Government of Canada war on Canadian Studies continues

She's gone

Independent board members and staff of the Foundation for Canadian Studies (UK), a British charitable foundation with a substantial endowment, have resigned en masse in response to a Canadian government coup.

Among those resigning are Margaret MacMillan, Steve Hewitt (security and intelligence scholar at U Birmingham), Susan Hodgetts (social sciences, U Ulster, scholar of Canadian foreign policy and editorial board member of the British Journal of Canadian Studies), and Diana Carney, (spouse of Bank of England governor Mark Carney, international development scholar, and advisor to the think tank Canada 2020).

Their replacements are to be civil servants from the Canadian High Commission in London, whose first move has been to remove another board member, scholar Rachel Killick. MacMillan writes:

It is also increasingly clear to me that the high commission intends effectively to take the foundation over and use its funds for the promotion of Canada’s interests as defined by it.

The government of Canada has already defunded Canadian Studies programs worldwide along with Parks Canada, the Archival Development Program, the Historical Thinking Project, along with most other independent and arm's-length historical programs that had public funding. Increasingly all direction for publicly funded projects in Canadian history and Canadian studies comes directly from the prime minister's office, with research objectives set by political criteria.

Update, February 16:  Steve Hewitt, one of the directors who is out, speaks out here at Active History