AGSEM, Teaching Assistant Positions and Discriminatory Hiring at McGill
The AGSEM, Discrimination, Antisemitism, and Anti-Zionism in Hiring Practices at McGill University
By Bonnie K. Goodman, BA, MLIS
The situation at McGill is much more hostile than is even publicly reported; just as bad is the passive-aggressive exclusion and aggressiveness from some professors who oppose activism or taking any position and from some departments who shut students out from work opportunities and teaching assistant positions because of their position on Israel. Two professors wanted me to work as their TAs, one in the fall and the other in the winter semester, who had been promising the position since June. In February 2009, I profiled the Associate Dean of the Faculty of Arts as an editor at George Mason University’s History News Network (HNN).
He asked me to TA to be the TA for his course in the winter semester when I asked about his fall semester course, the first introductory survey in US history. The wording sounds like a job offer; seeing it as anything different is challenging.
I would have happily recommended you to teach History 211 with me as a TA, but since then I accepted a role as Associate Dean in the Faculty of Arts. As such, I’ll only be teaching one class this coming year, my new course on the history of pandemics in Winter 2024. If that might be of interest, please let me know!
That would be considered a job offer and legally binding in Canada since I accepted it without requiring modifications. Any law professor could tell the History Department they had a legal way to honor that offer, and they had to make sure it happened, or else it was a breach of contract.[1]
My response:
I would love to TA your new course in the winter! During the lockdown, I expanded my research on Lillian Wald and public health, including her involvement in combating the 1918 pandemic in New York. Working with you on the course in the winter will inspire me to complete it and prepare myself in the process. If you need any research help for the course before then, I can do it.
In November, he responded when I asked about the position.
Yes, I am teaching History 222 and I’m happy to recommend you; the decisions are made according to the collective agreement with the TA union, but often times, there aren’t a lot of people who apply to particular courses, including one that meets on Friday afternoon like mine!
Still, the collective agreement does allow for graduate students to be hired outside the priority pool, so with the Associate Dean’s recommendation the department had every right and ability to give me the position especially since as I was qualified, even overly qualified.
Then on December 14, I received this response.
I just found out yesterday morning that a Ph.D. student has been assigned to TA my course. I’m sorry this didn’t work out. The collective agreement for TAships isn’t very flexible and gives priority to doctoral candidates.
Throughout the process, the excuses started, but if a professor recruits you for a position, you should get the position. This past fall, I was shut out of 26 positions I applied for, among them as teaching assistants, graders, research assistants, and library clerks. I marked the applications as refused; the others left the applications pending. One would think I was an undergraduate with no degrees or experience. The department administers, and the Association of Graduate Students Employed at McGill (AGSEM) union controls hiring. Despite my experience and extensive writing research in the courses’ subject areas; I was shut out of positions in both departments. The two departments I am associated with, the faculty of education and the history departments, have strong ties to the pro-Palestinian movement on campus.
Unsurprisingly, I have been shut out of every position I have applied to at the university, including as a teaching assistant in an academic field I have been studying for over twenty years. I even had a recommendation from the professor teaching the course. I was given the excuse of prioritizing doctoral students over master’s students despite the job being open to all graduate students, and my experience is far more extensive than even doctoral students. The difference is my political position being on the wrong side of the debate. I have been having a more difficult time than some other students have because of my public profile, my reporting, and my research on antisemitism and anti-Zionism at McGill. Universities might want to argue this is free speech, but it does lead to discrimination and hate towards those who have the opposite viewpoint. It is difficult to believe the history department or any other would include an outspoken Zionist on their list of TA for Union approval in light of these positions. While I spoke to employees at the PGSS, they have been polite and attempted to help, but are they being genuine or going through the legal motions? Their motion follows:
However, the concept of only hiring those in the priority pool who have already been a TA and have points is a form of systematic discrimination that prevents graduate students from gaining them, shutting them out of a position at the university. If graduate students are suffering enough financially, preventing new students from getting any work puts new students in a direr situation financially. However, according to accounts by members of the AGSEM, that is not true either. A member recounts to McGill’s primary student paper, the Tribune, that department administrators ask students in the priority pool to step aside for newly qualified students.
On November 9, the AGSEM had its third bargaining meeting with the McGill administration. On the table was the issue of job security, meaning their priority pool hiring. One of the union members attending as the negotiating team, “a graduate student and TA in the Department of Anthropology,” recounted in the bargaining meeting and then reported in the Tribune that the departments control the hiring process, they ignore the priority pool if it suits them and hires whom they like. In informal emails from administrators, McGill supervisors discourage graduate students with fellowships and grants from applying for TA positions. According to the Tribune, the graduate student “asserted that McGill supervisors and administrators discourage graduate students with external or internal fellowships and grants from applying for TA positions. In an email to The Tribune, Jesse described how many of their peers received informal emails from administrators requesting that these students ‘take one for the team’ in favor of incoming students without supplemental funding.
The Tribune’s reporting came from the AGSEM newsletters about their third meeting with the administration. There, they recounted:
One member, a student and TA in Anthropology, spoke about how their department discourages students from applying for TA positions. The justification for this widespread practice is to leave these positions for a new cohort of incoming students, many of whom do not have external sources of funding. From the union’s perspective, this practice undermines employees’ priority pool rights, and highlights the way the employer continues to conflate TA employment with graduate funding!
The student expressed, “Supervisors’ and administrators’ informal emails demanding that students not apply for TA positions create a climate of intimidation and can induce a fear of professional retaliation, as graduate students rely on their supervisors for references for job and grant applications. Moreover, the concerned students’ external funding amounts to an annual revenue that is still under Montreal’s poverty line. In essence, faculty and staff are requesting students live in poverty to make up for their own mismanagement of departmental resources.”
Additionally, other union representatives present who worked as TAs reported their departments, discouraging them from applying to TA positions. The AGSEM recounted, “Negotiators in the room who work as TAs in Physics, Biology, and Music Research affirmed similar experiences of being discouraged by their supervisors from applying for TA positions.” AGSEM suggested including language in the Collective Agreement to address and prevent this discouragement. McGill disagreed with the proposal, specifically regarding using the word “discourage.” However, no consensus was reached after the session.
The AGSEM union is advocating for three main objectives: an increase in the number of TA positions available on campus, removing these positions from funding packages, and increasing the minimum graduate stipends. The union believes the present circumstances are not viable due to coercive interactions between teaching assistants and their academic supervisors. The union recognizes the significance of academic supervision in facilitating the progress of graduate students; the restriction of employment opportunities poses a threat to labor rights. The union asserts that it is imperative to refrain from interfering in the employment choices of teaching assistants, particularly in light of the ongoing cost-of-living predicament. These practices arise from the institution’s limited funding for graduate students, as emphasized in the Funding Survey Report. Although the AGSEM is looking for the privilege of asserting the priority pool, their point can be used to indicate how advisers and departments need to have more sensitivity that all graduate students need to have the opportunity to be employed.
With all their talk and negotiations for being fair and against discrimination, the AGSEM’s essence of their collective agreement is discriminatory, and bringing politics and their position against pro-Israel Jewish students as a bias is discriminatory. McGill administrators proposed modifying the application process for TA positions and overhauling the final hiring lists for the union. However, the union refuses because it could undermine the priority pool system, which yearly assigns positions based on TAs’ studies. Other methods might lead to more fairness. The AGSEM wanted to include fifth-year doctoral students in the priority pool. At that level, the All But Dissertation ABD opens more doors so these students can earn money from outside sources. The higher the doctoral level, the less constrictive the residency, and they no longer take classes. The lower levels of graduate studies need on-campus jobs to work around a schedule of classes that is virtually only possible without interfering with their studies.
After being chastised by the associate director of the scholarships and student aid office over my financial plan because I did not have enough money or a job, I would not let the situation go, especially after consulting a lawyer. The department administrator responded to my message, dismissing me politely; I responded with my concerns about discrimination, saying I was not legally letting the situation go. A few hours later, I received an email from the department’s undergraduate coordinator. The coordinator condescended, distorted what I said about the dean, defamed me, and left me without work to support myself the semester, all under the guise of politeness. Behind my back, she made me look bad to an academic contact I had who predates his time, especially a valuable contact such as an assistant dean of my faculty. The department’s legal rights were to follow through on the professor’s offer and hire me. They could have, according to the collective agreement, if it was what he wanted.
According to the collective agreement, the hiring order first reserves some spots for students outside the union, for new students, then the priority pool, and then other students outside of the priority pool. Still, having a priority pool and each semester giving the jobs to those in the pool gives all the jobs only to a select few and leaves other students who might be even more qualified out in the cold, not being able to pay to survive a semester. The financial aid office wants to do something other than help. Generally, it wants a financial plan, punting it back to the department or telling students if they cannot afford their studies, they should drop out of the university. This systematic discrimination counters everything McGill publicly says.
13.02 Selection Process
In each Hiring Unit, appointments will be made in accordance with the following procedure:
13.02.01STEP 1) Reserve Clause A number of appointments may be reserved by the Employer for applicants from outside the Bargaining Unit who shall be graduate students in the term of the appointment. This number shall not exceed the number of Employees who have left the priority pool in the appropriate reference period, which is defined as follows:
a) For Fall term appointments: The reference period is the Winter and Summer terms. The number of appointments reserved for applicants from outside the Bargaining Unit is equal to the sum of the number of Employees who have lost or who will lose the right to priority pool entitlement in the Winter and Summer terms.
a) For Winter term appointments: The reference period is the Fall term. The number of appointments reserved for applicants from outside the Bargaining Unit is equal to the sum of the number of Employees who have lost or who will lose the right to priority pool entitlement in the Fall term.
The undergraduate coordinator told me something different from the collective agreement, believing I would not research further and keep quiet.
Each semester, the history department and every other McGill academic department put out the same ads; according to the Department of History and Classical Studies ad, “Applicants must be students registered in a McGill graduate program.” The administrator responsible for the position does so for (Anthropology, History & Classical Studies, Jewish Studies, Sociology). Jewish Studies is a small department, has close ties to the history department, and has been under its umbrella for many years. [2]
The Department of History & Classical Studies is searching for eligible candidates as Teaching Assistants for the Winter 2024 term.
Applicants must be students registered in a McGill MA or PhD graduate program in the Winter 2024 term.
Postings are considered tentative pending the final determination of course offerings and enrolments. Due to insufficient enrolment in courses, not all courses posted may require a TA.
Job Posting Title: History & Classical Studies Teaching Assistants Winter 2024
Hiring Unit: Department of History & Classical Studies
Position Summary
Responsibilities include hosting and facilitating discussions on Zoom with small groups of students; grading of exams and term papers; attending lectures and reading course materials; communicating with students regarding MyCourses, submission of assignments, etc.
Qualifications
Positions are only available to McGill graduate students with appropriate academic backgrounds. A previous study in the subject of the course.
Positions Available
CLAS 203 Greek Mythology. Lynn Kozak (6 positions)
HIST 201 Modern African History. Pedro Monaville (1 positions)
HIST 203 Canada Since 1867, Section 001. David Wright (1 position)
HIST 203 Canada Since 1867, Section 002. Ed Dunsworth (1 position)
HIST 215 Modern European History. Elizabeth Elbourne (3 positions)
HIST 218 Modern East Asian. TBD (2 positions)
HIST 221 United States Since 1865. Emma Teitelman (1 position)
HIST 222 History of Pandemics. Jason Opal (1 position)
HIST 223 Indigenous Peoples & Empires. TBA (2 positions)
HIST 226 East Central & Southeastern Europe. Natalie Cornett (1 position)
HIST304 International Relations History 2, Cold War. Lorenz Luthi (2 positions)
HIST 327 Age of the American Revolution. Michael La Monica (1 position)
HIST 375 Rome, Republic to Empire. Brahm Kleinmann (1 position)
HIST 392 The United States Since 1965. Leonard Moore (2 positions)
Hourly Salary: $33.03
Total Hours of Work per Term: 180
Position Start Date: 04/01/2024
Position End Date: 12/04/2024
Deadline to Apply: 21/11/2023
Internal Applicants
Internal applicants are McGill employees who currently hold an active contract at McGill University.
Refer to the How to Apply for a Job (for Internal Candidates.
IMPORTANT: You MUST first connect to McGill’s VPN before you log in to Workday (instructions on how to download VPN).
External Applicants
External applicants are applicants who do not currently hold an active contract at McGill University. This also applies to applicants who held contracts in the past and do not currently hold an active contract.
Refer to the How to Apply for a Job (for External Candidates).
IMPORTANT: You MUST first connect to McGill’s VPN before you log in to Workday (instructions on how to download VPN).
McGill University is committed to equity and diversity within its community and values academic rigour and excellence. We welcome and encourage applications from racialized persons/visible minorities, women, Indigenous persons, persons with disabilities, ethnic minorities, and persons of minority sexual orientations and gender identities, as well as from all qualified candidates with the skills and knowledge to engage productively with diverse communities.
At McGill, research that reflects diverse intellectual traditions, methodologies, and modes of dissemination and translation is valued and encouraged. Candidates are invited to demonstrate their research impact both within and across academic disciplines and in other sectors, such as government, communities, or industry.
McGill further recognizes and fairly considers the impact of leaves (e.g., family care or health-related) that may contribute to career interruptions or slowdowns. Candidates are encouraged to signal any leave that affected productivity, or that may have had an effect on their career path. This information will be considered to ensure the equitable assessment of the candidate’s record.
McGill implements an employment equity program and encourages members of designated equity groups to self-identify. It further seeks to ensure the equitable treatment and full inclusion of persons with disabilities by striving for the implementation of universal design principles transversally, across all facets of the University community, and through accommodation policies and procedures. Persons with disabilities who anticipate needing accommodations for any part of the application process may contact, in confidence, accessibilityrequest.hr@mcgill.ca.
All qualified applicants are encouraged to apply; however, in accordance with Canadian immigration requirements, Canadians and permanent residents will be given priority.[3]
The ad knowingly misleads students, making them believe they could have an opportunity for a job and that McGill is an equal opportunity employer that does not discriminate. The department’s ad allows students who have yet to be employed by McGill as external candidates and disclaims that there will be no discrimination.
The Department Administrator emailed:
Decisions have taken place in History & Classical Studies.
For the time being, we cannot offer you a TA position since priority is given to candidates in the Priority Pool (we have many) and then to students pursuing their graduate degrees in History & Classical Studies.
I responded, however, departments do not like students questioning their decisions.
I am not OK with the decision to exclude me. You speak of a priority pool. The department ad mentions that it is open to all McGill graduate students. Anyone who is qualified can apply. I am in Jewish studies; I did not formally change my program because of a technicality because of a scholarship.
Professor Opal has practically promised me that position since June. My application was supposed to be a technicality for department approval.
Any hiring practices that do not look at the best and most qualified candidates and have preferential treatment are discriminatory.
This will sound arrogant, but I am more qualified than many of your doctoral students. I have twenty years of academic experience in history, with a graduate degree from McGill, additional graduate work from Concordia and Hebrew University, and a body of writing that many doctoral graduates will never complete. A NYT best-selling author and a well-regarded Harvard professor have cited me, among others. How many of your graduate students have that experience? I can easily teach any American history class if given the opportunity.
Instead, I am being treated as a 23-year-old, first-year MA student. I also know how contentious my pro-Israel political position is regarding my writing of a history of antisemitism and anti-Zionism at McGill, which has received a lot of attention, especially this past semester. Even my professors disapprove, and I know the History Graduate Student Association and the AGSEM both have a pro-Palestinian position.
I’m sorry, but I’m not planning on leaving this as a polite dismissal.
The administrator then forwarded my email to the Undergraduate coordinator “Need your help — one TA candidate dissatisfied”
I am very sorry that we were not in a position to offer you a TA-ship this term, especially given your impressive background and extensive, diverse career experiences. The Collective Bargaining Agreement with AGSEM stipulates that everyone in the department’s Priority Pool — students who have earned priority points by TA-ing already for HIST or CLAS courses offered by our unit — must be offered positions before any other applicants, and this year we had an exact match between the number of students in our pool and the number of TA-ships posted. Hence the submitted assignments were, necessarily, all applicants with priority points.
I appreciate well the constraints of this system, as I am often unable to make what would otherwise be obvious or ideal placement due to those constraints. But per the terms of the agreement, an applicant’s experience or lack thereof only becomes a relevant consideration once the priority students have been assigned. Many units do, understandably, also try to place in-program students in TA positions before considering applicants from other departments, schools, or faculties, so that the former have opportunities to work with their supervisors, gain teaching experience relevant to their research, etc. I don’t know whether Jewish Studies does so but it may be worth inquiring about the unit’s assignment practices; many smaller units struggle to fill TA-ships and regularly employ non-program students beyond the Priority Pool requirement.
I did follow up with Prof. “X” to ensure that I wasn’t missing something and he forwarded me the exchange in which he told you he’d recommend you for HIST 222 but explained that such decisions are always made in accordance with the CBA. Unfortunately, this term we just didn’t have that latitude for HIST 222 or for the other courses you listed on account of the initial one-to-one ratio between our obligations and the available positions.
I can assure you that your political writing had no bearing whatsoever on the assignments, although I understand the concern — apart from the CBA, AGSEM and the HCGSA have no involvement in the process of assigning TAs. All units are required to submit their complete initial assignments to a Union representative before making any offers, but this process is an impersonal review to verify compliance with the terms of the collective agreement.
Again, my apologies that this didn’t work out as you had hoped and thank you for your interest in TA-ing for our courses. I will be in touch if anything changes (e.g., if a student offered one of the courses to which you applied declines) and wish you a restful break.
As I have noted about the caveat within the collective agreement and other graduate students going public about their departments pressuring them and giving jobs to students, not in the priority pool, the department has every “latitude” to fulfill the job offer I accepted back in June. To put it politely, her whole email was a lie about the rules, and departments regularly break any rules there are if it suits them. Apparently, the coordinator thinks I will take her word for it if she lies. As the saying goes, I wasn’t born yesterday, and there are legal remedies for such actions. However, most students, including myself, when I was younger and experienced discrimination at the university, do nothing and let administrators get away with it because they are afraid for their academic future. Their actions might put my financial life in peril, which is not a future at all. We have learned from the #MeToo movement that when we are treated wrong, we should never be quiet. We have to speak up.
Interestingly, except for a twist of fate and unfortunate circumstances, I would and should be this undergraduate coordinator’s equal. At a minimum, I should be given some respect, not the condescension and misconceptions she gave, thinking I would never find out the rules and loopholes and take her word as the truth. I am two years older than she is. I have a Google knowledge panel, and she does, too. We both have active Academia.edu pages; I have nearly double the views she does, and I am in the top one percentile of all writers on the site at the time of this writing, which includes millions of academics and student accounts. However, as a journalist, I wrote over 1,100 articles and essays and had several book-length histories. If anything, I would be more accomplished instead. I had to endure the indignity of condescension, begging for a job that, in reality, is beneath me, but it is in my field and would cover my expenses and allow me to survive a couple of more months.
The difference is the privilege; the undergraduate coordinator had the opportunity and the ability to afford to attend two Ivy League universities, including the top one. Those universities open doors, making it a given that they could be published and get a professorship by graduating from those top institutions. However, those who confront adversity and difficulties and who manage to beat the odds still manage to succeed and deserve respect. The same kind of condescension has plagued me throughout this past semester at McGill. We live in a world of degree snobs, where we overlook accomplishments for degrees, especially from the perceived prestigious universities. In my attempt to gain the credentials that would open up opportunities and universal respect, I opened myself to condescension and disrespect from the professors at McGill. Professors horde over their superiority over their students, even if the student’s body of writing and experience might surpass. However, I still have respect outside of McGill. Mature students need to be respected. They are often closer to the age or older than their professors are and have valuable experience; everyone should be treated respectfully.
[1] https://www.stikeman.com/en-ca/kh/canadian-employment-labour-pension-law/employment-and-labour-law-in-quebec-key-issues-and-emerging-trends
[2] https://www.mcgill.ca/history/graduate/ta
[3] https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/history-classical-studies-teaching-assistants-winter-2024-at-mcgill-university-3755400109/?originalSubdomain=ca
Bonnie K. Goodman, BA, MLIS, is a historian, librarian, journalist, and artist. She has done graduate work in Jewish Education at the Melton Centre of Jewish Education of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and in Jewish Studies at McGill University. She has a BA in History and Art History and a Masters in Library and Information Studies from McGill. She has done graduate work in Jewish history at Concordia University as part of the MA in Judaic Studies, where she focused Medieval and Modern Judaism. Her research area is North American Jewish history, and her thesis was entitled “Unconditional Loyalty to the Cause: Southern Whiteness, Jewish Women, and Antisemitism, 1860–1913.” Ms. Goodman has been researching and writing about antisemitism in North American Jewish History, and she has reported on the current antisemitic climate and anti-Zionism on campus for over fifteen years. She is the author of “A Constant Battle: McGill University’s Complicated History of Antisemitism and Now anti-Zionism.”
Ms. Goodman is also the author “Silver Boom! The Rise and Decline of Leadville, Colorado as the United States Silver Capital, 1860–1896,” and “The Mysterious Prince of the Confederacy: Judah P. Benjamin and the Jewish Goal of Whiteness in the South,” among others. She contributed the overviews and chronologies to the “History of American Presidential Elections, 1789–2008,” edited by Gil Troy, Arthur M. Schlesinger, and Fred L. Israel (2012). She is the former Features Editor at the History News Network and reporter at Examiner.com, where she covered politics, universities, religion, and news. She currently blogs at Medium, where she was a top writer in history, and regularly writes on “On This Day in History (#OTD in #History)” Feature. Her scholarly articles can be found on Academia.edu.
