Strax affair
[1] The suspension, and UNB's subsequent legal proceedings against Strax, led to the institution's being censured by the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT).
[2]: 70 Strax saw it as his role to make students aware of the "need to protest actively against all sorts of authoritarianism, injustice and, in particular, the U.S. participation and Canada's 'complicity' in the Vietnam War".
[3] In October 1967 the Mobilization, led by Strax, organized bus transportation for approximately 150 people from Fredericton to Washington, D.C., for the March on the Pentagon.
[4] This aroused the indignation of Calais, Maine, American Legion branch leaders, who complained to U.S.Senators Edmund Muskie and Margaret Chase Smith.
[4] In February 1968 Strax was among Mobilization members who staged an occupation and sit-in at the Centennial Building in Fredericton, disrupting a meeting between the provincial government and the Students Representative Council about university tuition fees.
Handbills distributed by the Mobilization members alleged exploitation of "workers and students" by a provincial government "under the thumb of K. C. Irving and other capitalist interests".
[3] In the summer of 1968 the university extended Strax's probationary appointment for one year, to June 30, 1969, subject to several conditions, including more participation in departmental activities and increased research output.
[3] However, Strax and other activists saw them as "infringement on individual rights, smacking of police-state tactics" and "decided to counter-attack" at the campus library, where the cards had to be presented in order to sign out books.
[6] On September 20, Strax and several students repeatedly carried piles of library books to the circulation desk and demanded to be allowed to sign them out without UNB ID cards.
[6][1] On September 24, Mackay suspended Strax from UNB "effective immediately", informing him by letter that "you no longer have any duties to perform here, and that all rights and privileges are withdrawn which normally belong to a member of its faculty".
The newly enacted UNB Act allowed the president to suspend a faculty member but required him to inform the Board of Governors of his action and the reason for it.
In the morning some of his supporters occupied the hall outside the room where the meeting was being held, blocking the exit so that some members had to be lifted over the prone bodies of the demonstrators.
[9][7] In November, Strax appeared in court in Saint John before Justice J. Paul Barry, who had issued the original injunctions at the request of President Mackay.
Strax's lawyers argued that his suspension was illegal and that Mackay had not followed proper procedures in seeking the injunctions without Board of Governors authorization.
Murphy wrote a column which was published in the December 3 issue of The Brunswickan, the student newspaper, describing his experiences at the trial, which he called a "mockery of justice".
Borovoy put forward several defenses including Murphy's right to freedom of speech and the unlikelihood that an article in a student newspaper would "denigrate the court in the eyes of the community".
Their determination to wait another month in case he appealed the decision made at the end of December 1968 meant further delay and noncompliance with the CAUT request for arbitration.
The removal of censure was delayed by the judge's initial refusal to lift the injunctions and then by Strax's inability to retain a representative on the arbitration tribunal.
[13] The outcome of the Strax affair helped to establish "standards of due process for academic employment in Canada" based on the CAUT policy statement of 1967.
