Money to create new position in health law
Dalhousie’s Schulich School of Law received $3 million last Friday as a donation from philanthropist and “King of Classifieds” John McCall MacBain.
The endowment is going towards the creation of the McCall MacBain Chair in the Health Law Institute at Dal. Constance McIntosh says the position will make the school a leader in the field.
“We’ll go from being ‘one of the Canadian leaders’ to ‘the Canadian leader,’” she says.
McIntosh is the director of the Health Law Institute and a professor in the law school. “We’re a unique institution, and lucky to be located in a research-intensive university,” she says. “This comes at a time when challenges to our health law system abound.”
Those challenges include end of life care, as boomers are nearing retirement and old age, as well as patient safety and the ambiguous and complex “neuroethics.”
In a presentation at the Weldon Law Building amidst dozens of academics and students, President Tom Traves thanked McCall MacBain and lauded his “profound idealism.”
McCall MacBain, whose father graduated from Dal in 1951, set up his McCall MacBain Foundation after he sold his classified advertising business for more than $2 billion in 2006.
Currently the foundation is setting up clinics in Liberia, as well as funding scholarships and endowments throughout Canada and the rest of the developed world.
David Taylor is a third-year law student, set to become a Supreme Court clerk when he graduates after this year. He is also the recipient of the MacBain Scholarship, which has been operating for ten years.
“It’s what drew me here to Dal,” he says of the entrance scholarship. He says that even students in other areas of the school will feel the effect of the new chair.
“If we’re able to become a centre of excellence it’ll bring a component that will affect students across the board,” he says. “Anything that builds the capacity of the law school can’t help but have a positive effect.”
McCall MacBain says he’s especially happy his money will be well spent. “It’s not just a stone, or even a building,” he says. “We’re creating a chair that will go on forever.”
He says the recent funding cuts to Nova Scotian universities did not play a role in deciding where to send this money.
“It’s a problem everywhere, unfortunately,” he says. “But students should be rightly angry. If in times of difficulty we cut education, we’re cutting the future.”
He says the base of funding should still be from the government, and that philanthropists cannot take over those basic areas.
“We’re an extra,” says McCall MacBain. “We don’t want to substitute the role of the government,” which he says would lead to government reliance on donors, expectation of their money, and thus further cuts.
The McCall MacBain Chair, which fits into that “extra” category, will provide the health law department with an added range of courses and course expertise for students, as well as a cornerstone for other research professors.
Whoever fills the position – which McIntosh says is not known yet – will be someone already established in the field of health law, who will bring that experience to Dal.
McIntosh says there has already been “a lot of interest” from potential chair-fillers. “The potential of joining up is attractive,” she says. “People are excited. They’d be joining a strong group and an existing community.”
She says the hope is to have someone in the position by next summer.
Recent Comments