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We are writing to express our solidarity with 20 members of the University of Ottawa’s (henceforth uOttawa) research ethics board (REB) who openly challenged their institution’s refusal to support two colleagues in a legal battle to protect the confidentiality of their data. In this commentary we briefly describe the case and reflect on the implications of this collective action for rethinking the role of REBs within the academy. In particular, we argue that REBs should be forums of critical interdisciplinary debate about the relationship between researchers, the academy, knowledge production, and society. Before entering into the larger discussion, it is worth reminding readers of the much maligned status of REBs and ethics review. REBs are often characterized as being secretive bureaucracies overly focused on risk management.[1-3] Certain forms of research, especially qualitative and participatory, have been reportedly subjected to inappropriate standards better suited for biomedical research.[4] As well, the growing infrastructure and resources needed to support ethics review has been likened to a ‘research ethics industry.’[3, 5] However, the most troubling critique charges ethics review with being a form of “imperialism”[6] and a threat to academic freedom.[7-9] Haggerty[8] introduced the term “ethics creep” to account for the process whereby ethics review is expanding to colonize aspects of the research process previously outside of its purview. While there are certainly many examples of REBs being paternalistic and risk averse, there are also less discussed examples of REBs that are methodologically savvy and supportive of emerging research approaches. [10-11] Wolf[12] has asked researchers to remember that

Lessons from the Ottawa 20: Reclaiming the ethics review process to advance academic freedom