Friday, July 16, 2010

Piero Boitani, Università di Roma

President David Naylor 12 July 2010
University of Toronto
Simcoe Hall, Room 206
27 King’s College Circle
Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5S 1A1

cc. Provost Cheryl Misak

Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Science, Meric Gertler

Director of the Centre for Comparative Literature,

Neil ten Kortenaar


Dear President,

News has reached me recently of the University of Toronto’s intention to disestablish the Centre for Comparative Literature. I have the honour of having been Northrop Frye Professor at the Centre in 2006 (and of having met Northrop Frye during a conference devoted to him at this University), and must confess my astonishment at this announcement. The Centre is one of Canada’s most famous institutions in the Humanities, a flourishing enterprise, a lively meeting point for researchers and intellectuals from all over the world. It has a cohort of excellent, motivated students, an innovative curriculum, a prestigious annual international conference organized by the students (indeed, I was back for this in 2008), and a number of exciting initiatives, such as the journal Transverse. It is one of the very few places in the Western world where a student can actually get a Ph.D. or an MA in Comparative Literature.

I think disestablishing the Centre means to betray the memory and the spirit of Northrop Frye. It really is an outrageous and useless move, which will take away from the Humanities at the University of Toronto – and from Canada – a lot of their international prestige.

I do of course realize that Universities all over the Western world have budgetary needs which condition their behaviour in the present circumstances, but I would hope that at least in Canada, a country which has always shown farsightedness in these matters, the short-term anxiety over the economy would not impair first-class, long-term, cultural – and financial – investments. In short, I hope the University of Toronto reverses this decision.



Yours sincerely,



Piero Boitani, FBA

Chair of Comparative Literature

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