Rachel F. Stapleton, University of Toronto

July 15, 2010

Dear President Naylor,

As I write to you, you have been receiving letters of protest from many concerned individuals, and some 2,600 academics, students, and members of the public have signed a petition asking you to reverse the recommendation of the Faculty of Arts and Science Strategic Planning Committee to disestablish the Centre for Comparative Literature effective July 1, 2011. I write to you to add my voice to theirs, and to ask you to re-evaluate this recommendation and its impact on the University of Toronto, its faculty, scholars, and students—both current and future.

Many of my colleagues have written to you of the international reputation of the Centre; of the ongoing high calibre of the students and faculty; of the innovative and award-winning research and pedagogies that are undertaken and developed at the Centre; of the largest, best recognized, and award-winning student-run conference at the University of Toronto, and possibly in Canada; of the involvement of students and faculty with theory and research groups across the globe; of the long history of the Northrop Frye Professorship in Literary Theory and the many distinguished scholars who have held that post; of the three Centre members who have served as Presidents of the Modern Language Association; of the historical, cultural, and intellectual history and importance of the Centre; and of many other successes of the Centre. I will not repeat facts which they have no doubt covered much better than I ever could.

Let me speak, rather, of what I see as the future and the question of the humanities. President Naylor, the disciplines that make up the humanities—the human sciences—are not “pieces of furniture,” as Dean Gertler referred to them in a recent interview in the Chronicle of Higher Education, that can be shuffled around or tossed out to suit fashionable notions of budgetary feng shui. Nor are they “sacred cows,” as Dean Gertler would also have it, that we are protecting for the sake of tradition. Instead, the humanities are what I called them above: the human sciences. Just as the natural sciences study aspects of our physical world, and the social sciences study aspects of our societies, so do the human sciences study humans, their thoughts, attitudes, creations. While the human sciences do not use the same scientific methods as the natural sciences, we are equally committed to rigorous methodological approaches to our studies; while there is less emphasis on reduplicative research, as in the natural sciences, our research must nevertheless live up to high standards and proofs that are millennia in the making; while our colleagues in the natural and social sciences often times need to look back on only a few decades of research, many of us in the human sciences must understand the centuries of thought behind our materials. We hold ourselves and are held to the same academic and intellectual standards as the other sciences. We are not second class intellectual citizens.

We are not ignorant of budgets, though the Dean’s proposal seems to be very scarce in actual financial details. The Dean has gone on record stating that the proposed disestablishment of the Centre for Comparative Literature along with the formation of the School of Languages and Literatures out of the current Spanish and Portuguese, Italian, German, Slavics, and East Asian Studies departments will save an estimated $900,000–$1.5 million. This begs the question: is the quality and calibre of graduate and undergraduate education offered by the University of Toronto, a quality recognized in the 2010 Maclean’s university rankings, is worth so very little to the University? Is the University really willing to put its reputation on the line for a price tag of $1.5 million dollars? When students of the Centre are bringing in more than $207,500—14% of the proposed savings—in external funding in 2010-2011 alone? Funding that will disappear as students go elsewhere upon the disestablishment of the Centre for Comparative Literature?

It is worrying to me, President Naylor, what this decision, along with many of the others outlined in the recommendations made by the SPC, say about the future of the human sciences at the University of Toronto, and of the University’s attitudes towards these vital studies. While such committees must perforce meet in closed sessions, no member of the Centre for Comparative Literature was asked to answer the concerns raised by the committee, which Professor Neil ten Kortenaar has since done in an open letter to Dean Gertler. As Professor Rebecca Comay (Comparative Literature and Philosophy) notes: “[Comparative literature is] not just about multiplying the number of different disciplines you can juggle—it’s about experimenting with different frames of reference.” I propose that the SPC try to experiment with different frames of reference before cutting funding to the humanities to pay for the poor judgment of the investment brokers. The Centre is home to some of the most creative, innovative, and interdisciplinary thinkers on campus: make use of this “brain trust” to formulate creative and workable solutions, rather than sending it to its dissolution.

Let me ask you again to re-evaluate the recommendation of the SPC, and recognize the ongoing contributions of Comparative Literature to the University of Toronto. To follow through on the recommendation, is not to take a difficult step against the “sacred cows” that Dean Gertler claims it is. On the contrary, the truly courageous position is to champion the humanities.

President Naylor, I hope that you will take on this challenge, and be the champion of the Centre for Comparative Literature and all the other disciplines of the humanities, the human sciences, that are at risk under these proposals.

Sincerely,

Rachel F. Stapleton

PhD Student

Centre for Comparative Literature

University of Toronto

Cc: Meric Gertler; Cheryl Misak; Neil ten Kortenaar; the Save Comp Lit campaign