Dear Dean Gertler,
I am writing to you today to follow up on my letter of July 15th to President Naylor (attached below) in which I expressed both my concern and dismay at the plan proposed by the Strategic Planning Committee that will see the disestablishment of the Centre for Comparative Literature—my academic home at the University of Toronto.
When I chose to leave my career to pursue graduate studies, it was a very difficult decision. While it was always something I had had in mind to do, the practicalities of leaving a steady and comfortable income for a much lower wage was difficult—Toronto has never been a cheap place to live! However, the actual intellectual decision was surprisingly easy: at the Centre for Comparative Literature, I was being offered the opportunity to push my horizons, to engage with my love of languages in ways that neither my career (which had no use for Latin) nor any other department (the Spanish department has little use for English or French, nor does the English department for Spanish) would allow me to do, as well as joining a community of scholars whose diversity of interests and engaging minds continue to astound me to this day.
While I imagine you must be extremely busy working out all the details of these proposals, I nevertheless look forward to your prompt response to both this letter and my earlier letter of concern to President Naylor, which he was kind enough to forward to you on July 16th.
Sincerely,
Rachel F. Stapleton
Ph.D. Student
Centre for Comparative Literature
University of Toronto
July 21--no reply from the Dean
ReplyDeleteThe Dean's reply:
ReplyDeleteDear Ms. Freedman Stapleton,
Thank you very much for taking the time to write to the President and myself to express your support of the Centre for Comparative Literature. The President has asked me to respond on his behalf. As you are probably aware by now, Jonathan Allan, VP of the Comp. Lit. Students' Union is organizing a meeting with Vice-Dean Robert Baker to address particular student concerns. I trust this will be a productive meeting and that you plan to attend.
I would encourage you to read the full Faculty of Arts & Science Academic Plan at www.artsci.utoronto.ca. It provides important context for our proposal to close the Centre while retaining graduate teaching and scholarship in the field of comparative literature. Far from reducing our commitment to humanities, the plan describes how we are developing a new model to strengthen and extend humanities scholarship and teaching, in the context of seriously constrained financial circumstances. We have already made a strong start on this goal, having recently implemented changes to the undergraduate curriculum which ensure that even more of our students will undertake study in the humanities.
The recommendations arising from this planning exercise have only just been publicly released. In the coming weeks, the Faculty will convene a full public discussion of the plan and its detailed proposals, including those that affect the Centre for Comparative Literature. Major recommendations will also be subject to the normal governance processes of the University of Toronto, which will provide further opportunities for discussion and debate. In the meantime, I am already in discussion with the Provost, the Director of the Centre, faculty and students and various others with an interest in this issue. Our goal is to identify a new organizational structure that reduces costs, while still preserving our proud legacy of scholarship and teaching in comparative literature. My office will ensure that the views and concerns of all relevant stakeholders are part of the deliberation on the proposals. The consultation part of the process is just beginning. Both the proposals themselves and the nature of any alternative structures will be fully and genuinely deliberated upon by our community in the coming months.
I welcome your interest and thoughts as we move forward in this process.
Sincerely,
Meric Gertler, FRSC
Dean, Faculty of Arts & Science
University of Toronto