Rachel F. Stapleton, University of Toronto; follow-up letter to Dean Gertler

September 23, 2010
Toronto, ON

Dear Dean Gertler,

          I would like to thank you for your engagement this afternoon at the first town hall meeting. I hope you will ascribe any “inflammatory” language—both earlier and in this letter—to a deep and abiding concern for the University. Having used only 1:10 of my allotted 3 minutes in my questions to you, I have taken the liberty to write to you now, in the spirit of consultation that you invoked at this afternoon’s meeting. I thank you in advance for your consideration of this letter, and I hope to receive a engaged response from you at your earliest convenience.

          Firstly, I want to state that I—and all of my colleagues—are fully aware that the status quo is unsustainable. Even those most unaware of budgetary realities understand that an annual deficit of $22 million is unacceptable, even for a public institution which. I believe that the proposals outlined in the Academic Plan are not those best suited to creating a long term, sustainable solution to the current crisis. At the same time, many of the major structural changes proposed in the Plan seem vague at best, and specific question that we have asked concerning the changes have been met almost entirely by, “Well, we hadn’t thought of that.”

           Secondly, let me say that I take as given that the intellectual “rationales” provided to the affected units at the end of June were misinformed, and I will therefore not address any arguments here towards those “rationales”; as you mentioned, your office has been inundated with letters from academics—and dare I say, experts—from around the world who have discredited those statements more eloquently than I can.

           When I asked you this afternoon about how the current Academic Plan aligns with two of your five pillars—enhancing student experience and leveraging excellence in research and graduate education—you focused your answer on a big picture view. I was not more specific in my question, but allow me to elaborate: given the parts of the proposal directly affecting graduate units (the Centre for Comparative Literature (my home department); the Centre for Ethics, the Centre for Diaspora and Transnational Studies; as well as the graduate sections of the five departments proposed to form up the “School of Languages and Literatures”), I hope you will see that we do not feel that the proposals currently on the table will in anyway enhance—or protect—our “graduate student experience.” I respectfully put to you that, no matter the opinions of the SPC or of any external reviewers, we, the graduate students, are the ones most capable of forming an opinion on our own experience at the University; indeed, we are the experts whom it behooves the Faculty to consult. Ask us how our graduate experience and education might be enhanced. I can guarantee you that it would not be by the amalgamation or disestablishment of units.
          In addition, let me tell you the personal effect this Plan has had on my “graduate student experience.” I have literally lost sleep over the proposed disestablishment of the Centre for Comparative Literature over the course of the summer. The news that my academic and intellectual home was under imminent threat of closure—and a timeline of 12 months, start to finish is certainly “imminent”—caused me much distress over several months. While I am extremely pleased that Professor ten Kortenaar and your office have had discussions that may alter the implementation of the Plan, I cannot overemphasize the impact that the threat of disestablishment has had on myself and my fellow students. (I use “threat” advisedly, and in no way intend it to be inflammatory; I merely alert you to how the proposal was presented to us in the early memos that we received, and in how we perceived the proposal to disestablish our Centre, and, in effect, our discipline. A collaborative program is in no way equivalent to supporting the discipline as it currently stands.)

          Another question I asked you was for your office to release hard financial figures. I was disappointed with what I saw as yet another “dodge.” When Vice-Dean Baker was good enough to meet with students from Comparative Literature on August 24, we requested the same information from him; he indicated that he would check with you as to what data could be shared; we never heard any more. I speak to my perception, not necessarily to the intentions behind the lack of sharing of those figures. I was heartened to hear you say towards the end of the town hall that budgetary memos were available on the FAS website. However I will mention that this was the first time that we have been directed to that information, despite many requests. And while I realize the difficulty of fielding so many questions from an audience, I will also mention that you only directed us to those memos after at least three different members of the audience had asked you to release budgetary figures. (At the same time, I would appreciate it if you or someone in your office could send me the link, as I have been unable to locate the budgetary memos you referred to on either the FAS website or the Provost’s website.)
          Much of the hesitance to share these figures—in addition to the suspicion it raises in the minds of an already-distrustful constituency—seems to be based on the “complexity” of the University and the Faculty’s budgets. While I am not an accountant, I respectfully maintain that any one of the Faculty’s 3,685 graduate students— most of whom live in Toronto on an annual income of $15,000, and some of whom support families—would have a very good understanding of budgets. I challenge any single one the University’s administrators to live for a year on the same income.

          My final request to you was for a firm commitment that no structural changes would be implemented before July 1, 2011, the original deadline proposed in the Academic Plan for the disestablishment of the above-mentioned Centres and the amalgamation of various departments into a new “School.” You were reluctant to make such a commitment, but were clear that such a timeline would depend on the UTFA grievance. I would therefore like to change my request and ask your office to publish a revised estimated timeline for structural changes, taking into account discussions you have had recently with the various affected units and the faculty grievance, including the proposed dates of presentation to the Arts & Science Council and the Governing Council for both discussion and decision, and when any such decisions would be implemented. Such a timeline would, I think, be an important step towards re-establishment trust within the Faculty.

          Finally, you indicated that you, the Provost, and the Faculty as a whole were interested in hearing constructive alternatives to the current proposal on the table. I therefore respectfully offer the following suggestions:

1. that the Provost grant the Faculty of Arts and Science a temporary release from contributing to the University of Toronto Fund for the next three years. While I realize that the cross-funding model is key to the University’s budget, given the current dire financial situation facing the Faculty, I would suggest that the net “loss” of $11 million would be best spent within the Faculty itself.

(I will only mention in passing the irony of an endowed School of Management that cannot—even with deregulated tuition fees—manage to run itself without subsidy, yet still has the capital funds to build a new building. A building project that I look out on from the cracked window of my carrel in Robarts.)

2. that administrators take a voluntary five-year wage freeze on those portions of their salaries that are stipends. This would not affect the portion of their salaries due to them as faculty, only that portion which is in addition to the salaries they would receive if they did not hold administrative posts.

Not having access to budget of the Faculty, I can only guess what affect these measures would have on the financial situation of the Faculty; they may not even be possible due to agreements and contracts to which I am not privy or of which I am ignorant. I do not know. However, I would once again draw your attention to the stipends that graduate students received, a stipend that is in effect a fixed income, and one that is not indexed to the cost of living, and certainly not to the cost of living in Toronto. I would suggest that voluntary measures might be one way in which the Faculty might make up some of its shortfall without placing in jeopardy the quality of education of which it is justifiably proud. (It is not my intention here to raise the issue of graduate student funding packages; I merely use it as an illustrative example.)
          I offer these suggestions in good faith, in the spirit of consultatioon, and as examples of some possible measures that I imagine would make more immediate and more significant contributions to the Faculty than the proposed School of Languages and Literatures, and the disestablishment of the three Centres mentioned above, which you estimated would save $900,000–$1.5 million.

          I thank you again for the time you have taken to read this letter, and I look forward to your response. I will be so bold as to hope for a personalized response rather than a form letter. If I have been misinformed as to any of the figures I have quoted, I apologize: I’m working with what information I have been able to find.

Best Regards,


Rachel F. Stapleton
Ph.D. Student
Centre for Comparative Literature
University of Toronto



CC: Provost Cheryl Misak
President David Naylor
Neil ten Kortenaar
Linda Hutcheon
Savecomplit
Academic Plan
UTFA
UTSU
CUPE

Courtesy of Eugenia Tsao, Anthropology

Hasta La Victoria Siempre!

Northrop Frye and Che Guevara seem to have much more in common than anyone ever guessed.

Robert Ramsay, Past Chair, CUPE 3902

September 24, 2010

Cheryl Misak
Vice-President & Provost
University of Toronto

Dear Professor Misak,

I have been watching the debate over the Faculty of Arts & Science (FAS) Academic Plan unfold since its release in July, and at this point I believe there is very little to add to the substantive input you and other administrators have received from members of the university and international community on the content of the Plan. However, there is still much to say about the process by which the Plan was produced and the state of academic planning at the University of Toronto in general, both of which deserve as much if not more censure than the FAS Plan’s now-infamously myopic recommendations.

In addition to their criticism of the Plan’s recommendations, many colleagues have noted the total abdication of your responsibility to shared, collegial governance. This is most clearly outlined in the grievance filed by the University of Toronto Faculty Association, which notes that the Academic Plan violates the contract between the University and its faculty, the principles articulated in your own planning document released in September 2009, the Policy for Assessment and Review of Academic Programs and Units, the University’s Statement of Institutional Purpose, and more generally, the academic freedom of your constituent scholars.

It is as if no one in your administration has done their homework. University governance in Canada has been a topic of study and reflection since at least the issuance of the Duff-Berdahl report in 1966. This massive study, commissioned jointly by the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada and the Canadian Association of University Teachers, had enormous impact nationally and was highly influential in the governance reforms that took place at the University of Toronto in the early 1970s. The commission was originally undertaken to examine the charges that “scholars no longer form or even influence their own policy, that a new and rapidly growing class of administrators is assuming control, and that a gulf of misunderstanding and misapprehension is widening between the academic staff and the administrative personnel, with grave damage to the functioning of both.” Over fifty years later, these sentiments are echoed in the current debate.

The University administration has done nearly everything the Duff-Berdahl report advised not to do and virtually nothing that it recommended. To wit, the guiding principle of long-term academic planning is expressed thusly: “Rather than having to accept purely administrative ad hoc decisions, it would be far better for the faculty to evolve a consensus which reflects its own values and long-range goals. The risks and the demands may be great, but the values are sufficient to justify the enterprise.”

These sentiments have been repeatedly forwarded and expanded upon in studies since 1966. The members of the Independent Study Group on University Governance wrote, in 1993, “It is our view that the well-being of the university cannot be fully achieved if it does not remain open and responsive to legitimate public suasion and if it cannot articulate its mission in a convincing fashion to the community it serves.” This is a prescient statement in light of your administration’s inability to articulate a guiding academic rationale for the proposed changes to FAS.

Investigation into the nature of university governance continues to thrive in the academy, and the general trend in this literature is to highlight a growing sense of alienation among faculty and students from the decisions that affect their working and academic lives. OISE’s own Glen Jones has suggested that a stronger integration of faculty, including contract faculty, into university decision-making may serve to counterbalance the effects of emerging market-oriented administration approaches. Conclusions like Jones’ were affirmed in a December 2009 paper by the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges, which stated, “Faculty participation in institutional governance isn’t a privilege; it’s a necessary part of decision-making in colleges and universities.”

To the observer, it would seem that neither you nor Dean Gertler, nor anyone else in senior administration, has studied the genealogy of your own jobs. If you had, surely you would have taken the necessary steps to avoid the current debacle, such as engaging in meaningful consultation with stakeholders prior to the implementation of radical changes (and it is well-documented that implementation has in fact begun). Despite your recent shift to the terminology “publicly-assisted university” rather than “public university” (a shift that signals far more than a fiscal reality, by the way), I assume that the recent events reveal only an unintentional failure of due diligence on your part, rather than an intentional departure from a tradition of shared, collegial governance that has long distinguished the public university from the private corporation.

I attended a meeting of the Governing Council in April 2010, during which the closure of language programs at the Scarborough campus was protested in multiple languages by a diverse range of governors (foreshadowing, perhaps, the present outcry). At this meeting, you spoke eloquently about the “great professors” at the University of Toronto. How is it that now you sidestep them, or worse, undermine them?

To cite just one example, the external reviewers for the Faculty of Forestry (FF) explain in their report of December 3 2009 that “we were advised by Provost Misak that a reorganization of the FF was being considered” and so “our primary charge became one of discussing with each group we met during our site visit the possible reorganization options being considered.” The reviewers continue, “Provost Misak advised that our report should only briefly comment on the traditional seven questions…and concentrate instead on reorganization.” In their response to this external review, the members of the Faculty correctly note, “Reorganization consideration was therefore less a conclusion that was reached than a primary charge to the review team.”

Your interference in the external review of the Faculty of Forestry belies your claim in a September 13 2010 letter to the Faculty Association that “planning processes must be local.” In this same letter, you go on to state that Simcoe Hall is prepared “to play a catalytic role when local processes stall or…spark significant unhappiness.” However, the public evidence shows that for the departments and centres of Arts & Science and for the Faculty of Forestry the local processes did not have a chance to succeed. In the former case, lack of communication and consultation from the Dean’s office resulted in an “air-tight” process and faulty plan. In the latter case, your manipulation of the process is what has resulted in significant unhappiness, as numerous letters from alumni and faculty, and the Faculty Association, demonstrate.

At a Planning & Budget Committee meeting in March 2010, I spoke against the process of the FAS plan, noting that the Strategic Planning Committee was small and unrepresentative, and that certain guiding objectives seemed to have purely financial justification, and potentially negative consequences for the academic mission of the Faculty. This intervention was wholly consistent with the recommendation of the 1988 Report of the Chairman’s Advisory Committee on Governance that Committees review policy matters “in the early stages of development,” and its recognition that a unicameral Governing Council can only flourish with “a high degree of reliance on consultation” (an idea reinforced by the 2008 Task Force on Governance). And yet, my comments were dismissed by the Committee, and later by Mr. Petch, as uninformed. Since then, my comments have been repeated by thousands of others. It is encouraging, at last, to see that Dean Gertler is taking the input from the university community seriously. I find it regrettable that our concerns were not taken seriously when we first voiced them many months ago.

I respectfully urge you to examine the crisis generated by the FAS Academic Plan as a case study in a long history of deteriorating university governance. It is not too late to salvage the reputation of the University of Toronto’s administration, or to regain the trust of those with whom you share the responsibility of governance. It will take much work to return to the practice of shared, collegial governance, and to honour the corollary obligation to observe due process in academic planning, but it will be worth the effort.


Sincerely,



Robert Ramsay
Past Chair
CUPE 3902
PhD Candidate
Department of Geography



cc: David Naylor, President
Meric Gertler, Dean of Faculty of Arts & Science
George Luste, UTFA President
Leslie Jermyn, CUPE 3902 Chair
Jack Petch, Governing Council Chair

Don Randall, Bilkent University, Turkey

Dear President Naylor,

I am writing to you concerning the recommended July 2011"disestablishment" of University of Toronto's Centre for Comparative
Literature. Having examined letters on this topic from scholars of high distinction (such as Gayatri Spivak), I find many of the points I might want to make have already been made, and better than I could make them. I, therefore, will strive to be brief and practical.

First, let me say that I do not have an established relationship with the Centre. However, my University has granted me a sabbatical research leave on the basis of proposed affiliation with the Centre. This leave had been refused when proposed in affiliation with another research centre, so I consider my success indicative of your University's high international prestige and also of the Centre's clear capacity to represent the University's openness to, and investment in, international and multicultural communities of scholars.

On a very practical level, though -- I said I would strive to be practical -- I think that establishing effective institutional settings for distinct scholarly communities must clearly be costly, in terms of the efforts of those engaged in the project and in plain dollars and cents. I was therefore very puzzled to learn that the University would decide to disestablish the Centre for Comparative Literature, which has been so clearly a successful establishment, in terms of the distinguished scholars that have been associated with it and the high-calibre students it has attracted.

Comparative Literature is far from having outlived its usefulness as a disciplinary institution (as other more distinguished voices have repeatedly affirmed to you). But more importantly, your Centre has been recognized as a leader and has undertaken steps toward on-going innovation of the disciplinary paradigm. The Centre's scholars have made important contributions toward the diversification of the comparatist orientation, making the Centre and the discipline it represents all the more viable and valuable in relation to the increasingly multicultural and transnational realities of literary production and its study.

Yours truly,
Don Randall, Associate Professor
Faculty of Humanities and Letters
Bilkent University
Ankara, Turkey

Ricardo Sternberg, to Provost Misak

8/16/10


Provost Cheryl Misak
University of Toronto


Dear Professor Misak,

Thank you for your kind letter of July 20 expressing your appreciation for my year as Interim Chair and Interim Graduate Chair of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese. I have been away at the start of my sabbatical and only received it yesterday. The job was, for the most part, rewarding and a joy. I found the interactions with the office of the Dean to be always collegial as they were the year I was Acting Chair of the same department (2007-08) and, a few years before that, when I served as Acting Director of the Centre for Comparative Literature. (2004-2005). But there is no denying that 2009-2010 was a particularly challenging year. The Department worked hard and collegially in drafting the Plan requested by the Dean that was sent to his office in December of 2009. It was thus rather shocking to see the cavalier way in which I, along with four other chairs of language departments, were called in for a one hour meeting with the dean in late June and informed of the decision to end our five departments and bring the academic programs of the five under the umbrella of a proposed School of Languages and Literatures by July 2011. Details to be worked out by December 2010. None of the plans filed by the five units spoke of a School. The report filed by the External Reviewers, who were called in at the last minute in late April to review my Department, also made no recommendations concerning a School. It is hard not to suspect, as some do, that the Faculty of Arts and Science Plan preceded, and was thus not in the least informed by our departmental plans. How else is one to understand the bizarre avoidance of consultation?

Let me at the outset say that I recognize the severity of the financial situation of the Faculty and let me further acknowledge that significant changes probably required a small committee (The Strategic Planning Committee) to work outside of the limelight. What I find undemocratic, uncollegial and arrogant, is the clear assumption by the SPC that after its initial deliberations, consultation with the units was unnecessary; that, in effect, all knowledge of the matter was already at hand in the Dean’s office and available to this committee. The units affected would be “consulted” when time came to implement decisions already taken. The promise by the Dean that town hall meetings to be held between September and December would constitute real consultation makes a mockery of collegiality and due process. I sincerely doubt that a public, free for all town hall or even a series of town halls is the appropriate manner and means of “consultation.” How does this respect procedure and furnish a careful, considered, and deliberate action of consultation with those departments directly affected?

Speaking in terms of my Department, I am not necessarily against the idea of a School per se and indeed have expressed that view to the Chronicle of Higher Education and to other media. This University could do worse than follow the lead of such peer institutions as the University of Guelph whose own School of Languages and Literatures, it should be noted, is more coherently structured than the one proposed at U. of T. True consultation with the units might have allowed the idea of a School to be fine-tuned and modified by input from the units. One can well imagine that had true consultation and due process taken place, the announcement of the School, modified by our own input, could have been welcomed by most of those concerned. (It might also have shown the Faculty that the Department of East Asian Studies posed different challenges than the other four departments).

As for Comparative Literature you have received many letters and I need not reiterate all of their points. I will mention only two. The Dean is a distinguished geographer and has no obligation to know that the debate on whether Comparative Literature is a true discipline has been settled in the affirmative for some 40 years. One has to assume others in his office and on the Committee knew better and advised him badly. As Prof. Kushner writes in a recent letter “the implication that Comparative Literature in its integrity is not an essential discipline at an excellent University” is a blow to the image of this University that sees itself, rightly, as an academic leader. My second point, if further evidence of the uniqueness of the Centre is necessary, is to point out that several distinguished members of the faculty when approached by other universities made sure their retention offers included cross appointment to the Centre. One such arrangement occurred during my one-year directorship. This is worth noting for, in pointing to the singularity of the Centre, it belies the assertion that Comparative Literature now can be “done” in any number of departments.

At the risk of over-egging the custard and trying your patience I would like to address yet one more part of the Academic Plan: Latin American Studies. We are told that the Munk Centre has no interest in the undergraduate program though it would keep, thank you very much, the research component of the program and its funding. Vice Dean Ito Peng requested a meeting on my last day as chair of the department and asked me to agree to housing the program in Spanish and Portuguese. I said no. She has now met twice with the current chair, Prof. Blackmore, continuing to insist that Spanish and Portuguese agree to run the program. 100% of all Latin Americanists on this campus are against the housing of the program in our Department. It has already been in our department, when LAS was IAS (Ibero American Studies) and it was, as Vice Dean Rupp would no doubt testify, a colossal failure. It is disheartening to those of us who have fought to have a true Latin American program on this campus for some 30 years to see it so cavalierly dealt with under this Plan. I understand from Prof. Peng that LAS has now been offered to History, to Political Science and to Spanish and Portuguese. No takers. Would prior consultation have helped? Hard to believe that the present disaster could not have been avoided by proper attention to the principle of collegiality. They do not ask. Or when they do ask, they do not listen.

Your letter of July 20th was short and kind and you might well find this response somewhat churlish. I hope you take it in the spirit with which I have written it: with the passion of someone who has dedicated himself to the units mentioned above for over thirty years. As I have made clear, I am not against every facet of the Plan. I am, however, totally against a process that short-circuited proper collegial consultation resulting in a flawed (in some cased deeply flawed) Plan. The Dean has proposed radical changes and has established a rushed timetable. Radical changes may well be needed but the University is not well served by a rushed timetable that has run roughshod over due process. Radical change is best affected thorough consultation with the stakeholders. I urge the Faculty of Arts and Science to begin again. In closing, I should note that nothing in this letter betrays our departmental response to the SPC plan. I include that response here.


With best wishes,


Ricardo da Silveira Lobo Sternberg
Professor

Kenneth Mills to Vice Dean Ito Peng, on behalf of LAS

11 September 2010

Professor Ito Peng
Associate Dean
Faculty of Arts and Science
University of Toronto

Dear Ito,

I have been almost silent about events around the Latin American Studies programme (LAS) as they have unfolded since last Spring. Yet, as the former and founding Director of this unit, and as a colleague who I hope has become known for a consistently creative and constructive attitude towards our University as a whole, I cannot remain silent anymore. I feel deeply unhappy at what I have seen. And I believe that any objective observer, faced with the evidence of what has transpired, would be properly horrified. Matters surrounding Latin American Studies appear to be getting worse, and it high time for leadership which will return our focus to the formation of our students as critical thinkers and global citizens, to the realm of ideas and public service, and to respect for each other as an interlocking community of faculty, staff, students and public.

The principal problems seem to begin with communication, the lack of it. Neither I nor other senior Latin Americanists across the Social Sciences and Humanities at the University have been consulted even once about the programme's accomplishments and future. We were not consulted about the recommendations of the Strategic Planning Committee within Arts and Science (SPC) to close down LAS's office in the Munk Centre, leave its dedicated administrator (40%) Stella Kyriakakis in an uncertain position which for the most part continues, and move LAS's teaching into Spanish and Portuguese. The first two have already happened. The one time you and I spoke about LAS in early summer, I accompanied Rosa Sarabia, Eva-Lynn Jagoe (both, former LAS directors), Ricardo Sternberg and Josiah Blackmore, the Chair of Spanish and Portuguese, at the latter's insistence, not yours. A compelling letter which Professor Sternberg sent to Provost Cheryl Misak on 16 August 2010 explored a number of subjects, but the penultimate paragraph spoke directly to the scale of our growing problem around Latin American Studies. That letter has not, to my knowledge, received a reply or, more importantly, led to alternative solutions and productive action from your office. I attach Professor Sternberg's letter, along with my own, for your ease of reference.

The kind of meeting which occurred because of Joe Blackmore's insistence should have been, should be, regular and vital. We need each other's help to think through possibilities, explore alternatives. At that time, I expressed my concerns that: first, in the wake of the recommendations within the A&S Academic Plan, you had broken off negotiations about the Directorship with Professor Valentina Napolitano (Anthropology), and; second, that you were attempting to de-link the research and teaching dimensions of the programme, with the idea of housing the latter in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese. I will return to the matter of a directorship below. With respect to the SPC's recommendation to de-link research and intellectual programming from the undergraduate teaching, well, it went against everything LAS had come to stand for, and against everything the programme was giving to its students, faculty, visitors and interested public. Our collective concern as Latin Americanists was expressed to you as only natural; we are committed to a fruitful coexistence of disciplinary and multi-disciplinary work in a great modern university. As all of us explained, we were united in support of Spanish and Portuguese's unanimous rejection of the recommendation that it house LAS teaching. (The programme should not be housed in any single department, we suggested, unless, as very last resort, it and its modest administrative support and resources rotated with the given, appointed Director.) A de-linking of research and teaching would fail on several levels, but most importantly: one, it would effectively kill off the unit's considerable contribution as a multi-, inter- and trans-disciplinary complement to disciplinary excellence at a great, ambitious and internationally-minded University; and two, without a nexus and base of operations, the hoped-for participation of Latin Americanists in initiatives within the new Munk School for Global Affairs would never occur. LAS, as we have known it since 2005, would wither into insignificance, or it would just disappear.

It is difficult not to take matters a little personally, given the reasons for which I have made Toronto home (and I love it here). I was hired from Princeton University to be a senior historian at the UofT, but also, in the words of then-Provost Shirley Newman, 'to build Latin America at UofT,' a vast area in this hemisphere that is increasingly connected to Canadians' lives. I joined a great many others in doing just that, pouring four years of my life into founding and growing a remarkable unit that, with modest resources, collaborated imaginatively across the University and beyond, and which has punched far above its weight in all ways. At a time when we are all so rightly concerned with financial reason, I wish to underscore the return on a modest investment. The leadership in teaching shown by Professor Victor Rivas, in particular, has been the foundation and inspiration of our student-centred approach to learning. The interim directorships of Rosa Sarabia and of Eva-Lynn Jagoe built substantially on our beginnings. The highlights have been many. One of my proudest moments came at the opening of the 'Virgin, Saints and Angels' exhibition of Baroque Art from Spanish South America (which LAS co-organised with the University of Toronto Art Centre [UTAC]); then-Provost Vivek Goel attended the opening, and commented on just how much Latin American Studies had managed to accomplish in a few short years. I won't trouble you with other examples of what Latin American Studies has been doing, but I hope you'll forgive me for asking if you know' Have you read the report on LAS I prepared on 1 June 2008 for then-Interim Dean Meric Gertler? The Faculty has conducted neither a review nor a proper, collective search for a Director since I was head of the unit. The programme has been very fortunate in its two Interim Directors since that time, but it is not the same as considering and appointing a new Director. The Faculty's stewardship and leadership is required.

Your communications to Spanish and Portuguese over the past few months have come to my attention, as has your recent reply to concerns raised by a current TA in the gateway lecture course, LAS 200Y, followed by another appeal made to Spanish and Portuguese to house the teaching programme and find an 'academic adviser,' now characterised as an 'academic director.' I am troubled by what I read, by how things seem to be getting only worse. At base, there is an apparent lack of understanding of what LAS is, where it came from, and why Spanish and Portuguese is resisting your requests, and about why Latin Americanist colleagues are patiently explaining that the SPC proposals for LAS need serious attention and re-thinking. Your assertion to the TA Jonathan Allan (10 Sept 2010) that you have been searching for an 'academic director' of LAS all summer is hard to understand. If a 'director' is now a wish, will you consult with faculty and student for views on the matter, and thus to make serious adjustments to what was proposed in the last days of June? Further, your effort to recruit a short-term leader from within a single Department by characterising the task of leading LAS as something that, you've been informed, 'really does not take much time,' is an insult to me as an experienced administrator, as well as to my colleagues. This characterisation will inspire no one to help out, much less to achieve great things for the study of Latin America, or anything else. Moreover, putting things in this way as you attempt to recruit assistance, is to set sights terribly and unacceptably low for an academic programme anywhere, let alone at a great University. I do not know from whom you are getting information or with whom you are consulting. But it is certainly not from those of us who study the region, who have worked hard for Latin American Studies, and who have signalled over and over again our readiness to help and offer counsel. As I told you in person in June and July, I have great respect for the difficulty of your position and I have offered to help. It is now mid-September, with students arriving and our greatest responsibility of teaching their classes just beginning.

The LAS programme's history and, as it were, its pre-history, is instructive and, as a historian, I know it is a best place for you to start. In what follows, I draw on information gathered carefully from a number of senior Latin Americanist colleagues (most notably Professor Ricardo Sternberg, Professor Peter Blanchard and Professor Judith Teichman), from Professor Stephen Rupp when he served as Chair of Spanish and Portuguese, and especially from Professor Emeritus William J. Callahan, my predecessor as a Chair of the Department of History and, for a decade, the Principal of Victoria College.

In the early 1990s, the opportunity for a real beginning for the coordinated study of Latin America at Toronto appeared when then-President Robert Prichard was approached by Sr. José Luis Pardos, the Spanish ambassador to Canada. (In his previous appointment in Australia, Pardos had been visionary, and promoted various initiatives to promote the study of global Spanish history and culture in universities. He wished to do the same in Canada and, in particular, for the University of Toronto. Pardo had already raised the subject with Mr. Jean Monty, then-President of Northern Telecom, which had extensive interests in various Latin American countries. Monty was receptive to the idea of funding an initiative at the UofT, culminating in a gift of $150,000 a year for five years, to a grand total of $750,000. Among other things, this generous grant provided for the creation of a Professor of 'Ibero-American Studies' (so named in deference to the efforts made by the Spanish ambassador) and of an internship programme designed to allow our students to gain first-hand work and study experience in the vast Latin American region.

Some aspects of the arrangement were put into encouraging motion. Professor Mario J. Valdes of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese was named the Professor of Ibero-American Studies (now emeritus) and, with a small fund provided for the purpose, he organised a number of conferences and exhibitions. Moreover, and auguring well for a better future, Valdes was multiply connective. One example was his co-direction, with Molson Prize-winning University Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature and English Linda Hutcheon, of a massive research project on Latin America and Europe, resulting in major Canada Council funding, and many publications, including their Rethinking Literary History: A Dialogue, and a three-volume monument, Literary Cultures of Latin America: A Comparative History. But, apart from the appointment of Professor Valdes, precious little was accomplished as a result of the Northern Telecom donation, in spite of the University and Arts & Science having made Latin American studies initiatives a faculty priority. I do not mean to discount some hopeful signs over the years, and especially not the fact that the University of Toronto Libraries have been well served by a gifted bibliographer and collection development, building a first class collection in areas such as Brazil and Mexico in particular. Limited funds were provided to the Department of Spanish and Portuguese for administrative assistance. The internship programme was never established and no concrete plans were ever developed to make best use of the remaining funds (some $600,000) to develop the programme the University deserved and had agreed to carry forward following its great opportunity.

The IAS programme was, from 2001 to 2005, housed in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, and was ostensibly directed by this unit's chair, then Professor Stephen Rupp. This arrangement was detrimental to the growth of a Latin American studies initiative, for that Chair was, very understandably, busy with the Department he helped to thrive. Beyond the one team-taught course mounted by committed faculty, IAS was, by all accounts, moribund at the beginning of this century. Initiatives by Latin Americanists at the time --such as the Brazil seminar-- were mostly independent. With the considerable assistance and advice of Professor Rupp and of then-Dean Pekka Sinervo, the Latin American Studies programme was founded in 2005. Our shared motivation was to move IAS out of one department, and to create something new, vibrant and truly multi-disciplinary. Latin American Studies was born, housed in the Munk Centre, and I was the first director. The some $600,000 remaining endowment money was earmarked for Latin American Studies initiatives, and its annual payout of c. $21,000 to c. $25,000, would help Arts & Science in support until such time as LAS could find its feet and further support. The help which the programme enjoyed from Director Janice Stein and from the Centre for the Study of the United States (with whom LAS shared an administrator) was vital. People of all kinds bought into what we could do together.

The programme took flight and began to thrive, to attract students from all walks of university life into a Major and then, more recently, a Minor programme, inaugurated by Professor Sarabia. LAS has annually offered three courses of its own (a gateway Y course, which introduces students to the history, civilisation and culture of this deiverse region; and two H seminars, one in the humanities and once in the social sciences), and often collaborated with other units to co-support other multidisciplinary courses. Its foundational instructor has been Professor Victor Rivas, an inspiration to students and faculty colleagues from the beginning. From that day one, LAS has knitted its pedagogical mission to its intellectual programming and research agendas. It has gathered Latin Americanist faculty and students from three campuses. It has annually offered a series of lectures, colloquia, symposia, workshops, film screenings, and other events that create intellectual community around learning about this diverse region in the hemisphere Canada shares. It inaugurated an Undergraduate Student Research Award. LAS has drawn on the tremendous resources of the U of T, its libraries, and its vibrant student and faculty with the university and city. Since 2005, LAS has added in no small way to both the Munk Centre's and the Faculty's and University's international profile.

With the vision and support of a next Director for a proper, five-year term, there is every sign the LAS would move from strength to strength.

As we all engage with the broad recommendations within the Academic Plan in the Faculty of Arts and Science, it has apparently been too easy to forget about LAS. Where is the communication, and effort at consultation between generous colleagues?

Latin Americanists feel that a Director is needed for a multi-disciplinary teaching and research unit that does the University proud for very little investment. That, in a nutshell, is why our colleagues in Spanish and Portuguese have repeatedly and respectfully declined your approaches in the wake of the SPC's recommendation. We have explained - and I have detailed above once again just why - that it is all of our interests to recognise the recommendation to house the programme in Spanish and Portuguese (or any one department) as ill-advised, and, as I hope you can seem an odd return to something (IAS) that decisively did not work in the past. More to the point, the proposed move would effectively suffocate this successful multi-disciplinary programme. One of LAS's many strengths, as intimated above in my brief explanation of its principles and accomplishments, is precisely the scholarly and pedagogical range it gathers, and the rich diversity of the students and faculty it attracts from across numerous departments and disciplines. Weeks before the planning recommendations were unveiled, you were completing a negotiation with Professor Valentina Napolitano, who came to you well recommended, and with vision, energy and new ideas -- including about fundraising in the community -- which would take Latin American Studies to new levels. She would become the first Director from the Social Sciences, offering new synergy with Political Science and the emerging Munk School, for instance, and a hugely important development on our campuses. Her respectful requests of you (principally, that the Directorship be a normal term of office, not another interimship) appear to me to have been administratively rational, and just what the health of the great new programme requires. It is, in short, with a plea for a return to such administrative rationality that I write this letter.

Let's look for some of the 'alternative solutions' to which Dean Gertler referred in his welcome memo last Friday afternoon (10 September 2010). It is, frankly, exhausting and deeply dispiriting to have to make these and related arguments over and over again. As you already know, I would be glad to provide any additional information you might want. I hope that, together with the Dean and many others, we might now find a way to ensure for Latin American Studies a continued life, not to mention even greater success, at the UofT. Students ought to be our primary concern, followed by staff and faculty, and a collective enhancement of our mission to reach outwards and to lead with diverse and mind-stretching things. Early next month, the largest single gathering of Latin Americanists in the world -- the Latin American Studies Association -- meets in Toronto; from January to March in 2013, UTAC will host a spectacular international exhibition of Peruvian silverwork; and there could be much in between! But will we be able to inspire any one from our local community to take part in the learning? The question right now is far more basic: whither LAS at all?

Yours sincerely,

Kenneth Mills
Professor and Chair
Department of History

cc. President David Naylor; Provost Cheryl Misak; Dean Meric Gertler

~~~~~~~~~
Kenneth Mills
Professor & Chair
Department of History
University of Toronto
100 St. George Street, Rm. 2074
Toronto, ON. M5S 3G3
Canada

Natalie Pendergast to the Université de Montréal and APFUCC

Bonjour,

Je vous écris pour vous informer de la dissolution du Centre for Comparative Literature à l’Université de Toronto. Je me suis inscrite dans le programme doctoral ici à l’Université de Toronto il y a un an, après avoir reçu une maîtrise en littérature comparée à l’Université de Montréal, et un baccalauréat en études françaises à l’Université Dalhousie et Kings College.

Sans aucun avis préalable, les étudiants ont reçu la semaine dernière un courriel annonçant la fermeture de notre Centre, ainsi que le remaniement des départements de East Asian Studies, Germanic Languages & Literatures, Italian Studies, Slavic Languages and Literatures et Spanish & Portuguese. En échange, UofT aurait l’intention d’établir une nouvelle école collaborative des langues et littératures.

Notre doyen des Arts et Sciences, Meric S. Gertler, a affirmé dans une note de service que, selon lui, la littérature comparée avait réussi à redéfinir et reformuler la manière dont on étudie la littérature à notre Université. Grâce à la recherche faite au Centre for Comparative Littérature, y compris l’exploration des théories de Benjamin, De Certeau, Derrida, Gadamer, Irigaray, Lacan, Ricœur, et cetera, les autres départements des langues et littératures ont progressivement commencé à considérer ces théoriciens. En suivant les procédés critiques et théoriques des comparatistes, les autres départements (d’Anglais, de Français, et cetera) mettent l'accent, maintenant, sur la théorie. En plus, chacune des dissertations doctorales dans ces départements doit avoir une focalisation théorique.

Puisque ces autres départements ont adopté la méthodologie des comparatistes, le Doyen Gertler prétend qu’il ne reste plus de raison pour continuer la littérature comparée comme discipline autonome. Le Centre for Comparative Literature sera par conséquent fermé le 1 juillet 2011.

Pour ceux et celles d’entre vous qui ignorent l’histoire du Centre for Comparative Literature, je propose de vous en faire le bilan. Établi en 1969 par Northrop Frye dans le but d’ouvrir un espace intellectuel où l’on pourrait explorer et comparer une pluralité de littératures, cultures, arts, medias, ainsi que les théories littéraires qui s’y rapportent, le Centre a connu, dès son établissement, un grand succès au niveau mondial grâce à ses colloques, ses publications et les chercheurs, canadiens et étrangers, qu’il a soutenus. Cependant, même si notre Centre vous est inconnu, je suis sûre que vous reconnaissez la place importante que la Littérature Comparée tient dans les sciences humaines et qu’une grande université ne peut pas se passer de cette discipline. Je vous prie donc de vous joindre à nous pour protester contre la décision de l’administration de l’Université de Toronto et pour lui demander que la Littérature Comparée soit maintenue comme une discipline autonome.

Toronto est censée être une des universités les plus reconnues du monde. Les autres grandes universités pouvant se prévaloir d’une réputation mondiale—Tokyo, London, Paris-La Sorbonne, Havard, Yale, Princeton—ont toutes des départements de littérature comparée. Si le nôtre est démantelé, l’Université de Toronto verra son envergure académique et son prestige amoindris et le Canada perdra son programme de littérature comparée le plus ancien et le plus renommé.

Le site http://www.savecomplit.ca/Home.html donne davantage d’informations sur la situation.

Veuillez envoyer vos lettres de protestation au courriel suivant : savecomplit@gmail.com

SVP, mettez vos signatures en bas de notre pétition : http://www.petitiononline.com/complit/petition.html


Merci de votre soutien et de votre solidarité.

Cordialement,

Natalie Pendergast

Letter to Dean Meric Gertler

Read the letter at http://academicplan.ca/2010/08/24/letter-to-dean-gertler/
. . .

5 August 2010
Professor Meric Gertler, Dean
Faculty of Arts and Science
University of Toronto

Dear Meric,

In the short weeks since the Faculty’s Academic Plan was announced to CPAD and CASD, without prior consultation with stakeholders, we are concerned that the Faculty has already begun to take steps to implement its proposals. These steps include: meetings with staff in units slated for elimination, advising them to seek new employment; direct communications to graduate students enrolled in or admitted to Comparative Literature, East Asian Studies, Germanic Languages and Literatures, Italian Studies, Slavic Languages and Literatures, and Spanish and Portuguese; preparations to transfer faculty appointments from one unit to another; and the creation of working groups to carry out different aspects of the Plan. The implementation measures will result in changes to staffing and programme structures in a manner that will prejudice the forthcoming consultation and governance processes.

We ask that further implementation of the Plan should begin only when those processes are complete. The academic units and programmes immediately affected, and many others conscious of the interconnectedness of the Faculty of Arts & Science, cannot rightly be expected to enter into discussion unless a freeze on implementation of the Plan is declared. Procedurally as well as intellectually, we trust you will agree that major changes, adjustments and terminations of academic programmes and entire units must not precede broad and open debate, consultation with an attitude of learning from all sides, and governance approval.

Current efforts by you as Dean to converse with affected chairs, directors and others about aspects of the proposed Plan are very encouraging, and they begin to address the disquiet and erosion of faculty confidence stemming from the lack of consultation in the process leading up to the announcement of the Academic Plan. We welcome particular information about how these conversations fit within the promised broader consultation process involving all affected unit heads, students, administrative staff, and other interested faculty and students.  We also find it urgent that the process of future consultation be clearly outlined at the outset. In short, faculty colleagues, administrative staff and students at all levels need to understand the consultation into which they are being invited as participants. We respect you, and appeal to your respect for our legitimate concerns in seeking the best ways of facing and working constructively with what has arisen in the wake of the SPC’s recommendations and the release of the Academic Plan: disagreement on substance and process. Our goal is one we hope you share: a consultative process which would render a re-developed academic plan legitimate, and assure stakeholders that, if consensus were to emerge, aspects of the currently proposed plan would be reversed or significantly modified.

Several questions have arisen in various recent campus gatherings of faculty, students and staff, and we would like to know the following at this time:

1. What is the overall budgetary impact of the Faculty’s plan? And, broken down for appropriate scrutiny, what is the net budgetary impact of specific features of the plan? Can the Faculty make spreadsheets detailing the current Faculty budget (for 2010-2011) available so that it can be compared with the projected budgets under the proposed plan for the duration of the next five years? This information has not been shared in any detail. If the budget information is confidential, on what grounds it is treated as confidential when: first, the Faculty has relied heavily on budgetary rationales as justification for its proposed plan; and, second, detailed budgetary information is vital information for our broad intellectual community and our Academic Council if we are to make informed judgments about the recommendations of the SPC, much less envisage modifications and alternatives?
2. What are the precise terms and scope of this consultation process? What is it envisaged to achieve? Will its scope include reversing some or all of the recommendations? Will it extend the proposed process of implementation? Will its mandate include the identification of other ways of addressing the deficit and making financial savings? Is there a guarantee that changes issuing from the full and genuine consultation process just ahead will be taken into account for implementation? Is the envisaged consultation process open-ended  and more than a mechanism for re-inscribing the recommendations of the Academic Plan? Town hall meetings have been promised as a mode of consultation. We doubt that town hall meetings offer the most productive format for debating the issues on a campus comprised of diverse departments and centres, and for permitting attendees some power to change the plan that has been set before them. We recommend a focussed series of consultations, encouraging learning about specific issues and a collective evolution of thought.
   
   We posit three things as fundamental. First, that an open call be issued to the faculty at large with an invitation to suggest agenda items that require separate lines of discussion, be they specific features of the proposed plan or not. Second, that we focus on specific and clearly controversial aspects of the proposed plan.  And third, that every proposed meeting – town hall or otherwise – should proceed according to simple principles of democracy.
   
   We might, for instance, conclude each gathering with a specific set of recommendations, proposals, or propositions which can be voted upon and recorded as such, or we might arrive at another manner of collating opinion that is acceptable to a majority.
   Aspects for focussed discussions might include, but not be limited to: (a) the overall budgetary impact of the proposed plan in the context of costs associated with the recommended changes, and of possible alternatives;
   
   
   
   • (b) the proposed School of Languages and Literatures and proposed eliminations of the the following departments: Department of East Asian Studies; Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures; Department of Italian Studies; Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures; Department of Spanish and Portuguese;
   • (c) the elimination of the Centre for Comparative Literature;
   • (d) the disestablishment of Diaspora and Transnational Studies;
   • (e) the elimination of the Centre for Ethics;
   • (f) implications for collection development and bibliographic expertise in the University of Toronto Libraries;
   • (g) prominent issues from the perspectives of undergraduate students;
   • (h) prominent issues from the perspectives of graduate students;
   • (i) prominent issues from the perspectives of administrative staff.
   
   We urge discussion towards a most productive format. We would also like to know how many meetings will occur, how the invitations will be issued and to whom, and how the agendas for these meetings will be structured?
   
3. What are the levels at which the consultative process will take place, and how will these feed into each other? For example, beyond the ways in which input from colleagues across the faculty and university will be invited and gathered, how are students and administrative staff in the various potentially affected programmes to be brought into the discussion? On the latter questions, it seems to us crucial that the ways in which the opinions and insights of our students will be heard and taken into account be absolutely clear from the start. The same holds true for affected administrative staff: are their views going to be heard through their Union, via public meetings and individual submissions, or in some other way?
4. What is the projected timeline for the consultation process? Or is there more than one timeline in play, especially given the complex and different elements that have been proposed? Is there allowance for flexibility if intriguing alternatives, and the need for further research, emerge?
5. What is the role of the A&S Academic Council (AC) in what lies ahead, and what precise procedures will it follow? What dates have been set for Council meetings, and how does the Faculty intend to stage that body’s deliberations of the plan across its meetings in 2010-2011? Will a newly constituted committee charged with adjudicating the consultation process (see item 6 just below) present its findings to the AC? How will motions concerning different features of the plan be framed?  For example, would each proposed displacement of faculty, and each disestablishment of a unit, arise as a separate motion in Council?  How will other motions arise? What opportunities will representatives of units slated for disestablishment or other significant changes have to present the case against the plan in Council?
6. Who will constitute the committee gathering information and collating the submissions through the consultative process? How does the work of this committee relate to the mandate of the SPC? Will a new committee or set of working bodies prepare a revised plan for consideration?

Thanks very much, in advance, for what we hope you will find reasonable clarifications going into a consultative process we welcome.

Yours sincerely,

Ronald Beiner, FRSC, Professor, Chair, Department of Political Science, University of Toronto at Mississauga

Josiah Blackmore, Professor, Chair, Department of Spanish and Portuguese

Joseph H. Carens, Professor, Department of Political Science

Stephen Clarkson, OC, FRSC, Professor, Department of Political Science

Natalie Zemon Davis, Adjunct Professor of History and Anthropology, Professor of Medieval Studies, and Henry Charles Lea Professor Emeritus, Princeton University

Anthony N. Doob, FRSC, Professor, Centre of Criminology

Allison Dubarry, President, USW Local 1998

Kathryn FitzGerald, Rotman Business Information Centre

Hugh Gunz, Professor and Chair, Department of Management, University of Toronto at Mississauga

Kelly Hannah-Moffatt, Professor, Chair, Department of Sociology, University of Toronto at Mississauga

Linda Hutcheon, University Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Department of English and Centre for Comparative Literature

Leslie Jermyn, Chair, CUPE 3902

Thomas Keirstead, Associate Professor, Chair, Department of East Asian Studies

Hana Kim, Korea Studies Librarian, University of Toronto Libraries

John Kloppenborg, Professor, Chair, Department and Centre for the Study of Religion

Neil ten Kortenaar, Associate Professor, Humanities, UTSC, Director, Centre for Comparative Literature

Eva Kushner, OC, FRSC, Mary Rowell Jackman and Mary Coyne Rowell Professor Emeritus, Department of French and Centre for Comparative Literature

Michael S. Lambek, Professor, Canada Research Chair, Department of Anthropology

The Librarians Committee, University of Toronto Faculty Association

Bonnie McElhinny, Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, and Director, Women and Gender Studies Institute

Suzanne Meyers Sawa, Assistant Librarian, Faculty of Music
Library

Kenneth Mills, Professor, Chair, Department of History

Linda S. Northrup, Professor, Chair, Department of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations

Mary Nyquist, Professor, Department of English

John K. Noyes, Professor, Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, Director, Book and Media Studies program

Ato Quayson, Professor, Department of English, Director, Centre for Diaspora and Transnational Studies

Jill Ross, Associate Professor, Graduate Coordinator, Centre for Comparative Literature, Centre for Medieval Studies and Department of History

Peter H. Russell, O.C., Professor Emeritus, Department of Political Science

Rosa Sarabia, Professor, Spanish and Portuguese, and UTFA representative

Vicki Skelton, Head, Information Services, Centre for Industrial Relations & Human Resources

Harriet Sonne de Torrens, Visual Resource Librarian, University of Toronto Mississauga, and UTFA representative

Ricardo Sternberg, Professor, Spanish and Portuguese, and former Interim Chair, Spanish and Portuguese and Interim Director, Centre for Comparative Literature

Fabiano Takashi Rocha, Japan Studies Librarian, University of Toronto Libraries

Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi, Professor, Departments of Historical Studies, UTM, History, and Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations

Miguel Torrens, Bibliographer for Italian, Spanish, Latin American studies and Philosophy, University of Toronto Libraries

Paul Tsang, Vice President, USW Local 1998

Anna Liang U, Director, Cheng Yu Tung East Asian Library, University of Toronto Libraries

Mariana Valverde, FRSC, Professor, Director, Centre of Criminology

Patrick Vitale, Liaison Officer, CUPE 3902

Germaine Warkentin, FRSC, Professor Emeritus, Department of English

John Zilcosky, Professor, Chair, Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures

. . . 
Read the letter at http://academicplan.ca/2010/08/24/letter-to-dean-gertler/

Atsuko Sakaki, University of Toronto

President David Naylor
University of Toronto
Simcoe Hall, Room 206
27 King’s College Circle
Toronto ON
M5S1A1

September 2, 2010

Dear President Naylor:

I am writing as one of the associate faculty members of the Centre for Comparative Literature to voice my opinion as to the recent recommendation made by Dean Meric Gertler that the Centre should be closed as of June 2011. For the past seven years, I have witnessed first hand devotion and accomplishments of distinguished members of the Centre, faculty, students, staff and alumni through teaching courses, advising students and communicating with colleagues. The centre has been such a source of intellectual inspiration and collegial support that my work has grown in a meteoric curve for the past few years, including publishing one single-authored book, many book chapters and several journal articles, as well as two SSHRC standard research grants and the Jackman Humanities Institute faculty research fellowship. The Centre has helped me to redefine myself as a scholar, critic and educator. Indeed, I cannot imagine myself remaining intellectually active without the presence of the Centre for Comparative Literature at the University of Toronto, as I have configured my current research in consideration of how I might produce critical work that is relevant to peers in comparative literature.

It seems to me that my position differs from the TPC’s in that while the committee sees the present moment as the end of Comparative Literature, we at the Centre see ourselves standing at a turning point, filled with the wealth of tradition and enthused with the prospect of a productive future.

As we ask whether or not Comparative Literature as a discipline has completed its mission and exhausted its potential, I suspect I am in a unique position to answer the question; I experienced a comparable phase in my days as a graduate student in Comparative Literature at the University of Tokyo, Japan (MA ’88; ABD ’91), one of the few institutions in the country that nourished the discipline, which they had characterized “young and beautiful.” It was the time that the first generation of the graduates from the department ran the department as successive chairs and were expected to retire soon—somewhat analogous to our institutional history as you can easily see. I heard it said that comparative approaches, which used to be non-existent in national language and literature departments, had been successfully adapted by them, and thus Comparative Literature was deprived of its reason for existence.

In the 90s, at the time of fundamental restructuring, however, the Comparative Literature department did not go down as a thing of the past at the University of Tokyo. Instead, it extended its program into undergraduate (till then it had been a graduate-only unit—again, the similarity to our system is all too obvious) and began to produce full-fledged Bachelors (previously they only had minors). Now their dual structure is fully implemented and functioning well, producing influential works on topics that still cannot be covered in nation-originated units. For example, a national language and literature department might now nurture a study of foreign literary influences on an author who wrote in the language, while that author’s legacy in international literary scene (how s/he was read in translation in other languages and inspired writers active in languages other than his/her own) cannot be fully addressed in the language and literature department due to the focus on texts in those other languages. As posterity as well as ancestry of literature, and diversified posterity at that, becomes more important to study in the irrevocably globalizing world, the presence of Comparative Literature is essential and is invested with promises of future research accomplishments.

In the past year, the Centre for Comparative Literature has taken a firm step toward future by revising its PhD language requirement, recognizing a body of disciplinary knowledge as an equivalent of a third language. This responds to the changing status of Comparative Literature, in which “comparative” means more than comparing two “distinct” literary traditions, but also engaging different media and introducing different procedures of inquiry. These newer dimensions have been solidified as legitimate and constructive in the global community of comparative literature scholars, at other universities and at international conferences such as American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA), annual meetings of which I have been participating in for the past four years. Comparative literature has expanded its corpus from inter-national studies to inter-media and inter-disciplinary inquiries, and it is exciting that the Centre is responding to the general change of tide. The size and quality of the ACLA conferences attest to the thriving state of Comparative Literature. There is so much Comparative Literature can offer and contribute to the humanities, for which the discipline deserves and needs a distinct institutional unit at the University of Toronto as elsewhere.

The Centre for Comparative Literature has never been confrontational to national language and literature departments. Instead, its presence has resonated constructively with nation-based literary studies, by highlighting trajectories between territories, lingual, geographic and disciplinary, and urging national literary studies to further sophisticate and intensify their consideration of borders and identities. In return, comparative literature benefits from rigorous studies of national languages and literatures. In order to ensure reciprocal and balanced exchange of ideas, one centripetal and the other centrifugal, it is important that both orientations are institutionally represented on equal footing, not one engulfing the other.

I hope the above will add to my colleagues and peers suggestions that the Centre for Comparative Literature should continue to exist and thrive as a unique and essential presence which enhances the intellectual well being of the University of Toronto. I thank you for your attention to this letter and look forward to learning of how you will respond to our collective voice in support of the Centre.

Yours sincerely,



Atsuko

Atsuko Sakaki
Professor

María José Giménez Micó, President of the Canadian Association of Hispanists

Re: Proposed Closure of the Comparative Literature Program at the University of Toronto

August 25th, 2010


To: President David Naylor, University of Toronto
Provost Cheryl Misak, University of Toronto
Dean Meric Gertler, University of Toronto

From: Dr. María José Giménez Micó, President of the Canadian Association of Hispanists, Executive Board and Members of the CAH

I am writing on behalf of the Canadian Association of Hispanists (an academic organization that belongs to the Canadian Federation of Humanities and Social Sciences, whose members consist of more than 250 professors, students and writers) to express our astonishment at the news of your intention to close the internationally and nationally recognized Centre for Comparative Literature, founded by the eminent scholar, Dr. Northrop Frye in 1969.

Faculty members associated with the Centre have established world-renowned reputations in the study of literature and literary theory, and have been recognized for their contributions to the intellectual and cultural life of Canada and the global community in a very wide variety of disciplines.

The Centre for Comparative Literature at the University of Toronto has been the foundation of Comparative Literature studies in Canada. Many members of the Canadian Association of Hispanists benefited from the instruction received during their years of studies there.

The Centre has been a carrefour of cultural interactions, and has helped to build interdisciplinary connexions. Its disappearance would jeopardize many of the relationships established throughout the years between departments and faculty members working on common research projects.

In light of what threatens to be the withdrawal of an essential program in the studies of literature and literary theory in Canada, the members of the Canadian Association of Hispanists would like to add their voice to the many organizations who have expressed the need for a Centre of such calibre and ask that the University administration reconsider its proposal for closure.


Sincerely,



María José Giménez Micó, Ph.D.
President of the Canadian Association of Hispanists

. . . 
See the PDF at http://fis.ucalgary.ca/ACH/ACH_to_U_of_T_CL.pdf