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
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