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