Dear All,
The news of 'disestablishing' the Centre for Comparative Literature comes as a shock to anyone engaged in projects that cut across languages, historical periods, literary traditions, geographical and disciplinary boundaries. Indeed, comparative literature is the paragon of humanities, and dissolution of such a program at any university in any part of the world is a disgrace. Indeed, the death of the Centre will be the death of intellectual advancement at University of Toronto.
Thanks,
Bhavya Tiwari
PhD Student, University of Texas, Austin.
MA, Comparative Literature, Jadavpur University, Calcutta, India.
Friday, July 16, 2010
Michael Lambek, University of Toronto
Dear Cheryl,
I've just returned from research abroad and am sorry to have to add my name to those expressing extreme dismay at what has transpired in the review process of Arts and Science. Not only were the letters from the Dean that I have seen or heard about ill-considered in their tone and misleading in their accusations, but the threatened closure or transformation of Comp Lit has done enormous damage to the University's reputation. This closure, as well as those of DTS and Ethics, that people worked so hard to create in the last round of budgeting, are deeply harmful to the intellectual life and morale at the university. There should be ways to address the budget crisis that do do not strike at the heart of the intellectual mission of the Humanities. The review process itself was biased insofar as it required the production of certain kinds of falsely objective 'data' that do not fit the humanities and humanistic social sciences models of understanding the world. I humbly suggest that the decisions be put on hold for another 6 months until there can be a proper review by a new set of scholars that focuses on intellectual integrity as much as 'output.' When the headlines of the national paper tell us that U of T would welcome Michael Ignatieff as director of the Munk Centre (at what kind of salary?) at the same time as the Bulletin contains a lot of double talk to paper over the closure of Comparative Literature, it is evident that there is a serious distortion of priorities.
I sympathize with the stress you must be under and the difficult fiscal realities, but please do stand up to this challenge.
best,
Michael
--
Michael Lambek, FRSC
Professor of Anthropology &
Canada Research Chair
University of Toronto at Scarborough
I've just returned from research abroad and am sorry to have to add my name to those expressing extreme dismay at what has transpired in the review process of Arts and Science. Not only were the letters from the Dean that I have seen or heard about ill-considered in their tone and misleading in their accusations, but the threatened closure or transformation of Comp Lit has done enormous damage to the University's reputation. This closure, as well as those of DTS and Ethics, that people worked so hard to create in the last round of budgeting, are deeply harmful to the intellectual life and morale at the university. There should be ways to address the budget crisis that do do not strike at the heart of the intellectual mission of the Humanities. The review process itself was biased insofar as it required the production of certain kinds of falsely objective 'data' that do not fit the humanities and humanistic social sciences models of understanding the world. I humbly suggest that the decisions be put on hold for another 6 months until there can be a proper review by a new set of scholars that focuses on intellectual integrity as much as 'output.' When the headlines of the national paper tell us that U of T would welcome Michael Ignatieff as director of the Munk Centre (at what kind of salary?) at the same time as the Bulletin contains a lot of double talk to paper over the closure of Comparative Literature, it is evident that there is a serious distortion of priorities.
I sympathize with the stress you must be under and the difficult fiscal realities, but please do stand up to this challenge.
best,
Michael
--
Michael Lambek, FRSC
Professor of Anthropology &
Canada Research Chair
University of Toronto at Scarborough
Katie Trumpener, Yale University
President David Naylor
University of Toronto
Simcoe Hall, Room 206
27 King's College Circle
Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5S 1A1
Dear President Naylor,
I was very concerned to hear from various Toronto colleagues about the proposed dissolution of Toronto's Center for Comparative Literature (and, indeed, of the proposed amalgamation of various language and area studies departments into one large but miscellaneous mega-department). I write as a comparative literature professor, area studies scholar, former language department chair, and sometime Canadianist whose early training took place in Canada. At the University of Alberta, where I received my BA in 1982, the University of Toronto was CONSISTENTLY held up as THE model of literary study, at least for all humanists in Canada. In that era the U of T was considered the preeminent place to do graduate work in Canada, in any literary or humanistic discipline and especially in Comparative Literature, and I find it hard to believe that is no longer the case. Hence I worry that this proposed move represents a de facto blow to the status and future of the humanities in Canada.
Comparative Literature itself is an extremely important discipline, one central to a bilingual, multicultural society. It is the only literary discipline which focuses intently on linguistic overlaps and differences, on the inner lives of writers attuned to more than one linguistic system, on the separateness and interconnection of linguistic and intellectual worlds in various parts of the globe. In the United States, at least, it is a discipline which is increasingly attractive to undergraduate majors and aspiring graduate students, who recognize in it a way of apprehending the world that matches their own internal map, and are often movingly able to articulate all that means to them. Yet I feel that the mission of Comparative Literature has special applicability to the Canadian situation, echoing as it does the internationalist aspirations of many Canadians, and the emphatically polyglot character of Toronto itself. For many decades, Comparative Literature has been not only the most cosmopolitan but the most intellectually adventurous of literary fields; it is certainly one of the few fields in the university (perhaps along with anthropology and linguistics, perhaps) with a long history of striving for a genuinely global picture of human culture. Institutions interested in globalizing their reach and their curriculum NEED the world picture and worldly understanding only Comparative Literature can give us.
Over the last decade, American universities which have saved money and cut corners by amalgamating their language and literature departments have generally found themselves far less able, over the longer run, to attract first-rate graduate students, mount full graduate programs, or remain full "players" in a range of research fields. (The forcible dissolution of area studies departments also risks destroying webs of interdisciplinary dialogue and interaction that other universities are struggling precisely to foster.) Where such amalgamations have had some compensations, it has been in institutions with strong histories of comparative literature, and where comparative literature has played a central role in creating a new framework for cross-disciplinary discussion. (This has been true, for instance, both at Stanford and at Johns Hopkins.) An amalgamation which ALSO involves the dissolution and institutional disappearance of Comparative Literature seems to me a recipe for real disaster--or at least for a new departmental structure that CAN'T create new kinds of knowledge but instead falls prey to competition and to parochialism.
PLEASE reconsider your recent decision. Please save the money somewhere else, spare the Center for Comparative Literature, and envision a different way forward for the literature and area studies departments. (Were money no object, wouldn't there be creative ways of creating additional layers of divisional communication and cross-over among departments, WITHOUT severing historians from semioticians, anthropologists from experts in oral poetics--and without destroying one of the university's few disciplinary spaces to enable genuinely polyglot exchange?)
I share the dismay of my Toronto colleagues at the restructuring plans announced so far, and their firm hope that you will reflect and reconsider.
Katie Trumpener
Emily Sanford Professor of English and Comparative Literature,
Yale University
Editorial Board member, English Studies in Canada
Supervisor, The English Institute
University of Toronto
Simcoe Hall, Room 206
27 King's College Circle
Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5S 1A1
Dear President Naylor,
I was very concerned to hear from various Toronto colleagues about the proposed dissolution of Toronto's Center for Comparative Literature (and, indeed, of the proposed amalgamation of various language and area studies departments into one large but miscellaneous mega-department). I write as a comparative literature professor, area studies scholar, former language department chair, and sometime Canadianist whose early training took place in Canada. At the University of Alberta, where I received my BA in 1982, the University of Toronto was CONSISTENTLY held up as THE model of literary study, at least for all humanists in Canada. In that era the U of T was considered the preeminent place to do graduate work in Canada, in any literary or humanistic discipline and especially in Comparative Literature, and I find it hard to believe that is no longer the case. Hence I worry that this proposed move represents a de facto blow to the status and future of the humanities in Canada.
Comparative Literature itself is an extremely important discipline, one central to a bilingual, multicultural society. It is the only literary discipline which focuses intently on linguistic overlaps and differences, on the inner lives of writers attuned to more than one linguistic system, on the separateness and interconnection of linguistic and intellectual worlds in various parts of the globe. In the United States, at least, it is a discipline which is increasingly attractive to undergraduate majors and aspiring graduate students, who recognize in it a way of apprehending the world that matches their own internal map, and are often movingly able to articulate all that means to them. Yet I feel that the mission of Comparative Literature has special applicability to the Canadian situation, echoing as it does the internationalist aspirations of many Canadians, and the emphatically polyglot character of Toronto itself. For many decades, Comparative Literature has been not only the most cosmopolitan but the most intellectually adventurous of literary fields; it is certainly one of the few fields in the university (perhaps along with anthropology and linguistics, perhaps) with a long history of striving for a genuinely global picture of human culture. Institutions interested in globalizing their reach and their curriculum NEED the world picture and worldly understanding only Comparative Literature can give us.
Over the last decade, American universities which have saved money and cut corners by amalgamating their language and literature departments have generally found themselves far less able, over the longer run, to attract first-rate graduate students, mount full graduate programs, or remain full "players" in a range of research fields. (The forcible dissolution of area studies departments also risks destroying webs of interdisciplinary dialogue and interaction that other universities are struggling precisely to foster.) Where such amalgamations have had some compensations, it has been in institutions with strong histories of comparative literature, and where comparative literature has played a central role in creating a new framework for cross-disciplinary discussion. (This has been true, for instance, both at Stanford and at Johns Hopkins.) An amalgamation which ALSO involves the dissolution and institutional disappearance of Comparative Literature seems to me a recipe for real disaster--or at least for a new departmental structure that CAN'T create new kinds of knowledge but instead falls prey to competition and to parochialism.
PLEASE reconsider your recent decision. Please save the money somewhere else, spare the Center for Comparative Literature, and envision a different way forward for the literature and area studies departments. (Were money no object, wouldn't there be creative ways of creating additional layers of divisional communication and cross-over among departments, WITHOUT severing historians from semioticians, anthropologists from experts in oral poetics--and without destroying one of the university's few disciplinary spaces to enable genuinely polyglot exchange?)
I share the dismay of my Toronto colleagues at the restructuring plans announced so far, and their firm hope that you will reflect and reconsider.
Katie Trumpener
Emily Sanford Professor of English and Comparative Literature,
Yale University
Editorial Board member, English Studies in Canada
Supervisor, The English Institute
Jeffrey Miller, University of Western Ontario
Dear President Naylor:
Good morning. I write as a former student of Northrop Frye, having taken his year-long "Principles of Literary Symbolism" at the U of T in 1973-74 during my masters/Ph.D. studies. Prof. Frye was the reason I came from the United States to do my graduate work at the U of T, and he was instrumental, in that respect, in my becoming a proud Canadian citizen and establishing my career as a writer and scholar here. In fact, his methodology serves as the foundation for the law-and-literature course I teach at the law faculty of University of Western Ontario. To my mind, Prof. Frye is the greatest thinker Canada has contributed to the history of ideas.
You will have guessed, I am sure, that I am deeply concerned about the "merger" ("collapse" seems the more apt description) of the Centre. Surely keeping Prof. Frye's brilliant, distinguished legacy alive in a material way is worth a million dollars per year. As the plan seems to be on a modern business model, a sort of academic Reaganomics (may the Fates and Furies preserve us!), perhaps the university could seek corporate assistance (corporate knights, in the jargon) with the cost? If the Canadian public were to become better educated about Northrop Frye's prominent place in the world's cultural history, surely they would support the centre, as well.
I of course understand that Prof. Frye is memorialized in other ways, materially, through his ideas, and through former students like me. But of course there is the larger, more diffuse concern, of marginalizing the humanities at the university and in our society - the frightening view that somehow they are not materially relevant. I'm sure I don't need to tell you that, particularly now in our "globalized" culture, the ecumenical concerns of comparative literature are vital to the progress of civilized life. If we push the humanities to the side or homogenize them, we risk becoming, as Prof. Frye once put it in a similar context, like a "dog in a library." I would hope my venerable and beloved alma mater would stand firm against this eventuality, particularly in times when we seem to find a billion dollars for a two-day world leaders' conference of dubious real value, and hundreds of millions to hold serial sporting events and their associated mindless partying.
Thank you, and best wishes,
Jeffrey Miller
http://www.jeffreymiller.ca
Adjunct Professor of Law and Literature, Faculty of Law,
University of Western Ontario www.law.uwo.ca
Good morning. I write as a former student of Northrop Frye, having taken his year-long "Principles of Literary Symbolism" at the U of T in 1973-74 during my masters/Ph.D. studies. Prof. Frye was the reason I came from the United States to do my graduate work at the U of T, and he was instrumental, in that respect, in my becoming a proud Canadian citizen and establishing my career as a writer and scholar here. In fact, his methodology serves as the foundation for the law-and-literature course I teach at the law faculty of University of Western Ontario. To my mind, Prof. Frye is the greatest thinker Canada has contributed to the history of ideas.
You will have guessed, I am sure, that I am deeply concerned about the "merger" ("collapse" seems the more apt description) of the Centre. Surely keeping Prof. Frye's brilliant, distinguished legacy alive in a material way is worth a million dollars per year. As the plan seems to be on a modern business model, a sort of academic Reaganomics (may the Fates and Furies preserve us!), perhaps the university could seek corporate assistance (corporate knights, in the jargon) with the cost? If the Canadian public were to become better educated about Northrop Frye's prominent place in the world's cultural history, surely they would support the centre, as well.
I of course understand that Prof. Frye is memorialized in other ways, materially, through his ideas, and through former students like me. But of course there is the larger, more diffuse concern, of marginalizing the humanities at the university and in our society - the frightening view that somehow they are not materially relevant. I'm sure I don't need to tell you that, particularly now in our "globalized" culture, the ecumenical concerns of comparative literature are vital to the progress of civilized life. If we push the humanities to the side or homogenize them, we risk becoming, as Prof. Frye once put it in a similar context, like a "dog in a library." I would hope my venerable and beloved alma mater would stand firm against this eventuality, particularly in times when we seem to find a billion dollars for a two-day world leaders' conference of dubious real value, and hundreds of millions to hold serial sporting events and their associated mindless partying.
Thank you, and best wishes,
Jeffrey Miller
http://www.jeffreymiller.ca
Adjunct Professor of Law and Literature, Faculty of Law,
University of Western Ontario www.law.uwo.ca
Albert Braz, University of Alberta
Dear President Naylor,
My name is Albert Braz and I am writing to you regarding the University of Toronto's proposed "disestablishment" of the Centre for Comparative Literature. I am compelled to express my concern about this troubling decision both as an alumnus of the University and the Centre (PhD, 1999) and as the director of the Comparative Literature Program at the University of Alberta.
Like anyone else even peripherally involved with academia, I am fully aware of the dire economic situation facing Canadian universities. Nevertheless, I am utterly perplexed that the University of Toronto would even contemplate downgrading Comparative Literature to a non-degree-granting program (in the future School for Languages and Literatures). As the study of literature in different languages, Comparative Literature is ideally placed to expose students to the diversity of cultural expression around the world. In this age of globalization, it is essential for the new generations, regardless of the fields they pursue, to become culturally literate. Not surprisingly, the most prestigious universities in the United States--such as Harvard, Yale, Columbia, New York, and Stanford--have degree-granting programs in Comparative Literature. Thus it is unimaginable that an institution with a reputation such as the University of Toronto would no longer offer Comparative Literature.
In conclusion, I hope the University of Toronto will reject the proposal to dissolve the Centre for Comparative Literature and thus
preserve a discipline that brings the University much prestige.
Sincerely yours,
Albert Braz
Albert Braz
Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and English
Director, Comparative Literature Program
University of Alberta
PS: I am copying this email to the Provost, the Dean of Arts, and the
Director of the Centre for Comparative Literature Program. Also, I
intend to write you a formal letter. However, since I am currently out
of the country, and considering the urgency of the matter, I decided
to write you this email.
My name is Albert Braz and I am writing to you regarding the University of Toronto's proposed "disestablishment" of the Centre for Comparative Literature. I am compelled to express my concern about this troubling decision both as an alumnus of the University and the Centre (PhD, 1999) and as the director of the Comparative Literature Program at the University of Alberta.
Like anyone else even peripherally involved with academia, I am fully aware of the dire economic situation facing Canadian universities. Nevertheless, I am utterly perplexed that the University of Toronto would even contemplate downgrading Comparative Literature to a non-degree-granting program (in the future School for Languages and Literatures). As the study of literature in different languages, Comparative Literature is ideally placed to expose students to the diversity of cultural expression around the world. In this age of globalization, it is essential for the new generations, regardless of the fields they pursue, to become culturally literate. Not surprisingly, the most prestigious universities in the United States--such as Harvard, Yale, Columbia, New York, and Stanford--have degree-granting programs in Comparative Literature. Thus it is unimaginable that an institution with a reputation such as the University of Toronto would no longer offer Comparative Literature.
In conclusion, I hope the University of Toronto will reject the proposal to dissolve the Centre for Comparative Literature and thus
preserve a discipline that brings the University much prestige.
Sincerely yours,
Albert Braz
Albert Braz
Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and English
Director, Comparative Literature Program
University of Alberta
PS: I am copying this email to the Provost, the Dean of Arts, and the
Director of the Centre for Comparative Literature Program. Also, I
intend to write you a formal letter. However, since I am currently out
of the country, and considering the urgency of the matter, I decided
to write you this email.
Darcy Gauthier, in response to Vice Dean Baker's Memo
Dear Vice-Dean Baker,
I am emailing you in response to the questionnaire that you sent out earlier today to address our concerns about the proposed School of Languages and Literatures. As a student in the Centre for Comparative Literature, whose research is also rooted in the Department East Asian Studies, I am in solidarity with the many other students who have already voiced shock and dismay regarding the decision to disestablish and restructure our disciplines. I am sure you have had the chance to read through many of the letters of protest, each of which I am proud to say is intelligent, articulate, well-argued, and persuasive in pointing out many of the troubling features of your office’s proposal. Whether or not it is to your benefit in these circumstances, I believe we can both agree upon the sophistication of the students being produced by the departments you intend to dismantle. I cannot say that such a high calibre of students will be sustained if the proposed changes go through, but as it stands, I hope you realize that you have your work cut out for you trying to pull the wool over the eyes of these ones.
Obviously, my colleagues and I have many questions and concerns. However, if it was your intention to assuage our fears with this recent questionnaire, I think you will soon see that is has not achieved its intended effect. That we are being asked to accept platitudinous answers to questions that are being posed for us in the form of prefabricated questionnaire is offensive to all those who have a real stake in the programs that are being dismantled. Not only were we not able to voice our concerns during the planning stages -- we were not made aware of the plan -- but now we are having our concerns voiced for us. I am sure you have read the many letters of protest that are being sent your way, and yet this questionnaire addresses none of their genuine, albeit difficult, concerns, or responds to any of the legitimate problems with the structure of the new school that they have been pointing out. The questionnaire said you would adapt to new questions as they are posed to you; I think it would also be a gesture of goodwill to address the many difficult questions that have already been posed in these letters.
One of my questions therefore is whether our real questions will get answers. Will you take what we really have to say seriously? For me, this means “is the proposal itself up for discussion?” Nowhere have I seen any indication that there is room for discussion surrounding the proposal itself. This questionnaire addresses concerns about the effects of the proposal, but it does not question the validity of the proposal. It seems as if it's a done deal, but is this true? What about the more fundamental question, then: “will you still give us a chance to defend the existence our disciplines?” Or, are we already doomed?
I have many other questions -- about the methodological focus of the new school, about what this will mean for the reputation of the University of Toronto as a centre for progressive academic research, about the actual value our degrees will have coming out of the death throes of a defunct program, etc. -- but many of these questions have already been well articulated in several of the protest letters, and I will not reiterate them here. What I would like to ask, then, in closing, is whether or not the Office of the Dean will be willing to reverse the evasive tactic of this questionnaire by agreeing to actually meet with students, face-to-face, in order to genuinely work through some of our serious concerns. We would like to be able to ask you our own questions, and voice our own concerns, in a format where real dialogue is possible. Such a genuine act of goodwill would do much to correct the lack of democratic and transparent decision making procedure that has characterized the establishment of this proposal up to this point.
With tribulation,
Darcy Gauthier
PhD student, Centre for Comparative Literature, UofT
Luke Nicholson, Concordia University
14 July 2010 (Bastille Day, coincidentally)
Dean Meric Gertler
100 St. George St., Room 2005
Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5S 3G3
Dear Dean Gertler:
As a U of T alumnus and a PhD candidate in a Canadian university, I object to your plan to roll up yet more of the University of Toronto's research and teaching capacity in the humanities.
Already as I was leaving the U of T ten years ago this direction was discernible. The administration of the university was ceasing really to talk to its community and began to talk over our heads to a broader business and policy elite. As a highly involved undergraduate student, I saw (in my latter years) several depressing instances of university officers (at the College, Faculty and University levels) preferring to support empty initiatives that had a public relations value over what ought to have been the real work of an institution of research and of higher learning. The university began consistently to pursue prestige at the expense of genuine quality and universality. I felt anxious for its future. I now see that the reality has exceeded even my worst fears, then.
The U of T is increasingly becoming an international centre (albeit a second tier one) in a limited range of disciplines - pure and applied
sciences, economics, and, especially, public policy areas - disciplines in which it is possible to win a Nobel Prize or that land its leading lights in the media spotlight. Never mind that these are not the traditional strengths of a university that once had truly original and important contributions to make in the humanities. The university that was home to the likes of Harold Innis, Northrop Frye and Marshall McLuhan might have had fewer prospects for Nobel Prizes; but the sacrificing of that former state for this latter state indicates an institution that has given up on knowledge, insight, and - especially - a uniquely Canadian contribution. Instead it puts out pretty press releases. And it has long since surrendered to the interests of its corporate donors, I fear. I must add that I find your observation, quoted in the Globe and Mail, that Comparative Literature has proven itself so successful it isn't needed anymore silly, and obviously disingenuous.
When my friends and colleagues who are U of T alumni and I attend conferences abroad, people sometimes ask what happened to the U of T. It used to be something very special, they say, but now it's becoming just another (and distinctly second-rate) public university. When I go to conferences in Canada, of course, members of the University of Toronto are almost never there. The university appears to regard its peers (like some anxious social climber) as an embarrassment to it now. The U of T used to aim to be (and it was) the best university in Canada - but a university very much in dialogue with Canada. Its principal glory was the range of research and teaching it undertook, mostly in the humanities. It now aims to be a "first class North American public research university," one, it s eems, that 'must make hard choices', as it is too often put. As a result, the U of T may have gained a small part of the world but it appears to have lost its soul.
Now it is fast becoming a place in which the weaker part of the PhD product of certain prestigious American schools (no offense: I'm sure I don't mean you, personally) end up teaching an increasingly international student body in a square mile of pretty old buildings that just happen to be in central Toronto. If they were in Philadelphia or Melbourne or Cincinnati, would anything really change? The university photographs well and has pretty press releases but it is losing its capacity to change this country or the scholarly world.
Maybe it's not too late to turn things around? I hope so.
In the meantime, I'm left to advise interested potential students in the humanities to consider a number of comprehensive universities in Canada that are actually much more dynamic places now, that is, intellectually. I'm afraid I've also convinced one (small) donor I know to suspend his gift to the U of T. He does not actually support an institution that cuts humanities but expands its business school. Why should he continue to support these perverse ends financially? And so, I hope that the loss - symbolic no doubt, for you - of his contribution may reflect our shared belief that this university, which we still tend to regard as our university, is being led in a bad direction. I hope this little note may lead you to reflect on the direction you and the rest of the phalanx of deans and senior administrators at Canadian research universities are leading us all. I mean no offense but I am angry and tired and disappointed to see that the gutting of the humanities continues apace. In this respect, alas, I fear the U of T still is a leader in Canadian higher education.
Thank you for your time.
Sincerely,
Luke Nicholson, 9T9
& PhD candidate, Concordia University
Dean Meric Gertler
100 St. George St., Room 2005
Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5S 3G3
Dear Dean Gertler:
As a U of T alumnus and a PhD candidate in a Canadian university, I object to your plan to roll up yet more of the University of Toronto's research and teaching capacity in the humanities.
Already as I was leaving the U of T ten years ago this direction was discernible. The administration of the university was ceasing really to talk to its community and began to talk over our heads to a broader business and policy elite. As a highly involved undergraduate student, I saw (in my latter years) several depressing instances of university officers (at the College, Faculty and University levels) preferring to support empty initiatives that had a public relations value over what ought to have been the real work of an institution of research and of higher learning. The university began consistently to pursue prestige at the expense of genuine quality and universality. I felt anxious for its future. I now see that the reality has exceeded even my worst fears, then.
The U of T is increasingly becoming an international centre (albeit a second tier one) in a limited range of disciplines - pure and applied
sciences, economics, and, especially, public policy areas - disciplines in which it is possible to win a Nobel Prize or that land its leading lights in the media spotlight. Never mind that these are not the traditional strengths of a university that once had truly original and important contributions to make in the humanities. The university that was home to the likes of Harold Innis, Northrop Frye and Marshall McLuhan might have had fewer prospects for Nobel Prizes; but the sacrificing of that former state for this latter state indicates an institution that has given up on knowledge, insight, and - especially - a uniquely Canadian contribution. Instead it puts out pretty press releases. And it has long since surrendered to the interests of its corporate donors, I fear. I must add that I find your observation, quoted in the Globe and Mail, that Comparative Literature has proven itself so successful it isn't needed anymore silly, and obviously disingenuous.
When my friends and colleagues who are U of T alumni and I attend conferences abroad, people sometimes ask what happened to the U of T. It used to be something very special, they say, but now it's becoming just another (and distinctly second-rate) public university. When I go to conferences in Canada, of course, members of the University of Toronto are almost never there. The university appears to regard its peers (like some anxious social climber) as an embarrassment to it now. The U of T used to aim to be (and it was) the best university in Canada - but a university very much in dialogue with Canada. Its principal glory was the range of research and teaching it undertook, mostly in the humanities. It now aims to be a "first class North American public research university," one, it s eems, that 'must make hard choices', as it is too often put. As a result, the U of T may have gained a small part of the world but it appears to have lost its soul.
Now it is fast becoming a place in which the weaker part of the PhD product of certain prestigious American schools (no offense: I'm sure I don't mean you, personally) end up teaching an increasingly international student body in a square mile of pretty old buildings that just happen to be in central Toronto. If they were in Philadelphia or Melbourne or Cincinnati, would anything really change? The university photographs well and has pretty press releases but it is losing its capacity to change this country or the scholarly world.
Maybe it's not too late to turn things around? I hope so.
In the meantime, I'm left to advise interested potential students in the humanities to consider a number of comprehensive universities in Canada that are actually much more dynamic places now, that is, intellectually. I'm afraid I've also convinced one (small) donor I know to suspend his gift to the U of T. He does not actually support an institution that cuts humanities but expands its business school. Why should he continue to support these perverse ends financially? And so, I hope that the loss - symbolic no doubt, for you - of his contribution may reflect our shared belief that this university, which we still tend to regard as our university, is being led in a bad direction. I hope this little note may lead you to reflect on the direction you and the rest of the phalanx of deans and senior administrators at Canadian research universities are leading us all. I mean no offense but I am angry and tired and disappointed to see that the gutting of the humanities continues apace. In this respect, alas, I fear the U of T still is a leader in Canadian higher education.
Thank you for your time.
Sincerely,
Luke Nicholson, 9T9
& PhD candidate, Concordia University
Valerie Henitiuk, University of East Anglia
Dear Drs. Naylor, Misak, and Gentler,
As a Canadian who earned her PhD in Comparative Literature (University of Alberta 2005), I was taken aback by the suggestion that the University of Toronto’s world-renowned Centre for Comparative Literature could be closed. This is a discipline that is at the leading edge of Humanities research today, and the centre itself importantly represents the legacy of one of the great, Canadian figures of literary theory and criticism.
Further, as someone who did her postdoc at the Center [now Institute] for Comparative Literature and Society at Columbia University in the US, has conducted research in France and Japan, attends scholarly conferences all over the world, and currently heads a Translation Studies centre in the UK, I am regularly reminded of the international status possessed by the Centre for Comparative Literature. It is rightly regarded with tremendous respect not only within the discipline, but also from outside it. Squandering that kind of global renown and recognition, not to mention undermining the stellar work of its current faculty and students, would seem a shockingly short-sighted step.
I have just read the Manifesto written by the Comparative Literature students at the University of Toronto and posted to their website (http://www.savecomplit.ca/
We all recognize the difficult economic climate and budgetary pressures faced by universities in Canada and elsewhere. However, this proposal to disband the centre and merge it into a more general School of Languages and Literatures cannot be the answer. I sincerely hope that the debate engendered by the proposed closure will help bring other, less potentially damaging options to the fore.
In closing, I would urge the University of Toronto to reconsider this action and instead take steps fully to acknowledge the great asset that the Centre for Comparative Literature has been, is, and can be, and continue to support its ground-breaking work in every way possible.
Thank you, and best regards,
Valerie Henitiuk (Dr.)
Director (Acting), British Centre for Literary Translation
Senior Lecturer, School of Literature and Creative Writing
University of East Anglia
Norwich NR4 7TJ
Tel.: (44) (0)1603 592739
www.bclt.org.uk
University of East Anglia
Norwich NR4 7TJ
Tel.: (44) (0)1603 592739
Geert Lenout, Unversity of Antwerp
Antwerp, 13 July 2010
Dear President Naylor,
As an alumnus of the Centre for Comparative Literature (Ph.D. 1985), I was greatly disturbed by the news that the University has plans to “disestablish” the Centre. Both as a professor of comparative literature and as someone who is not without experience in university administration, I can appreciate the difficulties involved in such decisions, but I would still ask you to reconsider.
Admittedly there is a trend in university administration and also, in Europe at least in government agencies, to try to downsize departments in the humanities. In the long run this is a disastrous decision, especially in countries such as yours and mine, where language instruction is and always has been of the utmost importance. My early training in trilingual Belgium and my graduate work at U of T have given me the kind of education that is the necessary basis for a thorough understanding of a multilingual and multicultural reality or our world in the twenty-first century. One of the great challenges of the next hundred years will be to deal with this reality and we will continue to need scholars and intellectuals that are able to study the language and cultures of other peoples in the original language. If great schools such as the University of Toronto, situated in one of the most multicultural cities in the world, are giving up on that task, who else will do it?
In my own career at the University of Antwerp and in my training of young scholars I have always built on the skills I had acquired at the Centre for Comparative Literature; in part in recognition of the importance of the programme and of the excellence of its teaching staff, my university awarded an honorary doctorate to Linda Hutcheon. I am greatly indebted to U of T and to the Centre in particular for laying the foundations of my scholarly career and I would be greatly disappointed if the Centre would suddenly cease to exist.
Sincerely yours,
Prof. Dr. Geert Lernout
University of Antwerp, Belgium
Member of the Academia Europaea.
Dear President Naylor,
As an alumnus of the Centre for Comparative Literature (Ph.D. 1985), I was greatly disturbed by the news that the University has plans to “disestablish” the Centre. Both as a professor of comparative literature and as someone who is not without experience in university administration, I can appreciate the difficulties involved in such decisions, but I would still ask you to reconsider.
Admittedly there is a trend in university administration and also, in Europe at least in government agencies, to try to downsize departments in the humanities. In the long run this is a disastrous decision, especially in countries such as yours and mine, where language instruction is and always has been of the utmost importance. My early training in trilingual Belgium and my graduate work at U of T have given me the kind of education that is the necessary basis for a thorough understanding of a multilingual and multicultural reality or our world in the twenty-first century. One of the great challenges of the next hundred years will be to deal with this reality and we will continue to need scholars and intellectuals that are able to study the language and cultures of other peoples in the original language. If great schools such as the University of Toronto, situated in one of the most multicultural cities in the world, are giving up on that task, who else will do it?
In my own career at the University of Antwerp and in my training of young scholars I have always built on the skills I had acquired at the Centre for Comparative Literature; in part in recognition of the importance of the programme and of the excellence of its teaching staff, my university awarded an honorary doctorate to Linda Hutcheon. I am greatly indebted to U of T and to the Centre in particular for laying the foundations of my scholarly career and I would be greatly disappointed if the Centre would suddenly cease to exist.
Sincerely yours,
Prof. Dr. Geert Lernout
University of Antwerp, Belgium
Member of the Academia Europaea.
Jennifer Andrews, University of New Brunswick
President David Naylor
University of Toronto
Simcoe Hall, Room 206
27 King's College Circle
Toronto, Ontario M5S 1A1
July 14, 2010.
Dear President Naylor:
I am writing as a University of Toronto alumnus to express my outrage and disappointment at the proposed closing of the Centre for Comparative Literature. Although I received my MA and PHD from the Department of English at the University of Toronto in 1994 and 1998 respectively, I consider the graduate courses that I took at the Centre of Comparative Literature to have been absolutely formative for my scholarly career and critical to the development of my cross- border work in English-Canadian and American literature, which has resulted in two monographs, over fifteen peer-reviewed scholarly articles, and dozens of conference papers; it also gave me the unique training needed to co-edit the only bilingual Canadian scholarly literature journal in the country.
The Centre for Comparative Literature offered a dynamic space to explore literatures and cultures in a truly comparative context, a perspective that I relish to this day. While the Department of English provided requisite training in the discipline of English literature and its national branches, I vividly recall the thought- provoking and indeed radical perspectives offered up in my comparative literature classes, which pushed me as a graduate student to think more broadly and deeply about cross-culture and cross-literary relations. For me, the legacy of studying at the Centre has been a congenial and generous group of colleagues and friends located around the global who continue to produce outstanding work across disciplines and languages and inspire my own continued productivity. If the University of Toronto aspires to be a university of global excellence then to close the Centre for Comparative Literature would be to end one of its finest creations; surely the university is smarter than that!
Sincerely,
Jennifer Andrews, Professor, Co-editor of Studies in Canadian Literature & Co-director of Honours and Majors
Room #247, Carleton Hall, Department of English, UNB, P.O. Box 4400
Fredericton, NB E3B 5A3
Office phone: (506) 458-7403
Office fax: (506) 453-5069
University of Toronto
Simcoe Hall, Room 206
27 King's College Circle
Toronto, Ontario M5S 1A1
July 14, 2010.
Dear President Naylor:
I am writing as a University of Toronto alumnus to express my outrage and disappointment at the proposed closing of the Centre for Comparative Literature. Although I received my MA and PHD from the Department of English at the University of Toronto in 1994 and 1998 respectively, I consider the graduate courses that I took at the Centre of Comparative Literature to have been absolutely formative for my scholarly career and critical to the development of my cross- border work in English-Canadian and American literature, which has resulted in two monographs, over fifteen peer-reviewed scholarly articles, and dozens of conference papers; it also gave me the unique training needed to co-edit the only bilingual Canadian scholarly literature journal in the country.
The Centre for Comparative Literature offered a dynamic space to explore literatures and cultures in a truly comparative context, a perspective that I relish to this day. While the Department of English provided requisite training in the discipline of English literature and its national branches, I vividly recall the thought- provoking and indeed radical perspectives offered up in my comparative literature classes, which pushed me as a graduate student to think more broadly and deeply about cross-culture and cross-literary relations. For me, the legacy of studying at the Centre has been a congenial and generous group of colleagues and friends located around the global who continue to produce outstanding work across disciplines and languages and inspire my own continued productivity. If the University of Toronto aspires to be a university of global excellence then to close the Centre for Comparative Literature would be to end one of its finest creations; surely the university is smarter than that!
Sincerely,
Jennifer Andrews, Professor, Co-editor of Studies in Canadian Literature & Co-director of Honours and Majors
Room #247, Carleton Hall, Department of English, UNB, P.O. Box 4400
Fredericton, NB E3B 5A3
Office phone: (506) 458-7403
Office fax: (506) 453-5069
Piero Boitani, Università di Roma
President David Naylor 12 July 2010
University of Toronto
Simcoe Hall, Room 206
27 King’s College Circle
Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5S 1A1
cc. Provost Cheryl Misak
Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Science, Meric Gertler
Director of the Centre for Comparative Literature,
Neil ten Kortenaar
Dear President,
News has reached me recently of the University of Toronto’s intention to disestablish the Centre for Comparative Literature. I have the honour of having been Northrop Frye Professor at the Centre in 2006 (and of having met Northrop Frye during a conference devoted to him at this University), and must confess my astonishment at this announcement. The Centre is one of Canada’s most famous institutions in the Humanities, a flourishing enterprise, a lively meeting point for researchers and intellectuals from all over the world. It has a cohort of excellent, motivated students, an innovative curriculum, a prestigious annual international conference organized by the students (indeed, I was back for this in 2008), and a number of exciting initiatives, such as the journal Transverse. It is one of the very few places in the Western world where a student can actually get a Ph.D. or an MA in Comparative Literature.
I think disestablishing the Centre means to betray the memory and the spirit of Northrop Frye. It really is an outrageous and useless move, which will take away from the Humanities at the University of Toronto – and from Canada – a lot of their international prestige.
I do of course realize that Universities all over the Western world have budgetary needs which condition their behaviour in the present circumstances, but I would hope that at least in Canada, a country which has always shown farsightedness in these matters, the short-term anxiety over the economy would not impair first-class, long-term, cultural – and financial – investments. In short, I hope the University of Toronto reverses this decision.
Yours sincerely,
Piero Boitani, FBA
Chair of Comparative Literature
University of Toronto
Simcoe Hall, Room 206
27 King’s College Circle
Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5S 1A1
cc. Provost Cheryl Misak
Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Science, Meric Gertler
Director of the Centre for Comparative Literature,
Neil ten Kortenaar
Dear President,
News has reached me recently of the University of Toronto’s intention to disestablish the Centre for Comparative Literature. I have the honour of having been Northrop Frye Professor at the Centre in 2006 (and of having met Northrop Frye during a conference devoted to him at this University), and must confess my astonishment at this announcement. The Centre is one of Canada’s most famous institutions in the Humanities, a flourishing enterprise, a lively meeting point for researchers and intellectuals from all over the world. It has a cohort of excellent, motivated students, an innovative curriculum, a prestigious annual international conference organized by the students (indeed, I was back for this in 2008), and a number of exciting initiatives, such as the journal Transverse. It is one of the very few places in the Western world where a student can actually get a Ph.D. or an MA in Comparative Literature.
I think disestablishing the Centre means to betray the memory and the spirit of Northrop Frye. It really is an outrageous and useless move, which will take away from the Humanities at the University of Toronto – and from Canada – a lot of their international prestige.
I do of course realize that Universities all over the Western world have budgetary needs which condition their behaviour in the present circumstances, but I would hope that at least in Canada, a country which has always shown farsightedness in these matters, the short-term anxiety over the economy would not impair first-class, long-term, cultural – and financial – investments. In short, I hope the University of Toronto reverses this decision.
Yours sincerely,
Piero Boitani, FBA
Chair of Comparative Literature
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