Letter to Dean Meric Gertler

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