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
