Don Randall, Bilkent University, Turkey

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

Ricardo Sternberg, to Provost Misak

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

Kenneth Mills to Vice Dean Ito Peng, on behalf of LAS

11 September 2010

Professor Ito Peng
Associate Dean
Faculty of Arts and Science
University of Toronto

Dear Ito,

I have been almost silent about events around the Latin American Studies programme (LAS) as they have unfolded since last Spring. Yet, as the former and founding Director of this unit, and as a colleague who I hope has become known for a consistently creative and constructive attitude towards our University as a whole, I cannot remain silent anymore. I feel deeply unhappy at what I have seen. And I believe that any objective observer, faced with the evidence of what has transpired, would be properly horrified. Matters surrounding Latin American Studies appear to be getting worse, and it high time for leadership which will return our focus to the formation of our students as critical thinkers and global citizens, to the realm of ideas and public service, and to respect for each other as an interlocking community of faculty, staff, students and public.

The principal problems seem to begin with communication, the lack of it. Neither I nor other senior Latin Americanists across the Social Sciences and Humanities at the University have been consulted even once about the programme's accomplishments and future. We were not consulted about the recommendations of the Strategic Planning Committee within Arts and Science (SPC) to close down LAS's office in the Munk Centre, leave its dedicated administrator (40%) Stella Kyriakakis in an uncertain position which for the most part continues, and move LAS's teaching into Spanish and Portuguese. The first two have already happened. The one time you and I spoke about LAS in early summer, I accompanied Rosa Sarabia, Eva-Lynn Jagoe (both, former LAS directors), Ricardo Sternberg and Josiah Blackmore, the Chair of Spanish and Portuguese, at the latter's insistence, not yours. A compelling letter which Professor Sternberg sent to Provost Cheryl Misak on 16 August 2010 explored a number of subjects, but the penultimate paragraph spoke directly to the scale of our growing problem around Latin American Studies. That letter has not, to my knowledge, received a reply or, more importantly, led to alternative solutions and productive action from your office. I attach Professor Sternberg's letter, along with my own, for your ease of reference.

The kind of meeting which occurred because of Joe Blackmore's insistence should have been, should be, regular and vital. We need each other's help to think through possibilities, explore alternatives. At that time, I expressed my concerns that: first, in the wake of the recommendations within the A&S Academic Plan, you had broken off negotiations about the Directorship with Professor Valentina Napolitano (Anthropology), and; second, that you were attempting to de-link the research and teaching dimensions of the programme, with the idea of housing the latter in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese. I will return to the matter of a directorship below. With respect to the SPC's recommendation to de-link research and intellectual programming from the undergraduate teaching, well, it went against everything LAS had come to stand for, and against everything the programme was giving to its students, faculty, visitors and interested public. Our collective concern as Latin Americanists was expressed to you as only natural; we are committed to a fruitful coexistence of disciplinary and multi-disciplinary work in a great modern university. As all of us explained, we were united in support of Spanish and Portuguese's unanimous rejection of the recommendation that it house LAS teaching. (The programme should not be housed in any single department, we suggested, unless, as very last resort, it and its modest administrative support and resources rotated with the given, appointed Director.) A de-linking of research and teaching would fail on several levels, but most importantly: one, it would effectively kill off the unit's considerable contribution as a multi-, inter- and trans-disciplinary complement to disciplinary excellence at a great, ambitious and internationally-minded University; and two, without a nexus and base of operations, the hoped-for participation of Latin Americanists in initiatives within the new Munk School for Global Affairs would never occur. LAS, as we have known it since 2005, would wither into insignificance, or it would just disappear.

It is difficult not to take matters a little personally, given the reasons for which I have made Toronto home (and I love it here). I was hired from Princeton University to be a senior historian at the UofT, but also, in the words of then-Provost Shirley Newman, 'to build Latin America at UofT,' a vast area in this hemisphere that is increasingly connected to Canadians' lives. I joined a great many others in doing just that, pouring four years of my life into founding and growing a remarkable unit that, with modest resources, collaborated imaginatively across the University and beyond, and which has punched far above its weight in all ways. At a time when we are all so rightly concerned with financial reason, I wish to underscore the return on a modest investment. The leadership in teaching shown by Professor Victor Rivas, in particular, has been the foundation and inspiration of our student-centred approach to learning. The interim directorships of Rosa Sarabia and of Eva-Lynn Jagoe built substantially on our beginnings. The highlights have been many. One of my proudest moments came at the opening of the 'Virgin, Saints and Angels' exhibition of Baroque Art from Spanish South America (which LAS co-organised with the University of Toronto Art Centre [UTAC]); then-Provost Vivek Goel attended the opening, and commented on just how much Latin American Studies had managed to accomplish in a few short years. I won't trouble you with other examples of what Latin American Studies has been doing, but I hope you'll forgive me for asking if you know' Have you read the report on LAS I prepared on 1 June 2008 for then-Interim Dean Meric Gertler? The Faculty has conducted neither a review nor a proper, collective search for a Director since I was head of the unit. The programme has been very fortunate in its two Interim Directors since that time, but it is not the same as considering and appointing a new Director. The Faculty's stewardship and leadership is required.

Your communications to Spanish and Portuguese over the past few months have come to my attention, as has your recent reply to concerns raised by a current TA in the gateway lecture course, LAS 200Y, followed by another appeal made to Spanish and Portuguese to house the teaching programme and find an 'academic adviser,' now characterised as an 'academic director.' I am troubled by what I read, by how things seem to be getting only worse. At base, there is an apparent lack of understanding of what LAS is, where it came from, and why Spanish and Portuguese is resisting your requests, and about why Latin Americanist colleagues are patiently explaining that the SPC proposals for LAS need serious attention and re-thinking. Your assertion to the TA Jonathan Allan (10 Sept 2010) that you have been searching for an 'academic director' of LAS all summer is hard to understand. If a 'director' is now a wish, will you consult with faculty and student for views on the matter, and thus to make serious adjustments to what was proposed in the last days of June? Further, your effort to recruit a short-term leader from within a single Department by characterising the task of leading LAS as something that, you've been informed, 'really does not take much time,' is an insult to me as an experienced administrator, as well as to my colleagues. This characterisation will inspire no one to help out, much less to achieve great things for the study of Latin America, or anything else. Moreover, putting things in this way as you attempt to recruit assistance, is to set sights terribly and unacceptably low for an academic programme anywhere, let alone at a great University. I do not know from whom you are getting information or with whom you are consulting. But it is certainly not from those of us who study the region, who have worked hard for Latin American Studies, and who have signalled over and over again our readiness to help and offer counsel. As I told you in person in June and July, I have great respect for the difficulty of your position and I have offered to help. It is now mid-September, with students arriving and our greatest responsibility of teaching their classes just beginning.

The LAS programme's history and, as it were, its pre-history, is instructive and, as a historian, I know it is a best place for you to start. In what follows, I draw on information gathered carefully from a number of senior Latin Americanist colleagues (most notably Professor Ricardo Sternberg, Professor Peter Blanchard and Professor Judith Teichman), from Professor Stephen Rupp when he served as Chair of Spanish and Portuguese, and especially from Professor Emeritus William J. Callahan, my predecessor as a Chair of the Department of History and, for a decade, the Principal of Victoria College.

In the early 1990s, the opportunity for a real beginning for the coordinated study of Latin America at Toronto appeared when then-President Robert Prichard was approached by Sr. José Luis Pardos, the Spanish ambassador to Canada. (In his previous appointment in Australia, Pardos had been visionary, and promoted various initiatives to promote the study of global Spanish history and culture in universities. He wished to do the same in Canada and, in particular, for the University of Toronto. Pardo had already raised the subject with Mr. Jean Monty, then-President of Northern Telecom, which had extensive interests in various Latin American countries. Monty was receptive to the idea of funding an initiative at the UofT, culminating in a gift of $150,000 a year for five years, to a grand total of $750,000. Among other things, this generous grant provided for the creation of a Professor of 'Ibero-American Studies' (so named in deference to the efforts made by the Spanish ambassador) and of an internship programme designed to allow our students to gain first-hand work and study experience in the vast Latin American region.

Some aspects of the arrangement were put into encouraging motion. Professor Mario J. Valdes of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese was named the Professor of Ibero-American Studies (now emeritus) and, with a small fund provided for the purpose, he organised a number of conferences and exhibitions. Moreover, and auguring well for a better future, Valdes was multiply connective. One example was his co-direction, with Molson Prize-winning University Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature and English Linda Hutcheon, of a massive research project on Latin America and Europe, resulting in major Canada Council funding, and many publications, including their Rethinking Literary History: A Dialogue, and a three-volume monument, Literary Cultures of Latin America: A Comparative History. But, apart from the appointment of Professor Valdes, precious little was accomplished as a result of the Northern Telecom donation, in spite of the University and Arts & Science having made Latin American studies initiatives a faculty priority. I do not mean to discount some hopeful signs over the years, and especially not the fact that the University of Toronto Libraries have been well served by a gifted bibliographer and collection development, building a first class collection in areas such as Brazil and Mexico in particular. Limited funds were provided to the Department of Spanish and Portuguese for administrative assistance. The internship programme was never established and no concrete plans were ever developed to make best use of the remaining funds (some $600,000) to develop the programme the University deserved and had agreed to carry forward following its great opportunity.

The IAS programme was, from 2001 to 2005, housed in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, and was ostensibly directed by this unit's chair, then Professor Stephen Rupp. This arrangement was detrimental to the growth of a Latin American studies initiative, for that Chair was, very understandably, busy with the Department he helped to thrive. Beyond the one team-taught course mounted by committed faculty, IAS was, by all accounts, moribund at the beginning of this century. Initiatives by Latin Americanists at the time --such as the Brazil seminar-- were mostly independent. With the considerable assistance and advice of Professor Rupp and of then-Dean Pekka Sinervo, the Latin American Studies programme was founded in 2005. Our shared motivation was to move IAS out of one department, and to create something new, vibrant and truly multi-disciplinary. Latin American Studies was born, housed in the Munk Centre, and I was the first director. The some $600,000 remaining endowment money was earmarked for Latin American Studies initiatives, and its annual payout of c. $21,000 to c. $25,000, would help Arts & Science in support until such time as LAS could find its feet and further support. The help which the programme enjoyed from Director Janice Stein and from the Centre for the Study of the United States (with whom LAS shared an administrator) was vital. People of all kinds bought into what we could do together.

The programme took flight and began to thrive, to attract students from all walks of university life into a Major and then, more recently, a Minor programme, inaugurated by Professor Sarabia. LAS has annually offered three courses of its own (a gateway Y course, which introduces students to the history, civilisation and culture of this deiverse region; and two H seminars, one in the humanities and once in the social sciences), and often collaborated with other units to co-support other multidisciplinary courses. Its foundational instructor has been Professor Victor Rivas, an inspiration to students and faculty colleagues from the beginning. From that day one, LAS has knitted its pedagogical mission to its intellectual programming and research agendas. It has gathered Latin Americanist faculty and students from three campuses. It has annually offered a series of lectures, colloquia, symposia, workshops, film screenings, and other events that create intellectual community around learning about this diverse region in the hemisphere Canada shares. It inaugurated an Undergraduate Student Research Award. LAS has drawn on the tremendous resources of the U of T, its libraries, and its vibrant student and faculty with the university and city. Since 2005, LAS has added in no small way to both the Munk Centre's and the Faculty's and University's international profile.

With the vision and support of a next Director for a proper, five-year term, there is every sign the LAS would move from strength to strength.

As we all engage with the broad recommendations within the Academic Plan in the Faculty of Arts and Science, it has apparently been too easy to forget about LAS. Where is the communication, and effort at consultation between generous colleagues?

Latin Americanists feel that a Director is needed for a multi-disciplinary teaching and research unit that does the University proud for very little investment. That, in a nutshell, is why our colleagues in Spanish and Portuguese have repeatedly and respectfully declined your approaches in the wake of the SPC's recommendation. We have explained - and I have detailed above once again just why - that it is all of our interests to recognise the recommendation to house the programme in Spanish and Portuguese (or any one department) as ill-advised, and, as I hope you can seem an odd return to something (IAS) that decisively did not work in the past. More to the point, the proposed move would effectively suffocate this successful multi-disciplinary programme. One of LAS's many strengths, as intimated above in my brief explanation of its principles and accomplishments, is precisely the scholarly and pedagogical range it gathers, and the rich diversity of the students and faculty it attracts from across numerous departments and disciplines. Weeks before the planning recommendations were unveiled, you were completing a negotiation with Professor Valentina Napolitano, who came to you well recommended, and with vision, energy and new ideas -- including about fundraising in the community -- which would take Latin American Studies to new levels. She would become the first Director from the Social Sciences, offering new synergy with Political Science and the emerging Munk School, for instance, and a hugely important development on our campuses. Her respectful requests of you (principally, that the Directorship be a normal term of office, not another interimship) appear to me to have been administratively rational, and just what the health of the great new programme requires. It is, in short, with a plea for a return to such administrative rationality that I write this letter.

Let's look for some of the 'alternative solutions' to which Dean Gertler referred in his welcome memo last Friday afternoon (10 September 2010). It is, frankly, exhausting and deeply dispiriting to have to make these and related arguments over and over again. As you already know, I would be glad to provide any additional information you might want. I hope that, together with the Dean and many others, we might now find a way to ensure for Latin American Studies a continued life, not to mention even greater success, at the UofT. Students ought to be our primary concern, followed by staff and faculty, and a collective enhancement of our mission to reach outwards and to lead with diverse and mind-stretching things. Early next month, the largest single gathering of Latin Americanists in the world -- the Latin American Studies Association -- meets in Toronto; from January to March in 2013, UTAC will host a spectacular international exhibition of Peruvian silverwork; and there could be much in between! But will we be able to inspire any one from our local community to take part in the learning? The question right now is far more basic: whither LAS at all?

Yours sincerely,

Kenneth Mills
Professor and Chair
Department of History

cc. President David Naylor; Provost Cheryl Misak; Dean Meric Gertler

~~~~~~~~~
Kenneth Mills
Professor & Chair
Department of History
University of Toronto
100 St. George Street, Rm. 2074
Toronto, ON. M5S 3G3
Canada

Natalie Pendergast to the Université de Montréal and APFUCC

Bonjour,

Je vous écris pour vous informer de la dissolution du Centre for Comparative Literature à l’Université de Toronto. Je me suis inscrite dans le programme doctoral ici à l’Université de Toronto il y a un an, après avoir reçu une maîtrise en littérature comparée à l’Université de Montréal, et un baccalauréat en études françaises à l’Université Dalhousie et Kings College.

Sans aucun avis préalable, les étudiants ont reçu la semaine dernière un courriel annonçant la fermeture de notre Centre, ainsi que le remaniement des départements de East Asian Studies, Germanic Languages & Literatures, Italian Studies, Slavic Languages and Literatures et Spanish & Portuguese. En échange, UofT aurait l’intention d’établir une nouvelle école collaborative des langues et littératures.

Notre doyen des Arts et Sciences, Meric S. Gertler, a affirmé dans une note de service que, selon lui, la littérature comparée avait réussi à redéfinir et reformuler la manière dont on étudie la littérature à notre Université. Grâce à la recherche faite au Centre for Comparative Littérature, y compris l’exploration des théories de Benjamin, De Certeau, Derrida, Gadamer, Irigaray, Lacan, Ricœur, et cetera, les autres départements des langues et littératures ont progressivement commencé à considérer ces théoriciens. En suivant les procédés critiques et théoriques des comparatistes, les autres départements (d’Anglais, de Français, et cetera) mettent l'accent, maintenant, sur la théorie. En plus, chacune des dissertations doctorales dans ces départements doit avoir une focalisation théorique.

Puisque ces autres départements ont adopté la méthodologie des comparatistes, le Doyen Gertler prétend qu’il ne reste plus de raison pour continuer la littérature comparée comme discipline autonome. Le Centre for Comparative Literature sera par conséquent fermé le 1 juillet 2011.

Pour ceux et celles d’entre vous qui ignorent l’histoire du Centre for Comparative Literature, je propose de vous en faire le bilan. Établi en 1969 par Northrop Frye dans le but d’ouvrir un espace intellectuel où l’on pourrait explorer et comparer une pluralité de littératures, cultures, arts, medias, ainsi que les théories littéraires qui s’y rapportent, le Centre a connu, dès son établissement, un grand succès au niveau mondial grâce à ses colloques, ses publications et les chercheurs, canadiens et étrangers, qu’il a soutenus. Cependant, même si notre Centre vous est inconnu, je suis sûre que vous reconnaissez la place importante que la Littérature Comparée tient dans les sciences humaines et qu’une grande université ne peut pas se passer de cette discipline. Je vous prie donc de vous joindre à nous pour protester contre la décision de l’administration de l’Université de Toronto et pour lui demander que la Littérature Comparée soit maintenue comme une discipline autonome.

Toronto est censée être une des universités les plus reconnues du monde. Les autres grandes universités pouvant se prévaloir d’une réputation mondiale—Tokyo, London, Paris-La Sorbonne, Havard, Yale, Princeton—ont toutes des départements de littérature comparée. Si le nôtre est démantelé, l’Université de Toronto verra son envergure académique et son prestige amoindris et le Canada perdra son programme de littérature comparée le plus ancien et le plus renommé.

Le site http://www.savecomplit.ca/Home.html donne davantage d’informations sur la situation.

Veuillez envoyer vos lettres de protestation au courriel suivant : savecomplit@gmail.com

SVP, mettez vos signatures en bas de notre pétition : http://www.petitiononline.com/complit/petition.html


Merci de votre soutien et de votre solidarité.

Cordialement,

Natalie Pendergast

Letter to Dean Meric Gertler

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

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/

Atsuko Sakaki, University of Toronto

President David Naylor
University of Toronto
Simcoe Hall, Room 206
27 King’s College Circle
Toronto ON
M5S1A1

September 2, 2010

Dear President Naylor:

I am writing as one of the associate faculty members of the Centre for Comparative Literature to voice my opinion as to the recent recommendation made by Dean Meric Gertler that the Centre should be closed as of June 2011. For the past seven years, I have witnessed first hand devotion and accomplishments of distinguished members of the Centre, faculty, students, staff and alumni through teaching courses, advising students and communicating with colleagues. The centre has been such a source of intellectual inspiration and collegial support that my work has grown in a meteoric curve for the past few years, including publishing one single-authored book, many book chapters and several journal articles, as well as two SSHRC standard research grants and the Jackman Humanities Institute faculty research fellowship. The Centre has helped me to redefine myself as a scholar, critic and educator. Indeed, I cannot imagine myself remaining intellectually active without the presence of the Centre for Comparative Literature at the University of Toronto, as I have configured my current research in consideration of how I might produce critical work that is relevant to peers in comparative literature.

It seems to me that my position differs from the TPC’s in that while the committee sees the present moment as the end of Comparative Literature, we at the Centre see ourselves standing at a turning point, filled with the wealth of tradition and enthused with the prospect of a productive future.

As we ask whether or not Comparative Literature as a discipline has completed its mission and exhausted its potential, I suspect I am in a unique position to answer the question; I experienced a comparable phase in my days as a graduate student in Comparative Literature at the University of Tokyo, Japan (MA ’88; ABD ’91), one of the few institutions in the country that nourished the discipline, which they had characterized “young and beautiful.” It was the time that the first generation of the graduates from the department ran the department as successive chairs and were expected to retire soon—somewhat analogous to our institutional history as you can easily see. I heard it said that comparative approaches, which used to be non-existent in national language and literature departments, had been successfully adapted by them, and thus Comparative Literature was deprived of its reason for existence.

In the 90s, at the time of fundamental restructuring, however, the Comparative Literature department did not go down as a thing of the past at the University of Tokyo. Instead, it extended its program into undergraduate (till then it had been a graduate-only unit—again, the similarity to our system is all too obvious) and began to produce full-fledged Bachelors (previously they only had minors). Now their dual structure is fully implemented and functioning well, producing influential works on topics that still cannot be covered in nation-originated units. For example, a national language and literature department might now nurture a study of foreign literary influences on an author who wrote in the language, while that author’s legacy in international literary scene (how s/he was read in translation in other languages and inspired writers active in languages other than his/her own) cannot be fully addressed in the language and literature department due to the focus on texts in those other languages. As posterity as well as ancestry of literature, and diversified posterity at that, becomes more important to study in the irrevocably globalizing world, the presence of Comparative Literature is essential and is invested with promises of future research accomplishments.

In the past year, the Centre for Comparative Literature has taken a firm step toward future by revising its PhD language requirement, recognizing a body of disciplinary knowledge as an equivalent of a third language. This responds to the changing status of Comparative Literature, in which “comparative” means more than comparing two “distinct” literary traditions, but also engaging different media and introducing different procedures of inquiry. These newer dimensions have been solidified as legitimate and constructive in the global community of comparative literature scholars, at other universities and at international conferences such as American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA), annual meetings of which I have been participating in for the past four years. Comparative literature has expanded its corpus from inter-national studies to inter-media and inter-disciplinary inquiries, and it is exciting that the Centre is responding to the general change of tide. The size and quality of the ACLA conferences attest to the thriving state of Comparative Literature. There is so much Comparative Literature can offer and contribute to the humanities, for which the discipline deserves and needs a distinct institutional unit at the University of Toronto as elsewhere.

The Centre for Comparative Literature has never been confrontational to national language and literature departments. Instead, its presence has resonated constructively with nation-based literary studies, by highlighting trajectories between territories, lingual, geographic and disciplinary, and urging national literary studies to further sophisticate and intensify their consideration of borders and identities. In return, comparative literature benefits from rigorous studies of national languages and literatures. In order to ensure reciprocal and balanced exchange of ideas, one centripetal and the other centrifugal, it is important that both orientations are institutionally represented on equal footing, not one engulfing the other.

I hope the above will add to my colleagues and peers suggestions that the Centre for Comparative Literature should continue to exist and thrive as a unique and essential presence which enhances the intellectual well being of the University of Toronto. I thank you for your attention to this letter and look forward to learning of how you will respond to our collective voice in support of the Centre.

Yours sincerely,



Atsuko

Atsuko Sakaki
Professor

María José Giménez Micó, President of the Canadian Association of Hispanists

Re: Proposed Closure of the Comparative Literature Program at the University of Toronto

August 25th, 2010


To: President David Naylor, University of Toronto
Provost Cheryl Misak, University of Toronto
Dean Meric Gertler, University of Toronto

From: Dr. María José Giménez Micó, President of the Canadian Association of Hispanists, Executive Board and Members of the CAH

I am writing on behalf of the Canadian Association of Hispanists (an academic organization that belongs to the Canadian Federation of Humanities and Social Sciences, whose members consist of more than 250 professors, students and writers) to express our astonishment at the news of your intention to close the internationally and nationally recognized Centre for Comparative Literature, founded by the eminent scholar, Dr. Northrop Frye in 1969.

Faculty members associated with the Centre have established world-renowned reputations in the study of literature and literary theory, and have been recognized for their contributions to the intellectual and cultural life of Canada and the global community in a very wide variety of disciplines.

The Centre for Comparative Literature at the University of Toronto has been the foundation of Comparative Literature studies in Canada. Many members of the Canadian Association of Hispanists benefited from the instruction received during their years of studies there.

The Centre has been a carrefour of cultural interactions, and has helped to build interdisciplinary connexions. Its disappearance would jeopardize many of the relationships established throughout the years between departments and faculty members working on common research projects.

In light of what threatens to be the withdrawal of an essential program in the studies of literature and literary theory in Canada, the members of the Canadian Association of Hispanists would like to add their voice to the many organizations who have expressed the need for a Centre of such calibre and ask that the University administration reconsider its proposal for closure.


Sincerely,



María José Giménez Micó, Ph.D.
President of the Canadian Association of Hispanists

. . . 
See the PDF at http://fis.ucalgary.ca/ACH/ACH_to_U_of_T_CL.pdf

Kenneth Mills and Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi, Letter to the Academic Council

Read the letter at: http://academicplan.ca/2010/08/24/letter-to-the-academic-council/
. . .
 
6 August 2010
Lannor Mallon, Manager
Faculty Governance and Curriculum

Glenn Loney, Assistant Dean & Faculty Secretary and Registrar
 And all members of the Academic Council

Dear colleagues,

We hope this letter and its two attachments find you well. We are sorry to write in mid-summer, in interruption of precious research- and rejuvenation time, and before membership on the Academic Council for 2010-11 is secure and its meetings are set. We trust you will communicate this message and the letters to all new members and appropriate parties.

As you will see, a group of department chairs and directors and concerned colleagues of many kinds, have written, first, to to the Governing Council and, second, to Dean Gertler to expressing concerns about the process leading up to the A&S Academic Plan, and about aspects of the Plan itself. If it were not mid-summer and time permitted, it is reasonable to assume that the lists of signatories would be rather longer. The Faculty’s recent moves to converse with unit heads and others about the changes proposed by the Strategic Planning Committee, and to reassure that a consultation process will follow, are very welcome. But we still look forward to learning about the specifics and the scope of the process, and whether, to put it bluntly, eveything will be on the table for consideration, modification if – when deemed appropriate – rejection. As such, our letters register: that we are particularly concerned by the Strategic Planning Committee’s lack of consultation with academic leaders and key stakeholders in reaching its particular recommendations and considering alternatives for addressing what we agree is a grave budgetary situation; that preparations towards implementation of the Plan have in some cases begun before discussion and approval; and that several of the elements proposed at the Plan’s core lack persuasive academic rationale and intellectual justification, or, at very least require considerable attention and development; and that, to reiterate a central point from above, it has not been demonstrated that the proposals – and not alternatives – are our best solutions to battle a deficit which we understand to be serious.

We’re aware of the integral role which your body, the Academic Council, plays in evaluating Faculty policy and procedure, and in advising the Governing Council, and thus send on these letters for your consideration at this time and going into the autumn of 2010. We would be grateful for your reassurance that they will be passed on to the AC’s membership for the next academic year.

With warm best wishes for the rest of summer and for our important discussions ahead,

Kenneth Mills and Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi

 . . . 
Read the letter at: http://academicplan.ca/2010/08/24/letter-to-the-academic-council/

Letter to the Governing Council

July 22, 2010

Dear Chair Petch, Vice-Chair Nunn, President Naylor, Provost Misak and other distinguished colleagues and members of the Governing Council of the University of Toronto,

On 13 July 2010 the Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences issued his Academic Plan for 2010-2015. A few days earlier some of its provisions had been transmitted to the departments involved, and concern was already being expressed. When the complete plan was circulated the major provisions and their implications created astonishment in those affected by them and among many others with overlapping academic missions: the smaller language departments conflated into a single School of Languages and Literatures, a number of Centres dismantled, including the disestablishment of the university’s internationally-known Centre for Comparative Literature. The Dean’s Strategic Planning Committee (SPC) was small and it worked without real consultation with the stakeholders whose roles it intended to change. Furthermore, the committee announced a tight schedule of deadlines by which time its recommendations were expected to be in place. Though “town hall” consultations have been promised in the fall, there is concern that these may proceed on the assumption that the Plan’s recommendations will be accepted. News about the proposed changes has already produced much national and international comment, in effect putting the reputation of the university at risk.


. . .


read the full letter at http://academicplan.ca/2010/08/24/letter-to-the-governing-council/

Dan Ben-Amos, University of Pennsylvania

Alarmed by the news about the impending demise of the University of Toronto Comparative Literature, I am writing to you with an urgent appeal to stop such plans on their track, reverse any action already taken, and continue your support for Comparative Literature.

I am writing to you not only as a member of the Comparative Literature Program at the University of Pennsylvania, but also as a faculty member who was himself subject for such an administrative action that terminated a distinguished scholarly program with global reputation, as a cost saving strategy, and without any consideration for the intellectual, scholarly and educational goals of the academia.
For thirty years I was a member of the Department of Folklore and Folklife of the University of Pennsylvania. The department was founded in 1967 by the distinguished ballad scholar Professor MacEdward Leach, and for the next thirty years achieved world-wide reputation. Our students became leading folklore and related disciplines scholars, assumed leading national positions in American Folklore Society and headed major national scholarly funds like the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Simon Guggenheim Foundation.

The distinction of our faculty did not go unnoticed. Other universities raided us, and without sufficient administrative support we were defenseless. Faculty attrition due to retirements also contributed to an admitted decline.

The administration considered this temporary situation as an money saving opportunity, and instead of supporting us decided to terminate the program. No faculty member was fired. We were dispersed into other departments, but the Graduate Program in Folklore and Folklife no longer exists.

Ten years after this decision was made, I am still getting inquiries from potential students from all over the world who wish to study folklore at the University of Pennsylvania. In the long run, the termination of our program did not save the University of Pennsylvania much money either.

We all are urged and would like to learn from experience. It behooves us also to learn from experience of other people and apply their lessons to our own situation. The University of Toronto has been a leading center for comparative literary studies. The faculty does not rest on the laurels of the great literary Northrop Frye. They have developed and maintained a dynamic interdisciplinary hub in which ideas are exchanged and shared by students and faculty alike. In today’s world, with the rise of new literatures in societies that have previously had only oral cultures, comparative literature offers the frameworks, theories and methods for rigorous critical studies in the humanities. Terminating such a program is a short term solution that has long terms terminal effects, from which a university as whole would not recover. I urge you to avoid the trap of short-sightedness, and take a leadership role in supporting the humanities in general and comparative literature in particular.

Sincerely,
Dan Ben-Amos, Professor
Program in Folklore and
Folklife, Chair
Comparative Literature
Program, Undergraduate Chair

William Ferris, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Dear Dean Gertler,

I was shocked to learn that the University of Toronto has recommended that the Centre for Comparative Literature be “disestablished” as of 2011. The Centre, founded in 1969 by Northrop Frye, is the premier site for the study of comparative literature in Canada, and the home of three past presidents of the Modern Language Association of America (Northrop Frye, Mario Valdés, and Linda Hutcheon). The Centre will no longer be able to admit students to the PhD or MA degrees, and it will be reduced to a collaborative, non-degree-granting program in a School for Languages and Literatures. Such a move has grave implications for the role of literature and the humanities in the academy.

In today’s globalized, multicultural world, the discipline of comparative literature is more important than ever. Because of its crossing of cultural, disciplinary and linguistic borders, and its self-reflexive and critical modes of thinking about literature and culture, the research nurtured by the Centre’s faculty and students is crucial for a full engagement with the complexities of a multinational world, and it has important implications for the practice of other disciplines. Such research cannot be done in national language and literature departments.

When I served as Chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities from 1997-2001, I strongly supported our nation’s interdisciplinary centres. These programs are uniquely qualified to address the complex issues our society faces today. You have a critically important resource that builds on the legacy of Northrop Frye and brings international recognition to the University of Toronto.

I urge you to reverse the recommendation to close the Centre and to strongly support the long international tradition of excellence and innovation of the Centre for Comparative Literature at the University of Toronto.

Sincerely,

William Ferris



Center for the Study of the American South
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
410 East Franklin Street, CB # 9127
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-9127

Eva Kushner, Emerita, University of Toronto, response to Dean Gertler

Dear Dean Gertler,

thank you for answering my letter of July 12 to President Naylor. Your letter rightly draws my attention to the Academic Plan in its entirety and to the forthcoming discussions. These matters have been fully covered in much many-sided recent correspondence in which I have also taken part.

Today I wish once more to draw your attention to the particular case of the Centre for Comparative Literature, for a very specific reason. At this very moment the Executive Council of the International Comparative Literature Association is meeting near Seoul, South Korea, in preparation for the congress of the Association which will begin, in Seoul, in a few days. The International Federation for Modern Languages and Literatures, of which the I.C.L.A is a member in what I like to call the "UNESCO pyramid" of international learned societies, is also holding a meeting there. Many of the colleagues participating in these meetings are aware of the situation of the Centre for Comparative Literature at the University of Toronto because of a multiplicity of reciprocal ties. If the pressure on the Centre continues, the image of the University of Toronto is bound to be affected in the eyes of the international Comparative Literature community, for two reasons mainly: the dismantling of the doctoral program, and the implication that Comparative Literature in its integrity is not an essential discipline at an excellent University. Please believe that I am not dramatizing. I sincerely hope that this particular case  (among all the others with which I realize the Faculty is faced) can be creatively and constructively handled in direct consultation with those affected by the proposed plan.

With apologies for disturbing you at this time, and many thanks for your attention

Eva Kushner, O.C., F.R.S.C.

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Columbia University

Dear President Naylor:

I am writing to you about your decision to integrate Comparative Literature into a larger school of Language and Literature and to take away the possibility of the Comparative Literature Ph.D. at the University of Toronto. Your university was kind enough to award me an honorary doctorate in 2000 and I therefore write with the added concern of an alumna.

There is no need to remind you of the extraordinary record of Comparative Literature at Toronto. I will simply speak to the absolute need to train students of the quality associated with Toronto precisely in Comparative Literature, especially as it is beginning to integrate areas of the world emphasized by the ongoing process of globalization.

Rightly or wrongly, we in the United States associate Canada, especially eastern Canada, and perhaps particularly the University of Toronto, as the custodian of the more humane virtues associated with a democratic polity. In this mission, deep language learning in a mode of diversity is a crucial requirement. The practice of reading literary texts in original languages establishes the affinity between peoples through the depth of imaginative training and an other-directed reading practice--an inhabiting of other worlds and cultures--that fuels the ethical capacity of the humanities. It is my experience, after forty-five years of full-time university teaching, that this training will not be rigorous if it doesn’t come through the doctoral process that a university such as yours provides. National language training, and/or heritage language training simply is not a substitute. Comparativism is not merely the learning of many languages, but training in an approach or in approaches that lead us to the perception of a just world.

This kind of training will never generate income for the university directly. Think of it as epistemological and ethical health care for the society at large. We have come to expect fully prepared global citizens and leaders from you. Indeed, rather than close operations, your university should find ways of making Comparative Literature a more attractive choice for interested students so that the number of such persons in society increases significantly.

I write this letter in confidence and hope and look forward to a positive response.

Sincerely yours,


--
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak

University Professor in the Humanities
Columbia University

Roland Le Huenen, University of Toronto

Saint-Pierre et Miquelon

August 11, 2010



President David Naylor
Simcoe Hall
University of Toronto

Cc: Provost Cheryl Misak, Dean Meric Gertler, Prof. Neil ten Kortennar, savecomplit

Re : the disestablishment of the Centre for Comparative Literature


Dear President Naylor,

I have from the start endorsed the petition by the students of the Centre for Comparative Literature who oppose the decision to disestablish the Centre. If I have refrained from writing until now, it is because I know too well that my status as former director, instead of helping the cause of the Centre, could have been perceived as supporting partisan motivation. As the Bible says “no man is a prophet in his own country”. Now that the national and international academic community, through a petition of more than 6000 signatures and numerous letters addressed to you, has had the opportunity to express its views, I join my voice to theirs to denounce a shocking and ill-advised decision.

I do not intend to offer a full defense for the Centre. Many excellent arguments have already been provided in the letters which were sent to you, and I do not want to repeat what was previously so well said. Drawing on my experience as a former director, I simply wish to add a few remarks.

Far from being an ad hoc program which would serve a specific and temporary purpose, as the decanal decision seems to imply, the Centre was created under the leadership of Northrop Frye more than 40 years ago, to be the locus of a discipline which appeared in the 1830s in Europe before being taught at Harvard University at the end of the 19th century. Since then, Comparative Literature programs have flourished in the best universities around the world and especially in the US. What is unique to Comparative Literature as a discipline is that it allows a dialogue among national literatures, with the arts and other disciplines from the angle of cultural inquiries. Furthermore, it reflects upon and theorizes its own practice. If theory has to some extent penetrated the language and literature departments at the University of Toronto, it is certainly not present in these units to the same depth and with the same purpose as it is in Comparative Literature. In addition, the Centre is the only academic unit at the University of Toronto where graduate students can pursue research on several national literatures in the original languages. Since its inception in 1969, the Centre for Comparative Literature at the University of Toronto has been a highly dynamic and productive academic unit, praised for the quality of its programs, the excellence of its faculty, teaching and research. It has always attracted top students from Canada and abroad where it contributes to enhance the reputation of the University. One has not to take my word for this, but simply to look at where the signatures on the petition are coming from and where the letters which were sent to you originated. Moreover, the large number of applications the Centre receives each year from abroad confirms how well it is regarded in foreign academic circles. Along the years the Centre has acknowledged the changes that occurred in the discipline, introduced new methodologies, promoted interdisciplinary inquiry and teaching, and went beyond its Eurocentric origins to welcome seminars and research in Asian, Latin American, African literature and culture. Remaining at the forefront of cross-cultural exchange, literary theory and innovative inquiry, the Centre for Comparative Literature is not simply another unit in the Faculty of Arts and Science, but stands at the very heart of the Humanities at the University of Toronto. Recommending its disestablishment is not only ill-advised, it is an absurd attack against academic excellence, a crime against Humanities. Such a move would deeply hurt the reputation of the University of Toronto in Canada and abroad.

I urge you to reconsider such a short-sighted and counterproductive decision.

Sincerely,



Roland Le Huenen, D. Lit (honoris causa), FRSC
Professor of French and Comparative Literature
Former Director of COL (1998-2009)
University of Toronto

Michael Palencia-Roth, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

CUPE Local 3902, University of Toronto

Dear Dean Meric Gertler:
CC: President David Naylor, Provost Cheryl Misak, Dean Brian Corman, savecomplit@gmail.com, uteau@lists.cupe.ca

On behalf of the over 7,000 members of CUPE 3902, we are writing to express our dissatisfaction with the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) Academic Plan and the process by which it was developed. This plan has had a deeply unsettling effect on many of our members as they contemplate the possible elimination of the departments and programs where they study and work.

Last October you formed a non-transparent committee composed entirely of administrators and tenured faculty to develop the FAS Academic Plan. Despite the obvious and predominant presence of our members as instructors, teaching assistants, and students in the departments evaluated, no CUPE 3902 member was included on this committee. As a result of the exclusion of CUPE 3902 members and thousands of other students and non-teaching staff, the committee has produced a plan that is wildly out of touch with the needs and perspectives of the broader University community. In a pattern that is becoming disturbingly prevalent, FAS chose to develop the plan first and consult with the community second. If FAS hopes to obtain the consent of the members of CUPE 3902 and other members of the University community, then we must be brought into the planning process in a meaningful way at its inception.

As a result of a very flawed planning process, the FAS Academic Plan has produced a series of proposals that cuts some of the most dynamic and effective programs at the University. The creation of a School of Languages and Literatures will regress to a thoroughly outdated model of language instruction. The elimination of East Asian Studies will dismantle one of the most treasured Departments at the University where scholars are undertaking research and teaching that cuts across disciplinary and national boundaries. Likewise, the elimination of the Centre for Comparative Literature will cut a locus of important interdisciplinary study and one of the most storied programs at the University. The elimination of the newly formed Centre for Ethics terminates what was quickly becoming an innovative cluster for scholars from across the University who are interested in ethical questions. These are just a few of the devastating effects that the FAS Academic Plan will have on innovative teaching and study at the University of Toronto. In addition, the proposed changes have badly damaged the reputation of the University resulting in scathing accounts in the Globe and Mail and the Chronicle of Higher Education and vocal dissent by prominent academics from around the world.

We believe that the FAS Academic Plan is fundamentally flawed and that none of the proposed changes and cuts should be made. A committee should be created that is representative of the University community. This committee should engage in meaningful consultation with the campus community before developing a plan. We understand the challenges facing FAS, but we believe the best way to address these challenges is through an inclusive and consultative planning process. If such a process is not undertaken, then the members of CUPE 3902 will actively oppose the FAS Academic Plan as an attack on their workplace and learning environment. We await your invitation to help develop a fair and workable plan and, as always, can be reached at the above address and phone number.


Sincerely,



The Executive of CUPE 3902

Lubomir Dolezel, emeritus, University of Toronto

Lago di Garda, Italy, August 2, 2010.

Dear President Naylor:

I have learned quite late about a proposal advanced by the Strategic Planning Committee (?) of the University of Toronto to merge the Centre for Comparative Literature with the proposed School of Languages and Literatures (?). As a former faculty member of the Centre, cross-apointed in 1982 from the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, I am greatly alarmed by this proposal. Since its inception by Northrop Frye, the Centre has survived many and deep changes in the conception and philosophy of the study of literature. It has thrived on these changes, both by promoting them and critically assessing them. What I found exciting about teaching at the Centre was the energy, devotion, curiosity and creativity of both its faculty and its students. Students of the Centre have been very positively influenced by this atmosphere and are, as alumni still devoted to the institution of their maturation. A merger with the proposed School would most likely destroy this atmosphere and repudiate possible students-candidates.

What should also be considered is the national and international importance of the Centre. It has been seen as a true centre of Canadian humanities and its transformation would be felt as another severe loss for the Canadian humanistic studies. Internationally, the Centre has been known for its scholarly achievements, and its international reputation can, I believe, match any department or institute of the University of Toronto. The contacts with the international research of literature has been mutual: papers and books of the faculty and advanced doctoral students have been read all over the globe and often translated into several foreign languages; on the other hand, internationally renowned scholars were attracted to the Centre as visiting scholars or Northrop Frye visiting professors. It is in these mutual contacts that the study of literature as an artistic cultural activity has flourished at the Centre.

For these (and not only these) reasons, I cannot but join the former director of the Centre, professor Peter Nesselroth in pleading with you: “If the university is truly commited to excellence, it should seriously reconsider this ill-advised recommendation”.

Sincerely yours,

Lubomir Dolezel

Professor Emeritus of Slavic and Comparative Literature

Margaret Atwood

Margaret Atwood
c/o McClelland & Stewart
75 Sherbourne St., 5th Floor
Toronto, ON
M5A 2P9


President David Naylor
University of Toronto
Simcoe Hall, Room 206
27 King's College Circle
Toronto, ON
M5S 1A1

CC. Provost Cheryl Misak, Dean Meric Gertler, Professor Neil ten Kortenaar,


Re. Centre for Comparative Literature, University of Toronto

July 27, 2010


Dear President Naylor,

I am writing to express my disappointment and frustration with the recommendation of the University of Toronto's Strategic Planning Committee to disestablish the Centre of Comparative Literature in 2011. As you may know, I was a student at Victoria College and studied under Northrop Frye. My admiration for his scholarship, and the work done at the centre he founded, is longstanding.

But the reasons I urge for a reconsideration of this decision are not simply nostalgic. This is a time in which cross-cultural trends are increasing exponentially; interdisciplinary study is booming, and globalization is the watchword of the day. To shunt students off to various linguistic departments instead of permitting conversation and collaboration in a central space is both counterintuitive and short-sighted. This is precisely the wrong time to make a decision of this kind, and would indeed reflect very poorly on the university overall. The University of Toronto, I know, prides itself on being able to dialogue with many of the top universities across our southern border and around the world. The Centre for Comparative Literature at the University of Toronto is the only one of its kind in our country. While I understand the temptation to save a few bucks with this closure, I urge you instead to heed the loud reminders (available to read at www.savecomplit.ca) that the costs of closing the Centre might be greater than the University of Toronto can afford.

Sincerely,



Margaret Atwood

Madelaine Hron, Wilfred Laurier University

Dear Dean Meric,

Thank you for your Email dated Aug 4th, 2010, in response to my Email to the President, dated July 14th, 2010. It appears however, that you did not read my Email – I did not write to you with regards to the East Asian Studies program. I wrote to you with regards to the proposed amalgamation of modern literatures (East Asian Studies included), and in particular, the elimination of the Center for Comparative Literature!

While I am glad to hear your assurances – with regards to the East Asian Studies program – that there are “governance processes of the University of Toronto, which will provide further opportunities for discussion and debate”; that “the views and concerns of all relevant stakeholders are part of the deliberation on the proposals”; that there will be “full public discussion of the plan and its detailed proposals” and “[b]oth the proposals themselves and the nature of any alternative structures will be fully and genuinely deliberated upon,” I certainly hope that these assurances also extend to the Center for Comparative Literature and the proposed School of Languages and Literatures as a whole. I also sincerely hope that these assurances are not empty rhetoric, and that you listen better to the concerns of your stakeholders, than you did to mine in my Email.

Since it appears you did not register my concerns the first time around, I reiterate them here again. Firstly, I will address the most egregious part of your plan: the proposed disestablishment of the Center of Comparative Literature, and the rational thereof. Your reasoning to close the center – that it was “successful” and hence dispensable, because its methodologies have now been incorporated by other disciplines – is simply ridiculous, and demonstrates that you have little understanding of the field of Comparative Literature! To give you an analogy, since you are so fond of them (e.g., “sacred cow” in Globe and Mail; “moving furniture” in Chronicle of Higher Education), your rationale is analogous to proposing the disestablishment of the department of mathematics because mathematical modules have been incorporated into the fields of physics, chemistry, computer programming, business, engineering or geography! As a scientist, you know that a gifted mathematician could indeed be of value in various fields – yet it would never occur to any administrator to eliminate the study of mathematics at any leading university, no matter the profit margin!

To give you an example of the value and practical (read “profitable”) application of a Comparative Literature degree, I take myself as example. Not because I am some kind of superstar, but because I am your typical Comparative Literature PhD (read “polymath”). After studying in the modern languages and literatures department at the University of Alberta, I completed a Comparative Literature PhD at the University of Michigan; I specialized in Slavics and Francophone literatures. However, I have taught in such different departments/programs as women’s studies, global studies, arts in society, as well as French and Comparative Literature. Currently, I teach English literature in the English and Film Studies Department at Laurier. It is an interesting development, really – because only took two English classes as an undergraduate/graduate student: English 101 and a queer theory grad course! Nonetheless, I was hired into the department because of my ability to research in and teach literary and narrative approaches, as well as cultural studies, global studies and postcolonial studies in relation to English. I obviously did a decent job, because I now have tenure. Don’t tell me that if I studied in a Slavics department, or in a French department, I would now be teaching in an English department, or have taught in so many other academic units...

As far as the Center for Comparative Literature is concerned, it is one of the few existing places in Canada where you can obtain an MA or PhD in the field. Moreover it has a lengthy, prestigious reputation, with Northrop Frye as its founder. You thus have the opportunity to brand, market and sell a unique “center of excellence” – instead however, you are choosing to disestablish it? I know you are driven by immediate fiscal concerns (and suspect that instead of replacing retiring Dr. Hutcheon with another brilliant super-star scholar, you could create three “new” tenure track hires somewhere else), but is the risk – of losing U. of Toronto’s uniqueness, prestige and reputation for humanistic research – really worth a $1.5 million dollar deficit reduction?

Your plan to amalgamate the literary departments is similarly short-sighted. I feel you are driven by a “copy-cat” impulse – that other literature departments in Canadian universities have been amalgamated – rather than by any real knowledge of how literature/language departments work, or by any commitment to high-quality scholarship in these areas. I know something about the study of languages and literatures; I am fluent in eight languages. I learned some of these languages at “study abroad” sessions, some on my own, some in amalgamated language/literature units, and a few in free-standing literature departments. Amalgamated literature/language units and “study abroad” sessions are just fine to learn a language – because their focus is on acquiring language skills and "fulfilling the second language requirement.” When choosing to study these literatures at an advanced, graduate level however, I only applied to universities with various free-standing literature departments, as I knew the quality would be much higher there because these literatures would be studied in the context of history, geography, culture and politics and because there would be dedicated scholars and specialists there, not just numerous adjunct language instructors, with a few token faculty scholars. I suspect you know all of this, (since you are not including English, French or Near Eastern studies in your proposed School of Languages and Literatures), but if you want to attract high-calibre scholars and students and maintain excellence in research and teaching in languages and literatures, you must retain free-standing literature departments.

As I’ve stated in my previous Email, I am neither an alumnus nor a former employee of the University of Toronto. I am simply a Canadian scholar who has always looked up to the University of Toronto as a world-class institution, and was never hesitant to share this laudatory opinion with my international colleagues. Similarly, I was also never hesitant to encourage my best and brightest students to consider University of Toronto’s graduate programmes, though personally I never considered it for my own studies, because I found it too conservative. If this restructuring proposal goes through however, I will no longer support the University of Toronto. On the contrary, I will be sure to inform all of my students, colleagues and possible University of Toronto donors, how, specifically, the University of Toronto threatens humanities scholarship in Canada.

In all, though you clearly did not read my previous Email, I am encouraged by your assuasive rhetoric, which seems to suggest that you are reconsidering your planned restructuring of the humanities in your Faculty, at least as far as East Asian Studies are concerned. Again, I sincerely do indeed hope that your assurances are not mere rhetoric. I urge you abandon this myopic plan, especially as far as the creation of an amalgamated School of Languages and Literatures and the closure of the Center of Comparative Literature are concerned.


Sincerely,

Madelaine Hron
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Madelaine HRON
Associate Prof., English & Film Dept.,
Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo ON, N2L 3C5, CANADA
(519) 884-0710 ext 2949

Marketa Russell Holtebrinck, University of Toronto

August 6, 2010

Dear Dean Gertler,

I am writing to you to express my astonishment regarding your recommendation to "dis-establish" the Centre for Comparative Literature as of July 1, 2011. Since the recommended measures, and the circumstances surrounding their announcement in particular, became a topic of public debate, I have been puzzled by the seeming indifference of the Strategic Committee to the academic and intellectual fate of the incoming PhD students in the unit deemed to close.

The vague insurance in the memorandum from vice-dean Baker that was distributed to graduate students on July 15th makes sure only three things for me. First, come what it may, our course schedule remains as planned for 2010-11; second, the PhD funding package remains valid; third, when I receive my degree the word "comparative literature" will appear somewhere on the document. What it does not assure me of-- and most probably no other incoming PhD student in the Centre --is the curriculum/course offering in my second and third year (should I need it), and the decreasing level of disciplinary cohesiveness due to the loss of faculty and the weakening of the "comparative" student body. In my eyes, a collaborative program in comparative literature is only a cosmetic measure that masks its factual nonexistence.

While academic units such as the German department realized the necessity of teaching theory already (!) in the 400-level courses in their BA programs, the need for real comparativity, i.e. reaching beyond the range of national, cultural and temporal delimitations, is not necessarily at the heart of many disciplines. This may, of course, change with time due to the increasing cultural diversification and shifting of national communities, but so is changing and growing the task of comparative literature. Not only do we read literature and culture in multiple languages and across established canons, we also take the findings of more narrowly constituted scholarship and learn to see them in different contexts in order to see new patterns and tendencies. This is the true experimental nature of our discipline.

I chose University of Toronto for its diversity, its stimulating environment, and for its faculty-- the human face of the huge university enterprise -- many of whom excel not only academically, but also in their ability and willingness to act as mentors to aspiring scholars. With my background -- I studied literature and culture in four different languages, none of which is my mother tongue -- I was aware that I would not fit in any of the more or less self-contained national literature departments in Toronto or elsewhere, which resulted in the preference I gave to the offer from the Centre for Comparative Literature.

The official offer of admission, both from the Centre and the School of Graduate Studies, stressed the financial and academic commitment of the Centre to incoming students that would enable them to develop and pursue their research, as well as, primarily, to complete their degree. With good faith -- indeed nothing else would occur to me -- I signed and returned the offer. There was no small press at the bottom of the letterhead or on its backside saying "subject to changes or cancellation at any time"; it was a solid and upright offer to make the Centre with all its resources my academic and intellectual home for as long as I pursue my degree in comparative literature. Or at least, I considered it solid enough to move my family to Toronto.

The recommendation of the SPC all at once shattered the multiple affiliations on which I had started to build my academic future. I urge you, Dean Gertler, to review and reasonably amend the plans of the SPC so that they accommodate the promises made in the name of the University in their full extent. I would not be able to carry on my multilingual research project in any of the affiliated departments of the proposed new School of Languages and Literatures. With faculty support severely cut back and no new students admitted fully as "comparatists", I also fear that my graduate studies would rather dully proceed than intellectually thrive, as they may do now in the current atmosphere of trans-departmental exchange that the Centre is known for across the University.


I am convinced that the Centre's intensive training in critical thinking, as the former director of the Centre, Professor Le Huenen described the PhD program to me three years ago, is not possible without a clearly defined comparative program. In practical terms, I think that the decreased disciplinary rigor of the proposed collaborative program would soon be well known within the academic community, which would no doubt devalue both the degrees conferred and the future employment prospects of their holders. This unsure future weighs on all of the students in the Centre, but it is especially hard on the incoming ones since the recommended closure of the Centre as a degree-granting entity would cut through their entire graduate training.

Regarding the recent announcement that your "goal is nothing less than to ensure the most stimulating and supportive environment possible for our students and faculty as we focus on our core mission of undergraduate and graduate education and advanced research across a wide range of fields," I firmly believe that you will value the trust I put into the University as represented by the Centre of Comparative Literature, and that you will reward the decades of the excellent teaching and research work done in the Centre by endorsing its status as well as its intellectual and academic capacities.


Sincerely,



Marketa Russell Holtebrinck

Incoming PhD student
Centre for Comparative Literature, University of Toronto
Maclaren Gold Medal (awarded by Victoria College to a graduating student with highest standing in Modern Languages)


CC: President David Naylor, University of Toronto
Provost Cheryl Misak, University of Toronto
Save Comparative Literature Campaign



Paper letter to follow