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Canadian Association of University Teachers
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Students and faculty protest proposed amalgamation of U of T language programs
(July 22, 2010) Students and faculty are protesting the University of Toronto administration’s plans to amalgamate the East Asian, German, Italian, Slavic, and Spanish/Portuguese departments into one “School of Languages and Literatures.”
Students in the East Asian Studies Program say the move would damage the university’s reputation, downgrade the undergraduate experience, and hurt enrolment.
“Amalgamating EAS into a School of Languages and Literatures and transferring remaining courses to other disciplines would effectively destroy opportunities for students … to do the type of humanities research on Asia that they have been highly well-regarded for in the past,” the students say in a petition to the Dean of the Faculty of Arts – signed by 1,300 students and faculty so far.
“Not only would undergraduates lose the opportunity to engage in humanities study of Asia, but there would no longer be a graduate program that would attract the top level of Asian studies scholarship currently at U of T, or allow those students to receive grants from Asian foundations,” they say.
The administration’s Strategic Planning Committee is also recommending folding the Centre for Comparative Literature into school and redefining it as a collaborative program.
More than 5,000 faculty, students and alumni have signed on to another petition to university president David Naylor, asking him to reject that recommendation.
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,” says their petition. “Such a move has grave implications for the role of literature and the humanities in the academy.”
Students have set up a blog with links to the petitions and news about the protest.
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