Queers come out against Israeli apartheid at Toronto Pride
rabbletv coverage of Toronto Pride 2009 with Queers Against Israeli Apartheid.
After pressure to ban the group Pride Toronto stood its ground and today Queers Against Israeli Apartheid took to the streets.
For more information about this march and some of the violence directed towards the group (missed by the video), click here.
Read about the initial controversy with B’Nai Brith and Pride Toronto, first featured on rabble.ca here.
Student Struggle/Student Rights: International Solidarity Campaigns and the Right to Education
From South Africa to Palestine, to name two prominent examples, Ontario students have played crucial roles in international solidarity campaigns. Beyond raising political consciousness and holding academic institutions accountable for their complicity, student involvement in these campaigns has made important contributions on their own campuses towards realizing the assertion that “education is a right”.
The right to education is more than the right to a seat in a classroom, it also includes the right to actively participate in shaping one’s education from the classroom to decisions affecting the university as a whole. The declaration that “education is a right” is a response to barriers put in place to deny access and meaningful engagement, barriers upheld by the disenfranchisement of students in decision-making structures. These barriers have only been strengthened by the chronic underfunding, increased privatization and skyrocketing tuition fees produced by neoliberal economic policies.
While students and their allies have framed the right to education in a global perspective, for instance through student unions affiliating with the Right to Education campaign run by Birzeit University students in Palestine, international solidarity campaigns have also been pivotal in local student struggles. This article draws on two cases of student activism at the University of Toronto (UofT) to consider the right to education in relation to the shifting rights of students within the university.
The first case examines the significance of going beyond accepted rules of dissent in advancing the campaign against South African apartheid in the 1980s, while the second case focuses on how changing university practices have attempted to limit dissent by reducing access to space in the current campaign against Israeli apartheid. In both examples student activism is centred on campaigns to pressure the university to recognize its complicity with oppressive regimes and take appropriate moral action. Through this activism students put forward a different vision of the university in which the institution recognizes its complicity, but also in which students have a meaningful voice in the operation of the university.
The University as a Space of Citizenship
Both cases of student activism represent shifts in student rights and redefine the “citizenship” of students within the university. I use citizenship because I find it a useful tool for considering who has rights – in theory and in practice – and how rights shift over time based on political moments and movements. Citizenship can be understood in terms of formal and substantive citizenship. Formal citizenship is membership in a nation state or political entity, while substantive citizenship is entitlement to civil, political, socioeconomic and cultural rights.
Like citizenship, “student” is both an exclusive and inclusive category. Addressing the exclusive nature of who is allowed to be a student is central to the broader right to education campaign, however this article focuses on struggles around substantive citizenship, or rights claims, made by current students.
As is the case with many social movements, including the civil rights and women’s movements, student struggles have advanced student rights such as the right to engage in political activities on campus (within set limitations) and participation (albeit minimal) in university bodies. If students and their allies had limited themselves to the rules of the day, many changes could not have materialized. This political engagement and expansion of recognized rights has in turn expanded notions of what it means to be a student within the university.
To qualify this, advances have been made in substantive rights and continue to be fought for, yet changes are by no means permanent nor are they all necessarily positive. We are constantly reminded of the need for resistance by the pervasiveness of injustices and again as regressive changes are justified with right-wing ideologies, particularly now under the cover of an economic recession.
Student Activism against South African Apartheid
In 1983 students and their allies began organizing to make UofT divest from apartheid South Africa. The Anti-Apartheid Network (AAN) drew members from the African and Caribbean Students’ Association, NDP Club, Communist Club and Student Christian Movement. [1] Despite receiving a groundswell of support, the university refused to budge on its $5.5 million in corporate holdings. UofT continued to purchase more stocks in South Africa after a toothless policy tied to the Canadian Code of Conduct was passed in 1985. [2]
UofT President George Connell argued that the university should not “be committed to a particular political cause, no matter how worthy,” while students countered that investment was a political act that supported apartheid. [3] By 1987 the Arts and Science Students’ Union, Graduate Students’ Union, Native Students’ Association, Canadian Union of Education Workers and UofT Staff Association had all joined the call to divest. An opinion poll showed that 64% of students supported divestment. [4] Over 70 faculty members signed a letter in The Varsity that called for Connell to resign if he continued to refuse to support divestment. [5]
On March 4 1987, 28 students and one professor marched from the International Student Centre to Simcoe Hall and occupied the office of the president. [6] The sit-in lasted until the meeting of the Governing Council (GC) the next day, where a motion on divestment by a student member was to be discussed. On March 5 a rally was held outside Simcoe Hall and 200 students filed-in to attend the meeting. [7]
After governors voted to refuse to consider the motion, students spontaneously unleashed their frustration, chanting “freedom yes, apartheid no”. “One guy jumped on a table, next thing you know three or four people jumped on tables,” recalled former AAN co-ordinator Akwatu Khenti. [8] After ten minutes the meeting was adjourned and police escorted the president out. The image of students on tables made front page of the Toronto Star and The Globe and Mail.
The students’ actions were criticized in the corporate media (“Degrees In Shouting”), [9] with slightly more sympathetic coverage in the student media. [10] The same poll that found 64% of students in favour of divestment reported 27% of students supported the actions at the GC. [11] The AAN was unapologetic. Khenti stated that after “every institutional channel of redress … had been exhausted” students were compelled “to let the Governing Council and university administration know that the present state of affairs cannot go on.” [12] While the chair of the GC claimed that free speech had been “abused”, the student member stated that “The administration and Governing Council must share the responsibility for any disruption” due to their inaction. [13]
According to Khenti, following the actions of March 4 and 5, “The momentum for divestment began to move forward expeditiously” and “more mainstream folks began to get involved”. [14] Tom Parkin, also a former AAN coordinator, received a letter from an NDP MPP who had previously spoken at an AAN rally that said “This will not help your cause”. Parkin believes that “It did nothing but help our cause” because while it may have been impolite, no one was hurt and it “forced the discussion”. [15]
In September 1987, President Connell appointed history professor A.P. Thornton to prepare a paper on South Africa and possible alternatives to UofT’s present policy. [16] Thornton met with the AAN in October [17] and released his report in late November, urging divestment from South Africa. [18] In January 1988 the GC voted to divest its holdings in South Africa. [19]
Parkin described the appointment of Thornton by Connell for his “expert advice” as a way of “finding his reason to change his position”, or saving face for his policy reversal on ethical investment. “George Connell didn’t want to have students telling him what to do.” The divestment campaign was a “threat to his sense of control” and the university administration “didn’t want to have to be accountable” to students. [20] The strength of the divestment campaign, ranging from lobbying to powerful student demonstrations, was ultimately too much for the university to ignore.
As illustrated by the campaign to divest from South Africa, going beyond accepted rules of dissent can play a significant role in the achievement of a campaign’s goals. This example is one on many in the history of UofT where students have been left with no other resort due to their lack of input in decision-making. Examples from UofT’s official history, Martin Friedland’s The University of Toronto: A History, include students in 1967 stopping napalm manufacturer Dow Chemical’s recruiting efforts by blocking the entrance to the recruiting centre [21]; students in 1970 occupying an unused building and later Simcoe Hall to get the President to commit to funding a daycare on campus [22]; and students in 1972 holding a sit-in in Simcoe Hall, being evicted by the police, and responding with another occupation of more than 500 people to gain access for undergraduates to Robarts Library [23].
Other notable examples include a sit-in that was part of the campaign that ended Hart House’s men-only policy in 1972 [24]; a camp-out held in 1986 to secure space for the Women’s Centre [25]; and an 11-day occupation of the President’s office in 2000 that resulted in UofT being the first Canadian university to introduce an anti-sweatshop policy for university clothing [26].
Supporters of the AAN transgressed university rules by disrupting the GC meeting. While not sanctioned in any rules, the occupation of the president’s office received no criticism, even before the events at the GC meeting had taken place. Jack Dimond, GC Secretary and spokesperson in the absence of President Connell was quoted as saying “I’m calm, I’m a child of the sixties”. [27] Perhaps this response was due to the normalization of such actions and the minimal inconvenience caused because the President was absent.
In contrast, the actions at the GC disrupted business as usual by causing the meeting to be adjourned. It was a spontaneous protest against business as usual. Business as usual was investing in apartheid South Africa and by extension supporting the racist regime. Business as usual was a structure that restricted students to token representation and allowed their issues to be swatted off the agenda. The interjection by frustrated students asserted that such dismissals were intolerable.
By transgressing the rules students soon achieved their political objective of divestment. Students also demonstrated their agency as legitimate actors, regardless of their subordination within university structures. Divestment was a blow against the apartheid South Africa regime, but it was also a blow against the arrogant policies of the university administration and their indifference towards student and international human rights.
Student Activism against Israeli Apartheid
The current generation of Palestine solidarity activism at UofT and the hostility towards it has centered around the inception and tremendous growth of Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW). IAW began in 2005 at UofT and is now an annual event that has spread to over 40 cities worldwide [28]. IAW in Toronto is organized by Students Against Israeli Apartheid (SAIA) at UofT in conjunction with SAIA at York University and Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights at Ryerson University.
The purpose of IAW is to raise awareness of the apartheid nature of the state of Israel and support the call issued by over 170 Palestinian civil society organizations for boycotts, divestments and sanctions against apartheid Israel, inspired by the call from the African National Congress to boycott the apartheid South Africa regime. [29] SAIA engages in university-specific campaigns for divestment from Israel, ending institutional partnerships with institutions that support Israel and supporting the right to education denied to Palestinian students.
The climate towards Palestine solidarity activism has resulted in attacks from pro-Israel organizations and intense scrutiny from the university administration. Organizers have long complained about bureaucratic hurdles and delays with room-booking requests. In 2007 the administration attempted to unilaterally assign undercover campus police to events deemed “security risks” and bill event organizers a prohibitive $440 fee for their services. [30] After organizers refused to pay, the issue was picked up by campus media and the administration backed down. However, shortly after IAW 2009 the administration indicated its intent to “require that Campus Police be present at all activities where we have justified concerns about safety and significant disruption” and “be fair in our allocation of the costs”. [31]
Moreover, a recent Freedom of Information request produced an email trail that proved administrators all the way up to President David Naylor colluded to deny a room-booking request on technical grounds for a cross-campus Palestine solidarity conference organized by SAIA. [32] The emails show that administrators decided to deny the request before it had been made, after being alerted of the planned event by a staff person for a pro-Israel campus organization.
This harassment of Palestine solidarity activists is taking place in a context of increasing repression of dissent at UofT, other universities in Ontario and within broader society. At UofT posters critical of major donor Peter Munk of Barrick Gold were torn down on the orders of the administration for being “potentially defamatory”. [33] Students alleged to have participated in a sit-in against fee increases received criminal charges and code of student conduct investigation notices, [34] and students were threatened with code of student conduct investigations for disrupting a meeting of the GC on fee increases. [35]
At other universities Palestine solidarity work has also been targeted, with IAW posters banned at Carleton and Ottawa Universities, [36] the term “Israeli apartheid” banned at McMaster University [37] and the student code of conduct used at York to apply suspensions and hefty fines to SAIA. [38] This chilling climate affects not just students but faculty and staff as well. Further, the federal Conservative government took an interest in denouncing IAW, [39] as did the leader of the opposition party. [40] In March 2009 funding for immigrant services was cut from the Canadian Arab Federation for its advocacy on Palestine, [41] and British MP George Galloway was banned from entering Canada for delivering humanitarian aid to the elected government of Palestine. [42]
The situation on campus shows how access to space is tied to expression of dissent. Dissent requires a space to be expressed in. Bureaucratic hurdles, security fees and outright denial of space all attempt to prevent the expression of dissent. These tactics of curtailing access to space also attempt to impose a new “normal”. If in the 1980s an occupation of the president’s office was normalized as a result of the student activism in the 1960s, recent experiences suggest this is no longer the case.
In fact, it is quite the opposite. The code of student conduct was passed in the early 1990s, prohibiting disruption with the threat of expulsion and other punitive measures, [43] while “conflict management” has made managing dissent a professional field. Jim Delaney, director of the office of the Vice-Provost, Students, is the principal communicator or buffer between the administration and student groups, including in the cases of the imposed security fees and room-booking denial, and has made it known that he is pursuing a degree in Conflict Analysis and Management at Royal Roads University by contacting student activists with interview requests. [44]
Increased management of dissent has coincided with increased alignment between the university and private interests. This is partly due to a growing reliance on private funding and donations as neoliberal governments continue to underfund education, and partly a result of administrators holding the same neoliberal ideologies and choosing to run universities according to profit-driven business models.
In the midst of campus activism to divest from South Africa, a struggle against putting the bottom-line of investment returns above ethical considerations, President Connell delivered a speech to the Empire Club of Canada entitled “From the Ivory Tower to the Corporate Tower” advocating increased orientation to corporate needs. [45] Connell authored a Renewal 1987 document that was criticized for reducing a degree to a “commodity”, privileging applied science and graduate studies, and emphasizing “upgrading UofT’s relations with the commercial sector”. [46]
Since then this orientation towards private interests has solidified and developed significantly. In 2007 President Naylor spoke on “Ten Myths about Commercialization” at a one-day symposium on commercializing university research (with a $200 registration fee, $50 for students) at the MaRS Discovery District, a hub for commercialization closely affiliated with UofT. [47] Naylor pushed the Towards 2030 plan that advocated for further commercialization of research, deregulation of tuition fees and reduction of undergraduate enrolment. [48]
These two trends of increased management of dissent and increased privatization are not accidents. They are both products of similar right-wing ideologies in which the role of students and responsibility of the university to the public good are marginal at best. As reflected in its behaviour toward student activists, the university is far from neutral on the issue of Israeli apartheid.
Beyond investments, UofT supports Israel through relationships with Israeli academic institutions. Nine university presidents including Naylor toured Israel in 2008. Naylor joined other university presidents in condemning a proposal from Britain’s University and College Union to discuss an academic boycott of Israel on the grounds that it violated the sacred principle of academic freedom, yet has never shown concern for the academic freedom of Palestinian students and academics or the bombing of Palestinian academic institutions by Israel.
Faced with calls from supporters of Israel to ban IAW, the administration has so far refused to do so, and has instead deployed strategies to withhold and limit access to spaces for expressing dissent. Dissent would not need such intensive management if it did not pose a threat. Measures are needed to secure the university from dissent, to secure administrators from the claims and campaigns of students who threaten the operation of “business as usual” in their embodiment of principles of equity and social justice.
The response to these shifting conditions has been continued organizing. A “Freedom of Expression” campaign was launched in April to unify opposition to repression of dissent. [49] Silencing of dissent brings more attention to injustices that activists are organizing against, while the act of silencing also exposes the power structures that uphold them. Denial of access to space is one way to deny expression of dissent. Technical grounds have been used to make decisions appear neutral, however the clear pattern of targeting, particularly of Palestine solidarity activism, shatters the myth of neutrality.
Without the appearance of objectivity rules are exposed as biased towards the powerful. “The frequent use of force [or power] draws attention, far too graphically, to the existence of those ruling.” [50] These actions, which tip the balance between coercion and consent, expose the promises of equality, free expression and academic freedom as empty. This again is a struggle in which students are asserting their agency, resisting the marginal position the university wishes to confine them to, and actively seeking a real voice in how the university is run. Students are embodying their rights claims rather than waiting for rights to be granted or further stripped away.
Conclusion: Student Struggle/Student Rights
While the university emphasizes the formal membership of students, staff and faculty in a common university community, this ignores huge differences in power relations between administrators, employees of the university and students. This article has considered the shifting rights of students in the university through the cases of student activism against South African apartheid in the 1980s and the current campaign against Israeli apartheid.
In both examples student struggles are intimately tied to student rights, from transgressing university rules to advance the campaign for divestment from apartheid South Africa to continuing to speak out and organize against Israeli apartheid in the face of increased repression. Through their activism students directly challenge power relations within the university, refusing to play a tokenistic role in decision-making and rejecting the complicity of their university with apartheid regimes. The right to education resides in the collective power of students. Student rights are non-existent without demonstrable student power.
Notes
[1] Interview with Tom Parkin, March 26, 2009.
[2] Akwatu Khenti and Carolyn Lynch, “Connell’s divestment stand ignores morality”, The Varsity, March 5, 1987.
[3] ibid.
[4] Richard Ellis and Lori McDougall, “Majority of students support divestment, poll says”, The Varsity, March 16, 1987.
[5] Undersigned, “72 Professors support divestment”, The Varsity, March 5, 1987.
[6] Jennifer Gould, “Students storm President’s office”, The Varsity, March 5, 1987.
[7] Gary Feld, “Protestors break up GC meeting”, The Varsity, March 9, 1987.
[8] Interview with Akwatu Khenti, March 20, 2009.
[9] Editorial, “Degrees in Shouting”, The Globe and Mail, March 7, 1987.
[10] John Hovland, “Intensity is no excuse for Governing Council rioting”, The Varsity, March 9, 1987.
[11] Richard Ellis and Lori McDougall, “Majority of students support divestment, poll says”, The Varsity, March 16, 1987.
[12] Akwatu Khenti and Bogdan-Eduard Ghetu, “Anti-apartheid groups clarify their position”, The Varsity, March 19, 1987.
[13] Gary Feld, “Protestors break up GC meeting”, The Varsity, March 9, 1987.
[14] Interview with Akwatu Khenti, March 20, 2009.
[15] Interview with Tom Parkin, March 26, 2009.
[16] Andrea Jacobs, “UofT appoints divestment officer”, The Varsity, September 24, 1987.
[17] Danielle Adams, “Divestment activists get moving”, The Varsity, October 29, 1987.
[18] Eric Geringas, “Report urges UofT divest from S.A.” The Varsity, November 26, 1987.
[19] Unknown Author. “UofT decides to divest”. The Varsity, January 25, 1988.
[20] Interview with Tom Parkin, March 26, 2009.
[21] Martin Friedland, “Student Activism.” The University of Toronto: A History (2002) p. 527.
[22] ibid., p. 535.
[23] ibid., p. 537.
[24] Graduate Students’ Union, “Activism: Victories” (2006), http://www.gsu.utoronto.ca/activism/victories.html.
[25] ibid.
[26] Helen Lenskyj, “Funding Canadian University Sport Facilities: The University of Toronto Stadium Referendum.” Journal of Sport & Social Issues 28.4 (2004), p. 381.
[27] Jennifer Gould, “Students storm President’s office”, The Varsity, March 5, 1987.
[28] Israeli Apartheid Week, “History of Israeli Apartheid Week”, (2009), http://apartheidweek.org/en/history.
[29] ibid.
[30] Liisa Schofield, “Exposed: University of Toronto suppresses pro-Palestinian activism”, Rabble, February 18, 2009, http://www.rabble.ca/news/exposed-university-toronto-suppressed-pro-palestinian-activism.
[31] Cheryl Misak, “Update on Controversial Events at the University of Toronto”, University of Toronto, March 26, 2009, http://www.provost.utoronto.ca/public/pdadc/0809/47.html.
[32] Liisa Schofield, “Exposed: University of Toronto suppresses pro-Palestinian activism”, Rabble
[33] André Bovee-Begun and Naushad Ali Husein, “UofT admins rip off protest posters”, The Varsity, February 14, 2008 (accessed April 2, 2009), http://www.thevarsity.ca/article/2015.
[34] Committee for Just Education, “UofT PRESSES CRIMINAL CHARGES AGAINST 14 FOR MOBILIZING AGAINST FEE HIKES” (April 2008), Committee for Just Education, http://fightfees.ca/call-to-action/.
[35] Naushad Ali Husein, “Governors shouted out of Simcoe Hall”, The Varsity, April 12, 2008, http://www.thevarsity.ca/article/3239.
[36] SPHR U of O, “University of Ottawa Bans Israeli Apartheid Week Poster”, Mostly Water, February 21, 2009, http://mostlywater.org/university_ottawa_bans_israeli_apartheid_week_poster.
[37] Karen Ho, “McMaster ban on phrase ‘Israeli Apartheid’ stirs protest”, The Varsity, February 28, 2008, http://www.thevarsity.ca/article/2141.
[38] Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid, “SAIA York Suspended / Fined: Call for Support”, CAIA website, February 27, 2009, http://www.caiaweb.org/node/1209.
[39] John Riddell, “Israeli Apartheid Week beats back attacks on free speech”, Rabble, March 16, 2009, http://www.rabble.ca/news/israeli-apartheid-week-beats-back-attacks-free-speech.
[40] ibid.
[41] Asam Ahmad, “‘Beyond the Pale’: Jason Kenney and the Criminalization of Dissent”, UofT Free Press, March 28, 2009, http://utfreepress.org/2009/03/beyond-the-pale/.
[42] ibid.
[43] University of Toronto, “Code of Student Conduct” (2002), University of Toronto, http://www.governingcouncil.utoronto.ca/policies/studentc.htm.
[44] Jim Delaney, “About Jim Delaney”, (2008), professional website, http://individual.utoronto.ca/jimdelaney/about.html.
[45] George Connell, “From the Ivory Tower to the Corporate Tower” (1985), Empire Club of Canada, http://web.archive.org/web/20071020083836/www.empireclubfoundation.com/details.asp?SpeechID=758&FT=yes.
[46] John Lorinc, “Connell wants an elitist UofT”, The Varsity, April 9, 1987.
[47] MaRS Centre, “Commercializing University Research” (2007), MaRS Centre, http://www.research.utoronto.ca/events/CUR%20Agenda%20MAY%2024,%202007.pdf.
[48] University of Toronto. “Towards 2030: Planning for a Third Century of Excellence at the University of Toronto” (2008), University of Toronto, www.towards2030.utoronto.ca.
[49] Unknown Author, “Launch: Freedom of Expression Campaign”, Rabble event listing, http://www.rabble.ca/whatsup/launch-freedom-expression-campaign.
[50] Sharon Wall, “’To train a wild bird’: EF Wilson, hegemony, and native industrial education at the Shingwauk and Wawanosh residential schools, 1873-1893”, Left History 9:1 (Fall 2002/Winter 2003), p. 3.
Searching for the Guerilla/Toronto Free Press
Last week I was going through old issues of student newspapers in the Robarts media commons for an essay on 1980s anti-apartheid activism. While doing this research, I overheard another library patron mention that he was reading the back issues of a publication called the Guerilla/Toronto Free Press.
After some googling and internet research today, I learned some really interesting things about this precursor to Now Magazine and Eye Weekly. According to libraries with the back issues, Guerilla began publishing as a weekly on “radical alternate culture” in 1970 and changed its name to the Toronto Free Press in 1973, which continued until 1974.
Oddly enough, one of the most accessible sources on the Guerilla/Toronto Free Press is an article published on the far right-wing Canada Free Press (no relation) website, a self-described “conservative free press” that is currently running a story that asks whether universal healthcare killed actress Natasha Richardson (“The short answer is yes”).
In the article on the Guerilla/Toronto Free Press, Canada Free Press editor Judi McLeod reminisces about the paper’s activist focus, such as a restaurant review that criticized the low wages of the server and cook, and its system of providing free copies for people to sell:
As a young , 18-year-old, broke and short-haired, no-drug “hippie” of the day that lived (existed) in Yorkville, I could go up an alley beside Crazy David’s and a basket came down and you could get 10 copies free to sell, and then go back and buy more to sell. The paper suggested that you could use the monthly to buy dope. I used it to survive.
Digging deeper, you can find traces of people who were directly involved, and read about connections and tension between Guerilla collective members and queer organizing in Toronto:
The idea for The Body Politic partly emerged out of tension in the ranks of Guerilla. While the weekly covered gay and lesbian issues, some straight people involved were wary of too much gay content.
“They thought gay stuff was cool because it was different,” says Dobie. “But the more gay content they ran, the more gay people got involved, and the more some of the straight guys felt threatened.”
With a public library card, you can gain access to the Toronto Star Pages of the Past archives, which reveals some of the more specific stories that were reported at the time, including a fundraiser attended by nearly 1,000 young people – “most of them long-haired” (Nov. 30, 1970), a raid of the Guerilla’s and other leftist groups’ offices by the police (Dec. 2, 1970) and a controversy over the Guerilla being the recipient of a $15,000 federal Opportunities for Youth (OFY) grant (Aug. 15, 1971).
For those interested in what the Guerilla/Toronto Free Press actually looked like and contained, there is very little (if any) original material available online – this entry on the Internet Archive on The Raid of the Guerilla initially looked promising but was from a different time period entirely – so it appears that there is no avoiding the physical library system, especially when Google Books still limits you to basic descriptions or snippets for useful books.
Access and Equity Under Attack at UofT
Access & Equity in the University edited by Keren Brathwaite
ACCESS & EQUITY UNDER ATTACK
COMMUNITY FORUM ON PRESERVING THE TRANSITIONAL YEAR PROGRAMME
March 21, 2009
Ahmed Ahmed, current TYP student
Keren Brathwaite, co-founder of TYP and Organization of Parents of Black Children
Zanana Akande, former provincial Minister of Education
Verne Ross, TYP alumni
Ashley Sanders, TYP alumni
Rod Michalko, Professor of Disability Studies, OISE/UT
A Message to the Dean and FASC about Flat Fees
Here’s the message I drafted up just now. You can read more about the proposal and send your own message with the contact info for members of the Faculty of Arts and Science Council (FASC) listed on the UTSU website.
Dear Dean Gertler (meric.gertler@utoronto.ca),
Even though I should be writing papers right now, your mass-mailing inspired me to respond with this message and to include the members of the Faculty of Arts and Science Council. I served on FASC as a student representative in 2007-08 and the year before that on the Academic Appeals Board.
In my estimation, this is the single most regressive policy proposal I have seen since I began studying at UofT in 2005. One of the main themes in your message may be “not to worry, this change will not affect you”, but I cannot help but worry about the future of each and every Arts and Science student that would potentially be confronted with this severely inequitable fee structure. I believe that you have misjudged the impact that this change will have on student enrolment decisions, let alone on the “student experience” and access to UofT in general.
If you are under the impression, as indicated in your proposal, that for students with financial need “tuition fees are fully covered by government and/or University student aid”, you have been given the wrong impression and are shockingly out-of-touch with the lived reality of students. The average student leaves with a $24,000 debt sentence. Many students do not even qualify for OSAP: students from middle-income families, part-time students, students with prior debt, students without immigration status.
Further, if you believe that this change will not have a negative impact on students with financial need, you are once again mistaken. You must recognize that students take less than five courses because they lack the time and money to take a five course load. Students in this position would either be forced to pay exorbitantly more for less, be overburdened with an untenable amount of course work, or be pushed to drop down to part-time status, making themselves ineligible for OSAP. Each of these prospects serve to do irreperable harm to student engagement inside and outside of the classroom and to the accessibility of UofT.
Tuition fee increases are only stop-gap measures that take pressure off the government to fulfill its responsibility to adequately fund education, which we know has been chronically underfunded for years. Not only are tuition fee increases ineffective, but they are incredibly regressive as well – tuition fees are charged to all students regardless of their income.
I would like to end this message on a personal note. In my first year at UofT, I took five courses. I received an A- average, but the stress that I received as a result of this courseload was more than I could handle. I spent too much time shutting myself away from everyone in my life just to get assignments done. Since my first year, I have taken between 3.0 and 3.5 courses. It has meant that I will take five years, but it has also meant that I have been able to stay mentally healthy and get involved outside of classes, where most of my learning and development has taken place. For someone like me, a student on OSAP with a climbing debt load, this proposal serves only to cause undue stress or financial penalization, which in the end has the same impact.
If you can see me and my fellow students as students – as human beings with a right to access education – and not simply basic income units, I trust that you will vote down this proposal.
Sincerely,
Ryan
P.S. In case you have not heard, an incredible access program at UofT, the Transitional Year Programme is also being targeted for regressive changes. Rather than considering proposals that appear to penalize poor and marginalized students for being poor and marginalized, I submit that FASC’s time would be better utilized thinking about how to adopt principles of access and equity across the Faculty of Arts & Science. I would love for the next mass-mailing I receive from the Dean to be about the measures Arts and Science is taking towards advancing access and equity.
Renewal 1987 / Towards 2030
From an essay I’m writing, looking at student activist stuff with South African apartheid in the 1980s and activism against Israeli apartheid now:
In the midst of campus activism to divest from South Africa, a struggle against putting the bottom-line of investment returns above ethical considerations, President Connell delivered a speech to the Empire Club of Canada entitled “From the Ivory Tower to the Corporate Tower” advocating increased orientation to corporate needs. Connell authored a Renewal 1987 document that was criticized for reducing a degree to a “commodity”, privileging applied science and graduate studies, and emphasizing “upgrading UofT’s relations with the commercial sector and private enterprise”.
Since then this orientation towards private interests has solidified and developed significantly. In 2007 President Naylor spoke on “Ten Myths about Commercialization in University Research” at a one-day symposium on commercializing university research (with a $200 registration fee, $50 for students) held at the MaRS Discovery District, a hub for commercialization closely affiliated with UofT. Naylor also put forward the Towards 2030 plan that advocated for further commercialization of research and deregulation of tuition fees.
These two trends of increased management of dissent and increased privatization are not coincidental. They are both products of similar right-wing ideologies in which the role of students and responsibility of the university to the public good are marginal at best. Dissent would not need such intensive management if it did not pose a threat. Measures are needed to secure the university from dissent, to secure administrators from the claims, campaigns and momentum of students who threaten the operation of “daily business” in their embodiment of principles of equity and social justice.
Racism and the University: How bureaucracy and the “equity industry” perpetuate racism
Preface: In August 2008, student representatives voted at a meeting of the Canadian Federation of Students-Ontario to launch a Task Force on Campus Racism. The task force is now traveling the province to hold hearings on the issue (www.noracism.ca). This article was written following the August 2008 meeting for an equity studies course that focused on many related issues. The article draws on course material to lay the groundwork, then turns to current issues of racism at the university and places them within a historical context in which bureaucracy has been used to stifle anti-racist organizing on campus.
Substantive Equity vs. the “Equity Industry”
The reality of equity programs in Canada is that they conceal racist and discriminatory practice – they promise equality of opportunity yet deliver grudging accommodation; they deal with systemic inequity while leaving the systems and structures responsible for those inequities intact.
– Rodney Bobiwash
Bobiwash’s remarks were delivered to an Equity Studies panel on employment equity at the University of Toronto in 1998. In his remarks, Bobiwash criticized the bureaucratized “equity industry” for failing to advance substantive equity. Much of his text draws on the university with its failure to hire indigenous staff people or even to prioritize making First Nations House physically accessible.
Bobiwash’s analysis resonates deeply with me. The university seems more committed to equity as a public relations tool and defensive mechanism for responding to criticisms than for addressing the root of problems within the university community. For example, while UofT allows tuition fees to skyrocket and has publicly lobbied for their deregulation – despite negative impacts on accessibility for poor and racialized communities – the university responds by touting its so-called “access guarantee” and access programs.
Upon closer investigation, the “access guarantee” does not apply to international, undocumented or part-time students, and the major grants program UTAPS only applies to full-time students who have qualified for and taken on the maximum amount of student loans possible from OSAP. Similarly, access programs such as the Transitional Year Programme (TYP) are very successful yet have very small enrollments and are under constant threats of cuts. The university expects us to believe that because it has an access policy, access program or anti-racism office, it is automatically a “non-exclusionary”, “non-discriminatory” and “non-racist” space.
The University as a Producer and Site of Racism
My thinking on this issue continued to develop as our equity studies class explored different topics each week. Course material helped situate the university as an active force in the history and perpetuation of racism and inequity. Dikkoter speaks to how science has been used in the service of advancing racism with the scientific theory of eugenics, while Tuhiwai Smith’s article on research and indigenous peoples speaks to the linkages between research and European imperialism and colonialism, much as Grosfoguel writes about Eurocentrism in knowledge production and the need for critiques from silenced perspectives.
Material from later classes helped me identify how racism is enacted at the university itself. Sorenson discusses the imperialist history of white supremacy and how white privilege is normalized to the point where white people have the luxury of not having to think about their own privilege or the corresponding exclusion of racialized bodies and knowledges. Razack’s analysis of how “place becomes race” through the law can be applied to how “place becomes race” through the establishment of a university on land stolen from indigenous peoples as part of a wider process of colonial dispossession, the propagation of Eurocentric knowledges, and the imposition of a fee structure that disproportionately affects poor racialized students. However, materials such as Friere’s “Education as the Practice of Freedom” brought the topic of resistance into focus and raised the question of the possibilities for liberatory change at the university.
In the following section, I demonstrate UofT’s lack of commitment to substantive equity and anti-racism by considering current and historical issues of racism and the university.
Perpetuating and Confronting Racism
Denying Anti-Racism: Towards 2030 Plan (2007)
In October 2007, UofT President David Naylor held a public meeting at Innis College on his Towards 2030 long-term planning process. The university community was invited to comment on a 50-page discussion document that endorsed deregulation of tuition fees and further commercialization of research. Many students attended this meeting and voiced their dissatisfaction with the direction of the plan. In one exchange students from the African Studies Initiative challenged the President for failing to address the issue of Eurocentric curriculum and in particular the under-resourced state of the African Studies program. Naylor stated that the issue was not within his jurisdiction, however he was rebuked for attempting to “pass the buck” and reminded of the 1992 Presidential Advisory Committee on Race Relations and Anti-Racism Initiatives (PACRRAI) and its recommendations on curriculum. “Duly noted” is all Naylor had to say in response.
Deflecting Anti-Racism: PACRRAI Report (1992)
Despite President Naylor’s virtual dismissal of PACRRAI, there is much more to be said about this document and the state of anti-racism at UofT. The 1992 PACRRAI report, long buried by the university administration, was found by an executive from the University of Toronto Students’ Union (UTSU) in their office archives. Doing research in the office of the Arts and Science Students’ Union (ASSU), I was able to find a brochure copy of the 1990 Report of the Presidential Advisors on Ethno-cultural Groups and Visible Minorities, as well as additional sections from the 1992 PACRRAI report and a critical response to the report written by an anti-racist action group of OPIRG-Toronto called Students Committee Opposing Racism Through Education (SCORE). Through this archive as well as web searches, I also found a large amount of information about racism at the university and how students have responded.
Remembering Anti-Racism: UCAR (1989)
Notably, while doing research, I was able to learn about the political context out of which these reports emerged. In a 2003 article that appeared in THIS Magazine entitled “Remembering Anti-Racism”, author Raghu Krishnan writes:
In 1989, I helped found the United Coalition Against Racism (UCAR) at the University of Toronto. We launched a “Campaign for an Anti-Racist U of T” with demands around curriculum, hiring, admissions, office and meeting space, and a racial-harassment grievance procedure. UCAR lasted more than two years, and stood out because of the intensity of its activities, its emphasis on non-white leadership, and the range of forces involved. The coalition included feminists from the Women’s Centre, pan-Africanists from the African and Caribbean Students Association, and mostly white representatives from the NDP, Communist Party, and small far-left groups.
Krishnan continues with this cautionary note about the university bureaucracy:
The momentum around UCAR was eventually channeled into the university bureaucracy. The U of T administration wanted peace around “equity issues” – the better to pursue a new agenda of tuition hikes, private fundraising and large-scale corporate involvement on the campus.
Bureaucracy: Today’s Deflection, Tomorrow’s Denial
Channeling the momentum from activism into bureaucracy is a common response by those in power who are attempting to defuse situations that threaten the status quo. Campaigns that apply massive public pressure are often politically impossible to ignore outright. Rather than attempting to achieve meaningful change, vague commitments are made to study the issue and develop a report. A committee is formed, selective consultations and research are conducted, and a report is produced. Drawn-out processes ensure that the institution is able to proceed at its own pace, while the intensity of activism ebbs and flows. Once issued, recommendations remain suggestions that the institution is under no obligation to implement.
Of course, this analysis of bureaucratization ignores institutional flexibility and the impact that continued political pressure can exert on areas such as the composition of a committee, how a committee goes about its work, and how activists work to see recommendations implemented. Nevertheless, the bureaucratic report process described here, while desirable in that it is recognized by the institution, allows the institution to retain control over the process and how it intends to respond to recommendations. Without autonomy, the possibility of critical inquiry is jeopardized. More importantly, without a binding commitment to implement change, the effort put into critical inquiry is wasted.
The bureaucratic report process is what Audre Lorde would refer to as a master’s tool that is incapable of dismantling the master’s house. This process does not take power back from the university administration; rather, it uncritically adopts the administration’s approved approach for “creating change”. Minor concessions that may result from this process can be strategically used to undermine demands for broader systemic changes and defend the current power structure that allows administrators to undemocratically maintain their dominance.
UofT’s Equity Industry: No Substantive Equity to be Found
In the case of anti-racism and equity at UofT, institutional responses to activism have continued the trend of bureaucratization, claiming to address systemic inequity “while leaving the systems and structures responsible for those inequities intact.” For instance, in a shift away from the direct presidential advisory model, a permanent office of Race Relations and Anti-Racism Initiatives was created in 1993, known since 2005 as the Anti-Racism and Cultural Diversity Office. The Anti-Racism and Cultural Diversity Office is part of a network of 15 equity offices at the university. Much like with bureaucratic report processes, UofT’s equity offices exist in a context where they lack autonomy and a binding commitment from the institution to implement change. The equity offices are accountable to the administration, a fundamentally backwards arrangement to effectively address inequity.
In a news release announcing its new glossy equity posters, UofT carefully framed the announcement with the title “Equity core value at UofT: New equity posters only a hint of activity taking place”. The poster campaign is said to be only one way the administration is “weaving equity into the fabric of the university”, in accordance with UofT’s 2006 Statement on Equity, Diversity, and Excellence. Part of this statement reads:
In striving to become an equitable community, we will also work to eliminate, reduce or mitigate the adverse effects of any barriers to full participation in University life that we find, including physical, environmental, attitudinal, communication or technological.
The statement glaringly omits any mention of financial barriers, one of the principle modes of exclusion from society and universities that disproportionately affect equity-seeking groups such as poor and racialized communities. Therefore, it is not surprising that activists criticized the equity posters for excluding categories such as “working class” or “racialized”, nor is it surprising that the supposedly “core value” of equity is entirely absent from the President’s Towards 2030 long-term planning process to determine the future of the university. When pressed about equity issues such as Eurocentrism in the curriculum, the President states that these matters are outside of his jurisdiction, as if it is the notion of substantive equity itself that is outside of his jurisdiction.
Renewing Anti-Racism
While institutional responses have failed to address the root causes of issues such as racism, the positive side of these incremental changes is that they directly resulted from pressure applied by activism, and that these incremental changes can still have positive impacts on the university community. The possibility for liberatory change at the university exists if we continue to organize collectively, remain committed to our principles and expose injustices and hypocrisy. For example, the Transitional Year Programme (TYP) is an access program that was founded by members of the African-Canadian community before becoming institutionalized. We must work to ensure that exemplary equity initiatives such as TYP are not framed as tokenistic accessories to be “woven into the university”, but rather ensure that their lessons in terms of access, support mechanisms, student-centred pedagogy and curriculum are applied to the university as a whole.
At UofT there is a rich history of anti-racist organizing that is erased from institutional narratives. This article lacks the space to highlight the many cases of racism which have highlighted systemic discrimination at the university such as the tenure cases of April Burey and Kin-Yip Chun. The counter-hegemonic narrative of anti-racist organizing disrupts the unsullied narrative of the university as a “non-exclusionary”, “non-discriminatory”, “non-racist” and progressive space. In the anti-critical way that the university discusses itself, it is constantly claiming to have improved its achievement of equity, but at the same time will never admit in the present to the existence and extent of inequity.
While it is true that campus activism ebbs and flows, the current climate on campus is promising. Groups such as the Critical Area Studies Collective (CASC) are bringing attention to Eurocentrism in the curriculum, while the Committee for Just Education (CJE) is organizing direct actions opposing fee increases on the basis that they disproportionately affect poor and racialized students and their families. Moreover, the Canadian Federation of Students – Ontario (CFS-O) recently voted to form a task force on racism and to integrate the work of this task force into their province-wide Drop Fees campaign. This activism is promising not only because it is autonomous from the administration and committed to systemic change, but in light of Krishnan’s reflections regarding anti-racist organizing, it also offers a united front on issues of access, anti-privatization, and anti-racism. Such unity amongst activists denies the university the opportunity to divide movements by superficially making peace on “equity issues” while ignoring the intersections between all of these issues.
References
Bobiwash, Rodney (1998). Paper presented at the Equity Studies Symposium. Toronto: New College.
Dikkoter, Frank (2002). Race culture: Recent perspectives on the history of eugenics. In Inderpal Grewal & Caren Kaplan (Eds.) In An Introduction to Women’s Studies: Gender in a Transnational World. Boston: McGraw Hill.
Friere, Paolo (1974). Excerpt: In, Education as the Practice of Freedom. London. Writers and Readers Publishing Cooperative.
Grosfoguel, Ramon (2007). The epistemic colonial turn: Beyond political-economy paradigms. Cultural Studies.
Krishnan, Raghu (2003). “Remembering Anti-Racism.” THIS Magazine.
http://www.thismagazine.ca/issues/2003/01/remembering.php.
Lorde, Audre (1984). The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. In Audre Lorde, Sister Outside: Essays and Speeches by Audre Lorde. Berkeley: The Crossing Press.
Razack, Sherene (2002). Excerpt from Introduction When place becomes race. In S.H. Razack (Ed.), Race, space and the law: Unmapping a white settler society. Toronto: Between the Lines.
Sorenson, John (2003). “I’m not a racist, and nobody I know is either.” In J. Blackwell, M. Smith & J. Sorenson (Eds.). Culture of Prejudice: Arguments in Critical Social Science. Peterborough: Broadview Press.
Tuhiwai Smith, Linda (1999). Introduction. In Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. London: Zed Books.
University of Toronto (2006). Statement on Equity, Diversity, and Excellence.
http://www.hrandequity.utoronto.ca/Assets/equity/statement.pdf.
University of Toronto (2008). “Equity core value at UofT: New equity posters only a hint of activity taking place”.
http://www.news.utoronto.ca/campus-news/equity-core-value-at-u-of-t.html.
Stuff Rich People Like
With the onset of the economic recession, UofT’s highest-paid senior administrators recently volunteered to freeze their own pay (http://www.news.utoronto.ca/campus-news/salaries-for-senior-administrators-frozen.html) after years of hyper-inflationary increases (www.fightfees.ca/UTFAInformationReport8.pdf) – the top 50 UofT incomes increased on average by 79% over the past 10 years.
Given this act of supreme self-sacrifice, will our administrators be able to sustain their immodest lifestyles? From the people who brought you Stuff White People Like (http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/), Stuff Rich People Like:
Judith Wolfson, VP-University Relations
http://www.news.utoronto.ca/10-questions/judith-wolfson-vicepresident-university-relations.html
6. Describe one personal item you have in your office.
It is a hand-coloured aquatint by James Gillray from 1798 entitled Juge du Paix (Justice of the Peace). He looks like a real scoundrel– and probably was!
(Yes, she owns buried treasure!)
*
Cheryl Misak, Interim VP and Provost
http://www.news.utoronto.ca/10-questions/cheryl-misak-interim-vicepresident-and-provost.html
10. Wine or beer?
Both, although more wine than beer, as evidenced by the hundreds of bottles of wine laid down in my cellar.
(Clever recession-proofing: a wine cellar that can be transformed into housing for a family of four)
*
Angela Hildyard, VP HR and Equity
http://www.news.utoronto.ca/10-questions/professor-angela-hildyard-vicepresident-human-resources-and-equity.html
10. Wine or beer?
Champagne!
(Buy groceries or pay the rent? Diamonds!)
*
Cathy Riggall VP Business Affairs
http://www.news.utoronto.ca/10-questions/cathy-riggall-vicepresident-business-affairs.html
8. Favourite thing to do in Toronto?
Walking through new neighbourhoods and criticizing other people’s design and landscaping choices.
(This is an increasingly popular sport in the class war between old money and new money)
*
David Palmer, VP and Chief Development Officer
http://www.news.utoronto.ca/10-questions/david-palmer-vicepresident-and-chief-development-officer.html
7. Favourite restaurant near or on campus?
I have to say C5 at the ROM. Gorgeous view of the campus and southern city skyline and exquisite menus by resident genius Ted Corrado running heaven’s kitchen.
(Dinner for two: $150+, http://www.toronto.com/restaurants/article/524760 – that’s like 130 patties at Patty King)
*
Paul Young, VP Research
http://www.news.utoronto.ca/10-questions/professor-paul-young-vicepresident-research.html
10. Sailboat or yacht and why?
Anything that floats and gets me on the water is great by me and I have a passion for sailing.
(I’m less surprised by the response than by the assumption in the question itself as if it were another “beer or wine” question)
*
Ian Orchard, VP and Principal UofT Mississauga
http://www.news.utoronto.ca/10-questions/professor-ian-orchard-vicepresident-and-principal-university-of-toronto-mis.html
6. Favourite place to vacation?
St. Martin, the French side.
(The richer side)
*
I can’t seem to find UofT President David Naylor’s response to the Stuff Rich People Like survey. Would anyone care to hypothesize? Moon-skiing did you say?