We are a group of faculty members at UofT. We come from units including Law, Political Science, History, Women & Gender Studies, Indigenous Studies, Religion, Environment, Geography & Planning, Social Work and OISE. Our group includes faculty who are Black, Indigenous, Jewish, Muslim and People of Colour. We all care deeply about the university and its future. We are working together to defend the University’s own vital Statement of Institutional Purpose, which insists:
The University of Toronto is dedicated to fostering an academic community in which the learning and scholarship of every member may flourish, with vigilant protection for individual human rights, and a resolute commitment to the principles of equal opportunity, equity and justice.
Within the unique university context, the most crucial of all human rights are the rights of freedom of speech, academic freedom, and freedom of research. And we affirm that these rights are meaningless unless they entail the right to raise deeply disturbing questions and provocative challenges to the cherished beliefs of society at large and of the university itself.
It is this human right to radical, critical teaching and research with which the University has a duty above all to be concerned; for there is no one else, no other institution and no other office, in our modern liberal democracy, which is the custodian of this most precious and vulnerable right of the liberated human spirit.
The University of Toronto believes that it best serves Canada and the wider world by pursuing to the limit of its abilities its fundamental mandates of research and teaching in the spirit of academic freedom. In seeking to achieve the above objectives, the University of Toronto is committed to four principles:
- Respect for intellectual integrity, freedom of enquiry and rational discussion;
- Promotion of equity and justice within the University and recognition of the diversity of the University community;
- A collegial form of governance;
- Fiscal responsibility and accountability.
While not all of us are able to be public in this work because of uneven vulnerabilities, our members include:
Abigail Bakan
Joe Carens
Deborah Cowen
Anver Emon
Mohammad Fadel
Kanishka Goonewardena
Trudo Lemmens
Jeffrey Macintosh
Ruth Marshall
Melanie Newton
Denise Réaume
David Schneiderman
Judith Taylor
Melissa Williams
Censure UofT 