The University of Toronto Presidential Home has a jaw-dropping exterior, not because of the house itself, with its muted shades of brown and black, but because of the amount of land it occupies.
Situated in a cozy neighbourhood of elite Rosedale mansions, the presidential home, unlike surrounding houses, has an enormous front lawn, which descends into a grove. Bright flowers and small trees dot the lush field in the summer; a visual feast of colour.
The interior is more predictable. Large, stately rooms are tastefully decorated in elegant patterns each with its own theme: a rose-patterned sun room, for example, leads into a dark wood-paneled study.
This is where U of T President David Naylor resides, where he holds a lot of his meetings and where he sat down with me to discuss his first year as president.
It has been an interesting year for a man who has been involved with U of T in one capacity or another for almost twenty years.
After receiving his MD from U of T in 1978, Naylor earned the Rhodes scholarship and went to study social policy and administration at Oxford, where he met his wife, Ilse Treurnicht, a fellow Rhodes scholar from South Africa, now the CEO of MaRS.
After joining the Faculty of Medicine in 1987, Naylor became a powerful force in Canadian health policy, creating innovative programs and initiatives that have changed the field.
These include a research program in clinical epidemiology at Sunnybrook and the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (ICES), a non-profit healthcare research corporation.
ICES in particular sometimes landed Naylor in hot water with fellow colleagues and the government.
“One of my favourite memories is being pressed by the government to provide an estimate of the open-heart surgeries required. We gave our best estimate but flagged it as imprecise due to the tight timeline.
“The Ministry of Health paid no heed and publicly announced funding in tens of millions of dollars. I was pulled from the audience and made to hold the other end of a large cardboard cheque in front of TV cameras.
“But when we finalized the numbers, they turned out to be higher and this did not make the Ministry happy. That was not a high point in my career.”
Another interesting period was 2003, when Naylor chaired the SARS National Advisory Committee.
He faced constant pressure from the government and the public, an experience he refuses to talk about even now.
Pressure also came from internal sources.
“I suffered from a herniated central disc right when I was due to hand in a major report. I typed most of it on my knees, with pillows thrown on the floor. People would come in and say I appeared to be praying in the computer area.
“There’s no glamorous explanation for why it happened….aside from advancing decrepitude,” he joked.
In 1999, Naylor became Dean of the Faculty of Medicine and served until 2005, when he was chosen as the university’s 15th president.
At the time, many felt that the university needed strong leadership.
“Lots of the senior team had jumped ship. U of T wanted a capable, internal leader who could fill a big vacuum in the administration,” explained Paul Bretscher, VP External of SAC.
October 1 marks the end of Naylor’s freshman year.
Small is beautiful
His primary focus was improving and enhancing the student experience, with an emphasis on areas such as the co-curricular experience and student activity space.
Modest progress has been made on the latter. A special task force reviewed student activity space on all three campuses, and several plans and designs have been studied. Naylor has also begun work on raising funds.
Other areas such as curricular experience are more contentious.
“I’d love to see smaller classes. I’d like to see him actually do something about it,” said Coralie D’Souza, undergraduate representative on the Governing Council.
The issue of large classes arose after Naylor visited classrooms across U of T’s campuses during his first week as president, a move that some dismissed as nothing but a “brilliant PR stunt.”
Whatever his motivation, Naylor became determined to introduce more personalized learning opportunities and smaller classes, along the lines of Vic One-a first-year program at Victoria College where students are placed in a class of 25.
“My problem with this is smaller, exclusive courses take teaching time and resources from other courses, so the result is larger classes anyway,” said ASSU president, Noaman Ali.
“A small class like Vic One gives students trappings of elitism. Rather, we should offer more tenure track positions to qualified instructors.”
Another way Naylor has tackled the student experience problem is through the Student Experience Fund.
The fund is designed to support initiatives that enhance the student experience. But many thought the submitted proposals had too little student input, while others felt there was too little money relative to the U of T budget.
Money problems extend beyond the student experience and into tuition fees-the most high-profile issue the university deals with each year.
Naylor has advocated the deregulation of tuition fees, meaning the provincial government can’t cap or freeze fees.
“Tuition revenue becomes redistribution rather than pure revenue, because it is used for bursaries,” he stated. “Our needs-based bursary program runs potentially in the red. We would use tuition revenue to restore it to stability. So freezing tuition is not the great thing it’s made out to be.”
Student organizations on the other hand have campaigned to continue freezing tuition.
“Higher tuition only improves [the student experience] for those who can afford it. It’s one thing to make U of T a world-class university, but if only world-class students can afford it, you’re disadvantaging world-class students who can’t,” said Ali.
Stepping forward
It’s probably a good thing Naylor has dealt with public dissent before. The experience no doubt came in handy during the most caustic period of his first year: the racist incidents of early 2006 that came to be nicknamed “Islamophobia.”
“That was not the lowest stress period for us. There was a sense that we had lost some of our civility. It was viscerally upsetting,” he admitted.
Naylor and the administration were criticized for being slow to address the incidents, for not responding with as much forcefulness as they had to earlier discrimination issues and for not doing more to rid the administration itself of racial intolerance.
He eventually presented a speech to the Governing Council condemning the incidents, much to the relief of students on campus.
He finds the other criticisms ridiculous and upsetting.
When asked about them, Naylor’s normally placid expression changed into a frown and he spoke more haltingly, as if choosing his words carefully.
“Those comments are easy to make and hard to prove. Our faculty are hired from an array of time periods. Of course they won’t represent the GTA exactly as it exists in 2006. Saying that’s an indication of racism strikes me as radically irrational.”
In general though, his handling of the Islamophobia situation met with approval.
In fact, David Naylor seems to elicit positive feedback from even his most vocal critics. He knows how to come out of almost any situation, no matter how controversial, smelling like roses.
The secret to his success lies in a congenial temperament that avers a talent for anticipating the needs and wants of the U of T community. He constantly displays a seemingly ingenuous desire to make the university a better place.
That’s not to say there isn’t room for improvement.
Many students want Naylor and the administration to find ways to engage apathetic students in the university community, whether by improving the classroom experience, providing more student aid, or simply working with more student organizations.
Some want to see more effective student representation as a means of improving the student experience. SAC wants to see Naylor’s continued support for the new student centre and a return to freezing tuition fees.
Naylor himself plans to “stay the course.” For him, that means recruiting new faculty, expanding graduate enrolment and continuing to working on the student centre, an “intensification” of what has already been done this year.
Among his favourite moments are meeting political figures, attending classes in his first week and going to convocation, despite the “risk of repetitive strain injury from shaking so many hands.”
Not surprisingly, he considers the Israeli Apartheid Week and subsequent Islamophobia incidents to be the most difficult.
“I really enjoyed this year. I’m dealing with some of the smartest young people in the country. That’s hugely appealing.”
