Having spent much of last Friday apologizing, U of T President Robert Birgeneau conceded that he’d made “a colossal mistake” after coming under fire for comments he made last Thursday’s Governing Council meeting.
During the meeting, student governors pressed the university to consider the possible consequences to diversity that recent cuts to public education in Ontario may be having. Part-time student Chris Ramsaroop raised a motion calling on the Governing Council to study the effects of these cuts on students in Toronto and the surrounding areas.
Commenting on the obstacles to diversity at U of T, Birgeneau said the university was already quite diverse in comparison to other institutions. He claimed that U of T mirrored the diversity of the Greater Toronto Area.
Birgeneau went on to say, “White students too often choose to go to other universities because we are so diverse.”
Birgeneau’s comment shocked several members of the council. During the meeting, alumnus governor Susan Eng said suggestions that students might decide not to come to U of T because of its diversity was “a very frightening statement.”
After the meeting was adjourned, Eng stated that she was “certain the university had an action plan for recruitment of both of faculty and students” regarding diversity. She said she believed Birgeneau’s comments were “a slip of the tongue.”
Later in the meeting Birgeneau tried to clarify his point, and eventually withdrew his statement.
In an interview the day after the GC meeting, the president reflected on his comments. “I was extremely frustrated in that moment. My frustration originates from the fact that I have spent my life committed to equity issues and I’ve worked really hard, and continue to work hard, on trying to have as fair and diverse a system as possible,” he said.
Birgeneau’s comment on U of T’s diversity was not his only stumble of the evening.
The meeting opened with guest speaker Murphy Brown, a part-time student at Woodsworth College and vice-chair of the organization of parents of black children addressing the council. She discussed cuts to education and their particular impact on children from diverse backgrounds. Brown said, “With what is happening in the public education system, I am entreating Governing Council to look into it, and write [a letter] to the premier of Ontario and the education minister.
“As I look around this room, I do not see many people who look like me,” she added.
Birgeneau then responded, “My black friends tell me that I look like you on the inside, just not on the outside.”
On Friday he said, “I’m a child of the sixties, I used a slang expression from the sixties, which, I could tell from a number of people’s expressions, they hadn’t heard before, which was meant to say ‘Yes, I understand what you’re saying and I agree with you.”
He said the expression was used in the sixties by “people like myself who spent time in the South as civil rights workers. [The phrase] obviously hadn’t propagated to Toronto.”
The president said he could tell people had misinterpreted the statement and he deeply regretted the comment.
Birgeneau said, “I didn’t mean to offend anybody or to imply in any way that this isn’t a great university and that all segments of the student population aren’t thriving here.”
Provost Shirley Neuman also spoke in the president’s defence the next day. “We’re very committed to diversity in the student body and diversity in the faculty.
“The Governing Council is a place of some occasional disorganization in the debate…. If you were watching the president’s face, it was very clear that he realized as soon as he had said this that he had misspoke in relation to the statistics he was quoting, and he backed right off it.”
In the past, Birgeneau has demonstrated his commitment to diversity and equity. In a speech given in March of 2001, Birgeneau said, “When I was an undergraduate here nearly 40 years ago, our student body was much less diverse than our current student body, and our faculty was even less so. Today’s faculty in part reflects that history. Our future will be different.”
In the same speech, he outlined a plan for ensuring a more diverse faculty.
Birgeneau has also been commended for his work on gender equity issues while at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
