“Kiss off Pentagon-Big Pharma. This is our public university. Happy Valentine’s” was the message on two oversized, heart-shaped Valentine’s Day cards that a group of activists surprised U of T President David Naylor with in a publicity stunt on Tuesday.
Naylor was in the middle of addressing students and faculty members on the subject of health studies at the Croft Chapter House in University College when the group crashed the talk, displayed the valentines, walked around the boardroom table, and quickly left the room.
At the end of his lecture, Naylor said that he would answer questions about anything, adding, “I would be happy to discuss the militarization of U of T, which is a baffling one for me.” The group was gone by the time the lecture ended, however, so no discussion between them and Naylor took place.
“[There is a] lack of ethical guidelines for the types and lines of research and research partnerships [at U of T],” said Ivona Vujica, the coordinator of People Against Militarization of Life (PAML), the group that was behind the stunt. Vujica, one of the people who handed Naylor the giant card at the event, claims her group is marginalized and silenced at U of T. The group tipped off various campus media outlets about the prank on Monday.
Vujica, a recent graduate of OISE’s Adult Education program, said PAML attempted to make themselves heard at the Board of Governors meeting on February 9, but they were not allowed to speak, nor to hold banners expressing their views.
“We wanted to speak on the establishment of ethical guidelines,” Vujica said. She added that the in-camera session, which is usually at the beginning of the meetings, was shifted to the end, which she claims was a deliberate attempt to make it more difficult for the protestors to try to break into it after protesting outside.
PAML claims in their pamphlet that U of T is involved in a marriage of public and private interests. It names the Toronto Region Research Alliance (TRRA) as just one of many organizations that has “rounded up presidents of our universities, hospitals, and mayors of the cities in the Golden Horseshoe Region” and is motivated by a goal of “privatization of our higher education, research, and healthcare.”
PAML cites the university’s partnership with the Medical and Related Sciences (MaRS) Discovery District, a not-for-profit corporation that provides networks for medical and technological research to connect with business capital, as a reflection of the increasing privatization of U of T. (MaRS’s CEO also happens to be Naylor’s wife, Dr. Ilse Treurnicht, and its chair is a former U of T president.)
A website that has posted information from PAML also states that U of T and MaRS have a close partner in Ohio-based Battelle Memorial Institute, a private body that is under contract to the U.S. Office of the Secretary of Defense. On the site, they express concern that there is nothing to stop MaRS from becoming a hub for the research and development of biotech weaponry.
When asked if U of T is increasingly relying on corporate funding, Naylor said, “No, it’s not accurate.” Ten years ago, 20 per cent of the university’s funding came from external sources, said Naylor. Now, that number is down to ten per cent, he said.
Naylor said that he is “glad when students take up causes that matter to them,” but he indicated that, in his opinion, issues such as racial, ethnic, and religious intolerance, and the state of the environment, seem to be much more vital causes to be focused on.
But according to U of T student and PAML member Paul York, “moral indifference,” is what worries him most. One of the organization’s central demands, according to their pamphlet, is the “[a]pplication of ethics, human rights and international law to U of T’s… research and research partnerships.”
