When the Tamil Students’ Association
lobbied to have a Tamil language course set
up at U of T in 2005, they were told to
turn to Toronto’s Tamil community
for funding.

Fortunately, finding community
funding went well and the course
went ahead that summer, said Ashwin
Balamohan a former TSA executive
who is now VP university affairs
at the Students’ Administrative
Council.

“But it shouldn’t have happened, it
shouldn’t be necessary.” Balamohan
complains about having to find external
funding.

“The problem is how the system
is set up. Everyone passes the buck
on to someone else. South Asian
Studies say New College doesn’t
give them enough money, New College
said Arts & Science doesn’t give
them enough money. This goes [up
to] the federal government.”

According to Balamohan, sustaining
a diverse range of programs, including
area studies, is not a priority
for the Faculty of Arts and Science.
“It’s been no one’s priority to promote
diversity in critical perspectives,
including area studies, at the
postsecondary level. I would like to
see it stop being neglected,” Balamohan
said.

This case illustrates the wider issue
facing area studies departments
at U of T. Students are told to expect
a world-class education, that
will prepare them to be world-class
citizens with critical minds. But the
entrenched, traditional ideas about
what constitutes a good education
haven’t changed enough in a few decades,
student groups say.

They charge that disciplines such
as African Studies, South Asian Studies,
and Caribbean Studies are underfunded,
generally ignored, and given little importance within U of T. They see the TSA having to turn to the GTA’s Tamil community to find funding as just another example.
To Professor Kanishka Goonewardena,
the head of South Asian Studies,
one of the most striking problems
with area studies departments
at U of T is how some have much better
funded and developed programs
than others.

“For example, the Centre for the
Study of the United States (CSUS)
has a budget that is several times
more than the combined budget of
African, South Asian, and Caribbean
studies,” Goonewardena noted.
Characterizing U of T’s teaching and
administration as communal and
Eurocentric, Goonewardena questioned
the dogma behind the structure
of the faculty of Arts & Science.
“The traditional academic disciplines
in the humanities and the social
sciences, all of which have very
Eurocentric roots, are much better
funded [than the nontraditional
area studies]. The reasons for such
‘uneven development’ are … immediately
very political.”

Professor Naisargi Dave, of the department
of anthropology, agreed. “I think part of the problem is that there are certain kinds of assumptions in place about where the centres of knowledge are.” Dave said that student movements are the key to overthrowing such assumptions.

At the moment, several such movements seem to be gathering momentum at U of T.
Student activists from the Arts and
Science Students Union, the South
Asian Studies Students’ Association,
the African Studies Initiative, Association
of Political Science Students,
and Women and Gender Studies Students’
Union, have come together to
create the Critical Area Studies Collective
(CASC), and are working toward
increased intellectual rigour in
Arts & Science.

Corey McPherson, a member of the
African Studies Initiative, commented
on the need for change. “The students
who take education seriously
are frustrated,” he said. McPherson
identified three problems plaguing
area studies departments: the lack of
core courses, the difficulty of expansion,
and above all the prevalence of
courses taught by sessional instructors
instead of rigourously-vetted
professors with superior qualifications.
African Studies, for instance,
has two core faculty members, and
no independent resources or hiring
capabilities.

“Students think, let’s take a language
course, I want to learn how to
speak like an African,” said McPherson.
“[But] then I don’t know who
speaks it or where they come from.
I don’t know the people or the politics,
but I can say ‘How are you’ and
‘Where is the washroom.'” Students
like McPherson feel a sense of despair.
“It just seems that we are
pushing against so much resistance
to updating the program.”
Siham Rayale, VP of the Association
of Political Science Students,
said area studies at U of T lag far
behind other schools. “You talk to
someone who studies Africa at another
university and you begin to
realize that you can’t even hold a
conversation with them, let alone a
debate.”

Concerned students are insecure
about their future in a world they
feel they know little about, and
worry that they are not adequately
qualified for graduate education or
the job market, where flexible and
critical minds are required. Viewing
the world from a Eurocentric perspective,
say some, places students
in an intellectual bubble and hinders
creative collaboration.

“This not a question of skin colour
or identity. It’s not because I’m South
Asian that South Asian Studies is
going to be important to me,” said
ASSU President Noaman Ali. “South
Asian Studies is important because
it’s part of this world. You want to
study something for the sake of intellectual
rigour.”

Diverse voices agree that now is
a good moment for change in U of
T’s area studies departments. New
College President Rick Halpern encouraged
organizations like CASC to push the university to improve their programs.

“Given President Naylor’s emphasis

on the student experience, if we
have students speaking articulately,
loudly and consistently, we’ll get
there sooner rather than later.” With
Arts & Science currently reviewing
its curricula, South Asian StudiesStudents’ Association President Preethy
Sivakumar agrees that now is
the best time to drum up the admin’s
support. “If the Dean of Arts & Science
and the rest of the administration
are serious, they cannot ignore
our efforts.” Sivakumar is campaigning
for consistent support, course
list expansion, and the resources to
improve intellectual quality in her
department.

“I see a few courses in political science,
for example, engaging colonialism
or the Third World, but it’s just
not intellectually rigorous enough,”
she complains.

Speaking to these criticisms Arts
& Science dean Pekka Sinervo said
that area studies programs are not a
low priority. “Area studies programs
vary in size, and therefore vary in
terms of the amount of resources allocated
to them.”

Meanwhile, those heading the beleaguered
departments are thinking
big. “I have no interest in running
something small,” said Caribbean
Studies director Alissa Trotz. “I have
an interest in growing this program
and making it something that really
contributes not just to the students
in the program but to the intellectual
life of the university as a whole.”