The Faculty of Arts and Science has hit the breaks on most of its proposed cuts and amalgamations. Dean Meric Gertler told the Globe and Mail that most of the streamlining to alleviate the faculty’s almost $60-million shortfall will now take place through restructuring instead of amalgamations and cuts.
The change comes after months of vocal protest from within the university community since the plan’s publication in July, as well as opposition from academia worldwide.
“The overwhelming opposition to these changes was just too much for the administration to take. They could no longer afford the bad press which this terrible idea had accumulated,” wrote ASSU President Gavin Nowlan, in an email to The Varsity. “It really is a great victory for the intellectual history, and future, of this university.”
The original plan sought the closing of the Centre for Comparative Literature, the Centre for Ethics and the Centre for Diaspora and Transnational Studies. It also proposed the creation of a super-department called the School of Languages and Literatures, an amalgamation of the Department of East Asian Studies, Department of Spanish and Portuguese, Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, Department of Italian Studies, and the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures.
The Centre for International Studies is still planned for disestablishment as courses are being merged into the Munk School of Global Affairs.
The change was announced by Gertler to five of the threatened departments at a meeting Wednesday morning, according to the Globe.
