A brief demonstration broke out inside council chambers during the February meeting of the governing council after a presentation from a student group. The protestors wore mock clown noses and chanted “Munk out of U of T” for several minutes, causing the chair to adjourn the meeting. The group’s apparent leader said she was not a student at U of T.
The February 17 meeting focused largely on issues surrounding Peter Munk’s donation to the university establishing the Munk School of Global Affairs, and philanthropy at U of T in general. The president’s address at the beginning of the meeting was devoted almost exclusively to the subject of U of T President Naylor’s response to a number of criticisms raised against the deal. Naylor also released an open letter on philanthropy at U of T this Friday in which he defended Peter Munk against what he called “repeated personal attacks on one of our most generous donors and best-known alumni.”
A press release circulated by one student governor before the meeting stated that the protest was largely in reaction to the fact that Barrick Gold, the mining giant of which Peter Munk is founder and chairman, has been accused of human rights violations abroad.
Joeita Gupta, a student governor representing part-time undergraduates, reiterated several criticisms of the donor agreement that critics have made over the past several months. “It’s quite baffling to me frankly — some of the more absurd provisions such as having a separate entrance for CIC members … and a secondary entrance for everybody else,” she said. “This is so archaic and so out of sync with the mores of this university. You have the lords and the ladies through one entrance and the little people through the other.”
Gupta also criticized the donor agreement for allowing $15 million of the $35-million donation to be paid in increments until 2017, subject to review by a blue-ribbon panel. She said that this would allow Munk charity’s to potentially influence the school’s academic direction.
Naylor replied that the panel would do nothing more than “measure the school against its self-directed, self-proclaimed plans and priorities.”
He said the university went through these kinds of reviews on a daily basis. “This is not some capricious decision by a bunch of corporate individuals coming in to review the academic program. This is a blue-ribbon external academic review that informs the final decision to release the funds. In that sense I really don’t understand the distinction between this approach and that which we follow every single day in the academy.”
He also added that “for obvious reasons,” the university would be unlikely to take a donor to court for not paying.
Naylor replied to the issue of the door by calling it a “drafting glitch,” and said that critics were turning it into a willful misinterpretation of the intent of the university. “Anyone who knows this place knows that anyone will go wherever they want in terms of going through doorways … The notion that there could be some exclusionary right is simply not on, and I have no question that no one expects that there will be some test as to who can get in and out of the front door.”
