To the Editors of The Varsity,

I am a visiting professor at U of T, and I have made it a point to read every issue of The Varsity this semester. As I prepare to leave campus, I am writing to express my profound disappointment in your publication.

In my encounter with U of T students, undergraduates and graduates alike, I find a diverse student body exhibiting curiosity about the world, a willingness to learn, an openness to hearing other points of view, and even a certain humility in acknowledging the gaps in their knowledge. The students I speak to understand that education is an ongoing process of exploration and learning. 

What I see in the pages of The Varsity stands in stark contrast. The reportage concerning the tragic war in Israel, Gaza, and Lebanon, and its reverberations on campus, is dreadful. It lacks all the things that U of T students are taught: that context matters, that nuance is crucial, that questions should be thoughtful and genuinely open-ended, and that the best answers are carefully formulated, modest, and perhaps even a little tentative. 

I am not advocating for a point of view. My focus is on the quality of the reporting and the opinion pieces.

Week in and week out, what The Varsity offers in its coverage of the issues that concern Palestine and Israel is simplistic and shallow. The hard and honest questions are eschewed in favour of self-righteous editorializing; the handling of issues such as antisemitism and freedom of speech is intellectually embarrassing, and the thoughtless presentation of contentious subjects undercuts the possibility of honest debate.

In an otherwise wonderful semester at a premier institution of higher learning, I am simply flabbergasted at the poor quality of The Varsity. I am happy to be proven wrong, but the arrogance and myopia that emerge from the pages of this publication suggest that this letter will be consigned to the trash. That would be a shame because wisdom begins with honest self-reflection.

Edward Breuer is a Shoshana Shier Distinguished visiting professor from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.