[Fdu] Reminder: Thursday: Rally Against the Corporate Takeover of UofT + Sign Munk Out Of UofT petition

Thu Apr 7 10:33:44 EDT 2011

A reminder of today's event. Please sign the Munk Out of UofT petition copied at the bottom of this message.

      WHAT: Rally Against the Corporate Takeover of UofT

      WHEN: Thursday April 7th, 3:00-5:30 pm

      WHERE: Meet on U.T.S.U. lawn (facing Hart House), march to Governing Council (Simcoe Hall)

      The anti-corporatization working group of the UT General Assembly calls on members of the UofT community and allies to unite to oppose a corporatized vision for our university. On Thursday, we will rally against the Munk “donation” and Governing Council’s tacit approval of privatized education.

      The UofT administration is partnering with the Munk Foundation to create the Munk School of Global Affairs. The administration wants to generate discourses around global issues that are financed by and subject to the annual approval of the Munk Foundation. Peter Munk is the chairman of the mining company Barrick Gold, a corporation facing frequent allegations of international human rights and environmental abuses.  What’s more, Barrick is currently pursuing lawsuits against three academics who have written about these issues.   

      As staff, students, faculty, and allies, we do not want our university to partner with Barrick Gold. We are suspicious of the kinds of “academic” activities that the Munk Foundation encourages, and concerned about what forms of knowledge production will become excluded. 

      Even the UofT administration seems to know that taking money from Peter Munk is a bad idea. Negotiations around the agreement were kept secret, even from the Governing Council – a body that is, at best, a façade of democracy. At the last GC meeting, when a student governor presented notice of a Munk-related motion, the chair tried to prevent her from speaking. Though the motion was served with due notice, it is notably absent from the agenda of this upcoming GC meeting. 

      The governing bodies at UofT run our university like a business. Mergers with other corporations are sought, while members of the university community are dismissed as nothing more than income and labour units. On Thursday, at the same time that we are being kept off the agenda at GC, governors will be voting to increase tuition fees so that for the FIRST TIME EVER, tuition and other fees are projected to surpass public sources of funding in UofT’s projected budget. 

                      We will rally on Thursday to show GC that we are not silent sources of profit; that we are the university. We will gather with Professor Noam Chomsky after his much-anticipated lecture on the State-Corporate Complex, in order to extract our university from complicity in this doctrine. We will rally to enact a new vision for UofT that reflects the interest of our community, not corporations and not neo-liberal governments.

      Facebook event : http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=145266022206655

      Sign the Munk out of UofT petition : http://www.petitiononline.com/munkoff/

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Petition against Corporatization and for the Cancellation of the Munk Contract at the University of Toronto 
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View Current Signatures   -   Sign the Petition 

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To:  UofT President and Governors To the President's office, 

We, the undersigned, express deep concern over the Memorandum of Agreement between The Peter and Melanie Munk Charitable Foundation and the University of Toronto, for the establishment of the Munk School of Global Affairs. This contract was negotiated behind closed doors and not made public, even to the members of the University of Toronto's Governing Council, until after it was finalized. Additionally, the contract imposes many conditions on the University that compromise its academic integrity, offering a route by which the Donor might exert undue influence on academic matters. 

Most troubling in this contract is the inclusion of annual progress reports as a condition for receiving funds. This condition requires that the University provide a detailed written report indicating descriptions of programs, initiatives and activities of the Munk School of Global Affairs. It also requires that the Director of the School meet annually with the Donor's board of directors following the submission of the detailed report. 

As there is a $15 million gift that can be terminated based on the Donor's determination as to whether the school is achieving its objectives, and considering that the Donor would meet regularly with the school's director, it is clear that this contract could enable the Donor to exercise undue influence over the Munk School's program areas. 

As Peter Munk is the founder and acting chairman of a gold mining company, Barrick Gold, which is accused of human rights abuses, environmental violations, and corrupt practices at many of their operations around the globe, this donor relationship is particularly troubling. Munk's influence on the School is especially troubling as the school's areas of study, International Relations and Global Policy, are areas in which Munk has vested business interests. 

Moreover, the manner in which this contract was approved reveals serious flaws in the University's process for accepting and receiving donations. It reveals that the University lacks proper measures to ensure that such conflicts of interest not influence the University's curriculum. Furthermore, the University's reputation is at stake when it brands itself with the names of leaders of questionable industries and businesses. 

Therefore we, the undersigned, demand that: 

• the final approval of any contract associated with a donation be conditional on prior approval by the Academic Board of the Governing Council of the University of Toronto; 

• any contract stipulating conditions under which donations are to be received be made public on a University website as well as through an announcement in the Varsity Newspaper at least one month before the contract is finalized; 

• the University protect academic integrity by ensuring that any contract between a donor and the University not include stipulations that offer the donor influence over the University's program areas, be they research, curriculum, right to publish, or any other subject of academic interest; 

• include democratically-elected student and faculty representation in the approval process for any memorandum of agreements between the University and large donors; 

• annul and renegotiate the contract with The Peter and Melanie Munk Charitable Foundation to eliminate the suppression of academic freedom inherent in the Donor's ability to cancel an additional $15 million gift at any time, according to their subjective opinion as to whether the University is fulfilling its objectives. 

• reconsider the branding of the Munk School, considering the Donor’s conflict of interest with a school that deals with global policy, under a new decision-making process that includes the approval of the Academic Board of the Governing Council of the University of Toronto. 

• support the resolution submitted to the University of Toronto Governing Council that would strike a standing committee made up of students, faculty, staff and their representative organizations as well as relevant community members to vet the ethical questions around accepting future donations from corporate sources and to ensure there are no strings attached. 

Sincerely, 
The Undersigned 

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