Departmental Statement
We seek to cultivate a departmental culture that welcomes and supports students, staff, and faculty with diverse education and experiential backgrounds, especially those who belong to groups that are currently underrepresented in academia. We are committed to providing a fair, equitable, and mutually supportive learning and working environment for our students, staff, and faculty. As a department, as a collective, as a group of colleagues, we acknowledge both our fundamental commitment to diversity and inclusion but also recognize our shortcomings. Our work has only just begun and we are committed to developing statements, and putting their corresponding commitments into action, for all equity seeking groups. To this end, we would like to begin with the following statements:
Solidarity Statement Regarding Anti-Black Racism
Black lives matter. Clearly, however, the murders of George Floyd in Minneapolis, of Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia, of Breonna Tayler in Kentucky, the killing of Tony McDade in Florida and the tragic death of Regis Korchinski-Paquet here in Toronto, together with far too many other similar events, have served as stark reminders of the necessity of organizing behind a premise of dismantling anti-Black racism and state-sanctioned violence.
The patterns are clear, evidenced, for example, in the writing of scholars such as Robyn Maynard on the policing of Black lives. An Ontario Human Rights Commission study, “A Collective Impact” provided irrefutable evidence that between 2013 and 2017, a Black person in Toronto was nearly 20 times more likely than a white person to be involved in a fatal shooting by the Toronto Police Service. Moreover, anti-Black racism intersects with and informs other forms of systemic violence. In Canada, this includes violence against Indigenous peoples, highlighted most recently by the killing of Chantel Moore in New Brunswick.
With these stories (and decades of too many similar stories) serving as contemporary examples and evidence of pervasive and persistent anti-Black racism and anti-Indigenous racism, we, the academic leaders of the tri-campus graduate programs in Geography and Planning and the three undergraduate geography departments at the University of Toronto-St. George (STG), the University of Toronto-Mississauga (UTM), and the University of Toronto-Scarborough (UTSC) affirm our commitment to do more than just express our collective outrage and dismay.
Recent days and weeks have brought pain, grief, frustration, and anger but also hope, solidarity, and fierce love. We are inspired by all of those in the United States, in Canada, and around the world who have sent out and responded to the call to oppose anti-Black racism, white supremacy and violence, and to reject racial discrimination and oppression in all their nefarious manifestations. We add our voices to those who are committed to fighting for justice.
Words are important, but they alone cannot undo systemic, institutionalized and individual racism and racially motivated acts of violence. We pledge to embrace changes aimed at fostering justice, dignity and respect for Black students, for Black colleagues, for Black staff, and for all Indigenous and people of colour. In making this pledge, we also honour and acknowledge the intersections of anti-Black racism with issues of gender, dis/ability, sexuality and class. We are specifically committed to the following:
- Advocacy for enhanced University funding specifically for Black students, and for Indigenous and students of colour;
- Recruitment, hiring and retention of more Black faculty members and fostering greater diversity in our faculty more generally;
- Continued and enhanced efforts to recruit Black students, undergraduate and graduate;
- Continued and enhanced efforts to recruit students from diverse socio-economic and cultural backgrounds;
- Efforts to strengthen our curricula at the undergraduate and graduate levels in the areas of Black geographies, anti-oppression (broadly) and anti-Black racism specifically, and the development of an enhanced understanding of the ongoing role of systemic racism, white supremacy and discrimination in the production of space, and of the production of forms of geographical knowledge aimed at overcoming systemic injustice; and
- The systemic development of an institutional culture of anti-oppression and respect through dialog, education, and training.
We are an intellectually and otherwise diverse community of faculty, staff, and students spread across our three campus departments and within our common graduate department. We may never all agree at each point on what is to be done, on what takes priority, and on how to proceed. Indeed, the mechanisms and institutional structures/processes will vary by department, program, campus, and division. Yet, we may embrace a common ethos of seeking in our teaching, in our research, and in our day-to-day professional lives to actively challenge and subvert the entrenched colonial legacies of anti-Black racism and of oppression, legacies that make possible ongoing acts of horrific violence and systemic, institutionalized and racist discrimination. We can embrace a commitment to more than words, and instead seek to enact and embody the kinds of real changes that are clearly now long overdue.
Ron Buliung, Professor and Chair, tri-campus Graduate Department of Geography and Planning
Richard DiFrancesco, Associate Professor and Chair, University of Toronto-St. George Department of Geography and Planning
Yuhong He, Associate Professor and Chair, University of Toronto-Mississauga Department of Geography
Paul Hess, Associate Professor and former Director, Graduate Programs in Planning
Thembela Kepe, Professor and Chair University of Toronto-Scarborough, Department of Human Geography
Scott Prudham, Professor and Associate Chair, Graduate Geography
Katharine Rankin, Professor and Associate Chair and Director, Graduate Programs in Planning
Indigenous Peoples Solidarity Statement
The collective leadership of our three distinct campus geography Departments and our unified tri-campus graduate Department of Geography and Planning wishes to affirm our commitment to solidarity with Indigenous peoples of Canada and beyond. This includes specifically our ongoing support for and development of geographical and planning scholarship and teaching that directly confronts Canada’s settler colonial history and the ways in which this colonial legacy pervades and profoundly shapes the geographies of everyday life in this country.
During the last week, we have witnessed heartbreaking confirmation that remains of more than two hundred Indigenous children are buried on the grounds of a former residential school near Kamloops, British Columbia. This discovery has been made possible in significant measure due to the important and ongoing work of the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation advocating for the rights of Indigenous families and communities from which the children were taken, for a full reckoning with the truth of their fate, and for honouring the memory of these lost children.
Sadly, this discovery, while horrific, is no surprise. Rather, it serves as confirmation again that thousands of Indigenous children in Canada were forcefully taken from their homes and communities and transferred into residential schools. Many of these children were subjected to monstrous sexual and racist abuses. Many never returned home. Others who did survive experienced life-changing trauma that has extended across multiple generations. The history of Indigenous residential schools is a poignant aspect of the broader organized, systemic architecture of settler-colonialism in Canada, and the recent discovery near Kamloops serves as a reminder that racism and racist dispossession are integral to the foundations of this country, and that the influence of organized cultural genocide continues to infuse contemporary Canadian geographies and the lived experiences of this nation’s spaces.
In recent years, our various Departments and programs across the three campuses of the University of Toronto have initiated concerted efforts to recruit and retain Indigenous and non-Indigenous faculty whose teaching and research expertise includes direct confrontation with and attempts to subvert colonial and post-colonial geographies, in Canada and beyond. We are honoured to include these faculty in our communities and they honour us with their teachings. We have also moved to enhance curricular offerings dealing with settler-colonialism and its immediate connections to geography and planning and to geographical and planning teaching and scholarship. These comprise aspects of ongoing efforts to decolonize our courses, our programs, and our disciplines. We have also introduced funding and other supports for Indigenous students. We pledge to continue and to enhance these and related efforts. Discovery of the remains of lost Indigenous children near Kamloops last week is a reminder of the vital importance of recognizing and reconciling our colonial histories and their imprint on Canadian geographies, on geographies beyond Canada’s borders, and on our disciplines and the production of geographical and planning knowledge. This moment also provides an opportunity to re-affirm our solidarity with Indigenous peoples and communities and re-commit to the active subversion of ongoing and systemic anti-Indigenous racism.
As we re-affirm our commitments to teaching and scholarship dealing with Indigenous and post-colonial geographies, we also invite members of our community to continue to educate themselves and to take action. For those who have not read the report of Canada’s 2015 Truth and Reconciliation Commission, now would be an appropriate time to do so. We urge all members of our community to consider ways to take action to express solidarity with Canada’s Indigenous peoples, to commit to more than recognition of the past in order to confront the profound challenge of genuine reconciliation in the present, including through actively rebuilding and strengthening Indigenous nations and governments in Canada.
We remain an intellectually and otherwise diverse community of faculty, staff, and students spread across our three campus departments and within our common graduate department. There are and will remain differences in how all of us come to terms with these issues, individually, and institutionally. Even so, we share an ethos of seeking to actively challenge and subvert entrenched colonial legacies that underpin all we do as intellectuals, as teachers, and as professional geographers and planners. We are responsible and accountable for no less.
Ron Buliung, Professor and Chair, tri-campus Graduate Department of Geography and Planning, Professor University of Toronto Mississauga Department of Geography, Geomatics, and Environment
Richard DiFrancesco, Associate Professor and Chair, University of Toronto-St. George Department of Geography and Planning
Yuhong He, Professor and Chair, University of Toronto Mississauga Department of Geography, Geomatics, and Environment
Thembela Kepe, Professor and Chair University of Toronto-Scarborough, Department of Human Geography
Sharlene Mollett, Associate Professor and Associate Chair, Graduate Geography
Katharine Rankin, Professor and Associate Chair and Director, Graduate Programs in Planning
Scott Prudham, Professor and Associate Chair, Graduate Geography
Additional Solidarity Statements
The UTM GGE EDI is currently working on statements regarding other equity-seeking groups.
Committees
GGE is an active member of the tri-campus EDI committee. In addition, the GGE department at UTM has formed its own committee that involves faculty, graduate students, undergraduate students, and staff.
Here is a link to the Terms of Reference for the GGE EDI committee.
Equity-Based Syllabi: Statements
As noted below under ‘Additional EDI initiatives’ the UTM GGE EDI committee has conducted an initial faculty survey to collect information about incorporation of EDI in teaching and is also working on a statement to be included in all GGE syllabi, in addition to that set out by the university.
Equity-Based Recruitment
All search committee members have been requested to take unconscious bias training, which has been applied to recruitment.
Furthermore, as noted below, the GGE EDI committee has initiated a faculty survey which will gauge the degree to which faculty have received different types of training related to EDI. The initial survey was conducted in 2021 to establish a baseline, and it will be re-engaged in regular fashion as a way of measuring progress toward enhanced awareness and training.
Additional EDI Initiatives
The undergraduate student representatives on the GGE EDI committee have conducted a survey of students, which has provided considerable insight, and there are plans to continue surveying the students in future years.
In the late fall of 2021, the GGE EDI committee undertook to survey the faculty on their level of EDI-related training, and to gauge the extent to which EDI has been incorporated into classroom teaching. This was mainly to provide a baseline from which to assess future improvements in EDI training, awareness, and teaching. Based on the result of this initial survey, the EDI committee found many faculty members in the Department are already incorporating particular elements of EDI into their classroom teaching, and the next step is to seek more creative ways in order to further enhance the focus on EDI in our teaching and research. The EDI committee will work with the faculty members and recommend about which forms of training should be considered most important and desirable, how often faculty should be asked to refresh their training, and how to best incorporate EDI-related training systematically into faculty teaching and research practices.