For at least a year now people have been quite appropriately doing important work in questioning legacies of racism and institutionalized forms of racism at Massey College, including in the traditional use of the title “Master” to refer to the head of the College.
A hurtful, callous, and offensive remark made in the dining hall has added urgency to the discussion. It was described in the resignation letter of the scholar who made it as “a poor effort at jocular humour” and a “bad joke”. In part, Dr. Michael Marrus’ letter from 1 October 2017 says:
First, I am so sorry for what I said, in a poor effort at jocular humour at lunch last Tuesday. What I said was both foolish and, I understood immediately, hurtful, and I want, first and foremost, to convey my deepest regrets all whom I may have harmed. What I said was a bad joke in reference to your title of “Master,” at the time. I should never have made such a remark, and I want to assure those who heard me, and those who have learned about it, that while I had no ill- intent whatsoever I can appreciate how those at the table and those who have learned about it could take offense at what I said.
I’m not going to link the rather foolish editorials published by The Globe & Mail and the National Post (two papers that seem to share lazy assumptions and ineptitude much like Canada’s Liberal and Conservative parties). Some more meaningful commentary has already been in the public press:
Op-ed: Reconciliation at Massey College
An Indigenous Junior Fellow shares her story
By Audrey Rochette
Op-ed: The importance of forgiveness
A former Don of Hall reflects on moving forward from conflict at Massey College
By Juliet Guichon
Black faculty members pen letter condemning Marrus, coverage of incident
Open letter criticizes media outlets for framing incident as “political correctness run amok”
By Aidan Currie
In my six years at Massey College, I have had regular routine and polite interactions with Dr. Marrus. My only exposure to his academic work has been two lectures he gave on the theatrical quality of trials.
Faculty, students pen open letter condemning allegedly racist incident at Massey College
Letter calls for punitive measures, college-wide reform
By Jack O. Denton
In light of the incident that took place here at the College on Tuesday, September 26th I would like
to issue the following statement
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‘You Know This is Your Master, Eh?’ Toronto Professor Apologizes for Racist Comment to Black Student
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Toronto Professor Who Made Racist Remark Resigns
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The master of Massey is no more: Salutin
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Massey College and insidious racism on Canadian campuses
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Confronting racism on campus is not political correctness run amok
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Massey College head says racially offensive incident shows need to formalize code of conduct
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Junior fellows demand apology after alleged racist incident at Massey College
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Massey College professor resigns over racially offensive remark, cites lack of ‘due process’
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Massey College professor resigns over ‘master’ comment to Black student
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Massey College apologizes after faculty member’s alleged racist remark to Black student
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Massey College issues ‘sincere and unreserved apology,’ announces review of practices
When it began in the 1960s, it was a snooty, men-only institution with an anglophile head, novelist Robertson Davies, who revelled in Brit pretensions. It took 10 years and a big fight just to get women in as members. The filthy rich, aristocratic Massey family endowed it, along with Hart House at U of T, also restricted to men for its first, oh, half-century.
Part of the shtick at Massey was the archaic lingo. It was the only part of U of T with a “master.” Davies loved that stuff. My own guess is that Marrus, who I’ve known since high school, wasn’t just making an offensive, tin-eared joke. He also meant to take the piss out of the pretension. His jibe was probably directed mostly at the current master, Hugh Segal, a lifelong Tory, not at the Black student who was present. But everything went shriekingly off the rails.
Apologies have now been rendered, Marrus has resigned, “master” will no longer be used — and this is how things get resolved at that weird place: with maximum public embarrassment. It’s a great piece of architecture, by the way, and you should drop by to see it, but be prepared for stuff like the gowns they still wear to dinner, where they still have a “high table” for the nobs and boffins.
https://www.thestar.com/opinion/commentary/2017/10/03/the-master-of-massey-is-no-more-salutin.html
When you are agreeable, your race is rarely an issue. It’s only when you offer pushback or articulate policies that are deemed “too radical,” that you face harassment. Caricatures are created and quickly posted on online message boards like reddit. White men are praised for strong leadership. But people of colour, myself included, are described as “bullies,” “aggressive” and “angry.” In my case, more than one anonymous commentator on reddit thought it appropriate to call me a “dictator” and “tyrant.” Society already views people of colour, specifically Black and Brown people, as more violent, so it should come as no surprise that we are being described this way when we disagree. This sends a chilling message to representatives of colour—agree or be subjected harassment.
http://www.macleans.ca/education/massey-college-and-insidious-racism-on-canadian-campuses/
Related: Jordan Peterson’s crusade
York University scraps ‘College Master’ academic title to cut association to discrimination and racism
Harvard University made the same switch last year, preferring to change the title to ‘faculty deans,’ for much the same reasons
“It is an ever more frequent discussion on modern campuses, about whether the Latin roots and common academic usage of the word “master” have been eclipsed by newer connotations of racism and slavery, and what to do about it in a climate of growing vigilance to language.”
York University scraps ‘College Master’ academic title to cut association to discrimination and racism
Press Release from Massey College
The Governing Board of Massey College Approves “Principal” as New Title for the Head of College
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Massey College nixes ‘Master’ title four months after racist incident
A professor at the college resigned in October after making a remark to a Black student that carried connotations of slavery.
Margaret Wente’s Massey College appointment yields three resignations, petition demanding rescission
By Hannah Carty
Massey College is facing considerable backlash after it announced Margaret Wente as a 2020–2021 senior fellow and member of the Quadrangle Society this week. Three faculty members have also resigned from their senior fellowships at the college in response to the decision.
Dr. George Nana Dei resigns as Massey College Senior Fellow after the appointment of Margaret Wente
Massey College reviewing Margaret Wente appointment amid campus uproar
News of Wente’s appointment sparked petition signed by students, faculty, staff, alumni, and donors
U of T professor resigns from Massey College committee after it appoints controversial columnist Margaret Wente as fellow
Margaret Wente resigns from Massey College fellowship
Former news columnist Margaret Wente has resigned from a senior fellowship position at Massey College after the school said it would review her appointment.
The review was launched after Alissa Trotz, an associate professor of women and gender studies and Caribbean studies, resigned on June 18 as a member of Massey College’s Governance and Nominating Committee.
Trotz said she was “dismayed” to discover that Wente, formerly of the Globe and Mail, had been appointed a 2020-21 senior member of Massey College.
“Margaret Wente is someone who has demonstrated consistent and outright hostility to questions of equity, women and gender studies and anti-racism, and moreover someone who has demonstrated such a glaring lack of professional integrity,” Trotz’s resignation letter reads.
In a statement released by Massey College in response to Trotz’s resignation, Principal Nathalie Des Rosiers said the school would review Wente’s “writings and conduct to assess whether they are consistent with the college’s values.”
On Monday, in another statement, the college said they received a resignation letter from Wente. She was one of nearly four dozen people named a senior fellow and member of the school’s Quadrangle Society.
In her resignation letter, which Wente emailed to the Star, she called the accusations “false and outrageous.”
“I do not wish to be a member of the Quadrangle Society. The accusations against me are false and outrageous. My record speaks for itself,” the email read.
Obituary: Michael Marrus, 81, was a globally renowned scholar of the Holocaust—primarily based at the University of Toronto
https://thecjn.ca/lives/michael-marrus-obituary/
Michael Marrus, noted historian and scholar of the Holocaust, dead at 81
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-michael-marrus-noted-historian-and-scholar-of-the-holocaust-dead-at-81/
“Nearing the end of his career, however, in September, 2017, Prof. Marrus did put a foot wrong and set off a politically charged blast.
Prof. Marrus loved Massey College, a graduate residential enclave at the University of Toronto. He loved the red-brick architecture, reminiscent of Oxford and Cambridge. And he loved the rituals: Fellows of the college wear academic gowns to High Table, people take port in the library; a George Santayana quote is carved in wood: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
Prof. Marrus appreciated the college for welcoming him as a senior fellow in 2006 when he was required to retire from his university position at the age of 65. He was given a lovely large office and lots of respect.
And he continued to write, to lecture, and to advise others, especially the junior fellows. He made it a point to lunch frequently with a different group each time. It was at such a lunch with three junior fellows that Prof. Marrus uttered a dozen words that would change the remainder of his life.
One of the fellows at the table was a young Black woman. The party was joined by the then-Master of the College, former senator Hugh Segal.
Sensing an auspicious moment, Prof. Marrus turned to the Black woman, pointed toward Mr. Segal and said: “You know this is your master, eh? Do you feel the lash?”
After a stunned moment, the woman rose and told Mr. Segal: “If this man [Prof. Marrus] doesn’t know what he has done wrong, you better explain it to him.”
Prof. Marrus, speaking five years later, said it was only when the woman got up to leave that he realized his remarks were taken the wrong way. “It was silly,” he said. “I never meant to hurt her.”
His remarks, however, were quickly labelled “an anti-Black racial slur” in various media and the outcry that followed compelled Prof. Marrus to resign from the college six days later.
“He was devastated,” said a close friend, Harold Troper, co-author of the book None is Too Many – Canada and the Jews of Europe.
A Globe and Mail editorial denounced the outcry and said Prof. Marrus “has been treated unfairly, which is as unacceptable as the remark he made.”
Made aware of the Massey incident from press coverage, the award-winning U.S. author, Philip Roth, then gravely ill, sent Prof. Marrus a copy of his 2001 book, The Human Stain. It tells the story of a Jewish university professor in a small New England town, wrongly accused of being a racist and suffering the loss of his university position, his reputation, his academic legacy.
Philip Roth was Prof. Marrus’s favourite author. Receiving this gift, he said, was “very unexpected … a source of pride.”
Ironically, the incident led Massey College to quickly drop the title of Master and to replace it with “Head of College.” This should not be surprising, since the Marrus statement that day had been an attempt to lampoon the racist-sounding title of “Master” rather than level a slur against the Black student.”
‘I was lynched’: Why astronaut Julie Payette flamed out as governor general
She surmounted the challenges to make two trips to outer space and rose to the high office. A new book looks at why it all ended so badly
John Fraser, Special to National Post
…
Almost exactly one year after her unceremonious departure from Rideau Hall, on January 27, 2023, we literally bumped into each other in the main hallway of Massey College in the University of Toronto. It was following the college’s annual dinner honouring Adrienne Clarkson and the Clarkson Laureates in Public Service. In the good-natured melee in the hallway after the dinner, Payette and I were suddenly face to face. It was the first time we had met since her ouster. We had been good friends for quite a while before. She was, after all, a distinguished alumna of my college, having made her mark at Massey during the years that my predecessor, Professor Ann Saddlemyer, was master of the college, and she maintained the relationship after I was elected master of the college. She came several times to stay, and the Junior Fellow scholars — and everyone else — were very happy to see her around the place. But the relationship had soured as she started digging her viceregal grave deeper and deeper at Rideau Hall and declined all help, even from those who admired her.
“Hi Julie. It’s nice to see you here.” A brief interlude of embarrassed silence ensued. We had stopped communicating as she careened off into her own limbo land of inexplicable rebellion against what was considered appropriate behaviour of a governor general, and she had clearly resented my point of view. “Are we talking to each other now?”
“Why would I talk to you? You were part of the lynch mob that hounded me out of office.”
“Julie, you can’t use the word ‘lynch’ around Massey College. It will just lead to trouble and …”
She didn’t linger. Abruptly turning her back on me, she returned to the nearby Upper Library. I wasn’t surprised or particularly hurt by the snub, because things had been bad between us for some time. But it deeply saddened me because I could see so clearly the wreckage that her life had become, despite her best intentions. It was also sobering to see how little she understood her own complicity in her troubles.
I am still gob-smacked that it took the Toronto Star about ten nano-seconds (that’s journalistic exaggeration for an easy search) to discover Payette had accidentally killed a (pedestrian) by running them over in her car, and also that she had spent time at a police station for allegedly going after her estranged husband with a dangerous weapon. That Star story ran three months before Payette was sworn into office. Due diligence takes on a special negative meaning in the PMO, as this sad but easily researched history demonstrates. I do not believe for a moment that if anyone in the PMO had known of these unfortunate incidents she would have ever been asked to take on the job of governor general.
Nevertheless, she did get the viceregal gig, which turned out to be a disaster on most fronts, and now the wreckage was before the entire nation’s eyes. And my own eyes because here she was at a place we both loved and I was deeply recalling all this when she returned a few minutes later, this time with eyes brimming with tears: “I came back to apologize. I shouldn’t have just said that to you, but you do know I was lynched.”
“I do know what happened to you, Julie, and no one should have to go through what you went through. But you mustn’t use the word ‘lynch’ around here. Not since my successor screwed up everything at the college by mishandling a racial incident …”
I was cut off mid-sentence, trying to explain how an ill-timed, ill-spoken barb was directed at a Black student at Massey College. The incident, wildly taken out of proportion, made front-page news and was then allowed to fester and poison the whole place for months to come. It’s still a blot on the college’s reputation.
“But I was lynched. How else do you explain what I was supposed to do when the prime minister comes and tells me I have to go? I wasn’t given a chance to have my own lawyer present. I tried phoning the chief justice for advice, and he didn’t return my calls. There was no one to come to my help and now I am a pariah. People at the CBC or the Globe and Mail aren’t interested in any viewpoint I might have. They were all part of the lynch mob, too. You didn’t help me. No journalists would help me. No one in the Privy Council would help me. I was completely alone.”