Former Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU) Dean of Arts Dr. Pamela Sugiman at TMU on Sept. 13. More than 300 faculty members, chairs, administrators, alumni and students across multiple universities have signed an open letter calling for her reinstatement after she was dismissed from the role by the university following an extended leave.Sammy Kogan/The Globe and Mail
The dismissal of a popular dean at Toronto Metropolitan University has angered a section of the faculty who say the decision was callous and are seeking her reinstatement.
Pamela Sugiman, who had been dean of the arts faculty since 2016, was relieved of her administrative duties before the start of the academic year. She remains a tenured faculty member.
Dr. Sugiman is seen as a champion of equity and diversity policies. She said her tenure as dean was marked by efforts to support the work of Black and Indigenous scholars. She allowed some classes to run with relatively few students because she thought it was important to give new courses a chance to get off the ground, even if it could be costly in the short term.
She has been on leave for much of the past year after the death of her daughter.
In an open letter signed by more than 250 people, many of them TMU faculty members, her supporters upbraided the university’s senior administrators for what they called an “inhumane” level of mistreatment and lack of empathy.
Dr. Sugiman said in a recent interview that she had been looking forward to returning to her administrative duties this fall. But in late July she was called to a meeting and told she would no longer be the dean.
“I was shocked,” she said. “It was very hostile, the whole thing. I don’t understand that.”
TMU president Mohamed Lachemi was not available for an interview. School spokesman Michael Forbes defended the university’s decision.
“No university would take the step of removing a dean without very serious deliberation,” Mr. Forbes said in an e-mail. “While I cannot speak to HR specifics, the decision was made for a number of reasons. For all deans, as with all academic administrators at any university, there are obligations to manage within the budget.”
TMU, like other universities, is dealing with revenue challenges brought on by a four-year freeze to domestic tuition prices imposed by the Ontario government and an expected drop in international students stemming from a federal government move to reduce the number of temporary residents.
The university’s decision struck many of her supporters as insensitive, considering the family tragedy that prompted her to take a leave less than a year before.
In e-mails to administrators and public letters, her faculty supporters have cast doubt on the university’s commitment to equity, diversity and inclusion – as well as the principle known as collegial governance, the idea that the university is governed by both its faculty and senior administration.
Deans are chosen and reviewed by a joint committee of faculty, staff, students and administrators at TMU, but the administration’s view is that decisions about who continues to hold those posts reside with the president and provost.
Jacqui Gingras, a professor of sociology at TMU, said many staff and faculty are reeling from the dean’s sudden dismissal. In the open letter it is described as “a move towards top-down governance by administrative fiat that targets those who do not fall in line.”
“I’ve explained to the president in an e-mail that I think we have a crisis in academic leadership at this institution,” Prof. Gingras said.
“Our university says we are the most equitable, diverse, inclusive, community-oriented institution across the whole land, but their actions absolutely contradict those stated values.”
Anne-Marie Singh, a criminology professor, was on the committee that renewed Dr. Sugiman’s appointment to a second five-year term as dean in 2021.
“There was no inkling at all that there was something wrong with the way she was conducting her role,” Prof. Singh said.
Mr. Forbes, on the university’s behalf, denied that the dean’s removal reflects any kind of shift in the university’s commitment to its values.
“The university’s commitment to EDI does not rest with a single individual, it is infused across our entire organization,” he said, adding that 46 per cent of faculty members hired between 2019 and 2023 are racialized.
Dr. Sugiman said she stands by every major decision she made as an administrator.
She has hired legal representation.
TMU said it intends to hire a new dean of arts to promote strong enrolment, fiscal responsibility and a commitment to EDI.
In little more than a generation, TMU has grown from a relatively small polytechnic to one of the country’s largest universities in terms of enrolment. It now has more than 40,000 students, a law school that opened in 2020 and a medical school opening next year.
In 2022 the university shed the name of Egerton Ryerson, a 19th-century educational reformer whom protesters accused of bearing some responsibility for the design of the residential school system.
The controversy surrounding Dr. Sugiman’s removal as dean follows a painful episode involving the law school that saw the publication of a pro-Palestinian open letter signed by dozens of students in the wake of the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel.
The Decibel: The fallout from a law school’s pro-Palestinian letter
An independent inquiry by retired judge J. Michael MacDonald found that the letter, which offended many in the Jewish community and beyond, was not antisemitic and that the university had harmed its students by describing it that way in a public statement.