Clarkson graduated from Trinity College in 1960 with a bachelor’s degree in English literature and earned her MA in 1962. As she developed a career in writing and broadcasting, she kept in touch with the university as a member and chair of the provost’s committee at Trinity. She was named an honorary fellow of the college in 1996.

The years at U of T were formative for the Hong Kong immigrant; here her love of literature and the arts was ignited, and she was sensitized to politics as vice-president of the Students’ Administrative Council and head of St. Hilda’s College.

Like the office of the governor general, U of T is an institution that must be reinvented by each new generation while standing the test of time. “Universities like U of T can maintain their reputation through excellence in academic standards, good student-staff ratios, and enlightened and decent human relationships,” Clarkson says.

Douglas spends her summers in the high Arctic collecting microfossils that she later studies to determine how Earth’s environmental conditions have changed over passages of time far more grandly glacial than one piddling millennium. Her work contributes to the growing mountain of scientific evidence showing that human actions have had a profound, climate-altering effect on the planet – mostly in the last 150 years. So if her response to the human-centred time-mark of a thousand years is nothing more than a polite “whoop-de-doo,” it’s easy to understand why.

In fact, whoop-de-doo pretty much sums up the prevailing attitude of all the faculty with whom I spoke about millennium hype versus reality. If you’ve been suffering a touch of millennial paranoia, take comfort: some of Canada’s smartest people aren’t stocking up on canned goods or bottled water, and they merely shrug over predictions of Y2K-induced disaster. “I don’t believe there will be madness in the streets,” says bemused psychiatry professor George Tolomiczenko.

And while more flamboyant members of the human race are set to ring in 2000 with spiffy festivities, our sample scholars will opt for quiet evenings among family and friends, secure in the knowledge that the new millennium doesn’t start for another year anyway. So attention, party-planners looking to entertain this demographic group: go easy on the fireworks and silly lampshades; a nice bottle of champagne and some microwave popcorn will do just fine. But if partying hard to welcome the millennium doesn’t particularly excite this group, being asked to take stock of their various fields – of where they’ve been and where they’re headed – certainly does. What’s notable is their optimism; for years they’ve operated in a climate of vision-cramping funding cuts. That’s changing, especially in the sciences, thanks to major infusions of cash from a variety of sources. In this, faculty are refreshingly un-Canadian in their willingness to toot their own horns – albeit not at big New Year’s parties.

New millennium or not, time is of the essence for researchers like Michael Chazan, an archeologist in the department of anthropology, who studies ancient stone tools to gain insights into the behaviour and cognitive processes of Neanderthals and Homo erectus. But he says it will be a long while, if ever, before we understand such subtleties as how these species viewed time – although we can probably assume that they didn’t celebrate it in thousand-year blocks.

“We don’t know if they had recollections of the past or if they anticipated the future,” says Chazan. Evidence that suggests modern humans recorded lunar time cycles is found in 40,000-year-old cave paintings, but before that there are few clues to early ideas of time.

Thanks to innovations in artifact-dating techniques, in some cases pioneered at U of T, we do know more than ever about the age of many archeological finds, and researchers have discovered that many artifacts are actually a lot older than previously thought, shifting our concepts of the capacities of early members of our species. “The idea that the time line isn’t fixed is strange for students,” Chazan admits. “There is a lot of flux.”

With collaborative projects under way in the Middle East, Africa and Europe, Chazan and other U of T researchers have the potential not only to link us to the past but also to act as significant cultural bridge-builders in the contemporary world. Chazan is taking part in a five-year project with French and German archeologists excavating near the famous painted caves at Lascaux in southwestern France.

“Archeology is part of its time, and in the past there has often been a colonial approach. We’re in an emerging global period of ethnic tensions, and I hope that archeology will be a place where people will think about their past and how to interpret it as a peace-building activity.” As part of that effort, Chazan and colleagues have ambitious plans to create a state-of-the-art research facility at U of T called the Laboratory for Archeological Science and Human Evolution. To see it succeed, says Chazan, his department will be digging up ways to raise the necessary funding.

t may be hard to pin down what our earliest ancestors understood about time, but even as we fast-forward to more recent human history, we find that concepts of time we now take for granted, including millennia, aren’t exactly carved in stone. “Historically, it’s just chance that we’re marking the millennium,” says Roberta Frank, professor of English and medieval studies.

As Frank points out, the Muslim and Jewish calendars aren’t the same as the Christian one from which the millennium springs. In Rome, dating was done by reigns of emperors, popes and consuls, as well as tax periods known as indictions. Dating by Anno Domini (AD) was invented in what we think of as the early sixth century, later standardized by the Anglo-Saxons. But nothing was fixed, calendar-wise, until the 11th century. “Anyone in medieval Europe would have learned to date in multiple fashion,” says Frank, “by Roman consular year, by the 13-month Anglo-Saxon year, by the moon, by kings and by the Roman 15-year indiction period. They would have been juggling always.”

Although the mark of the first millennium was not culturally significant, as the 11th century progressed, “there was a belief among Christian writers that humankind was living in the last era of the world,” says Frank. “In the homilies, there are some wonderful, melancholic poetic lines about how the world is older and approaching its end, how the fruits are smaller and the men punier.”

This idea of millennial apolcalypse has survived into our day. And while it may arise from the Christian tradition, “notions of Ages or periods of recurring time cycles are found among Hindus and Janes,” says Willard Oxtoby of Trinity College, professor emeritus of the study of religion and author of The Meaning of Other Faiths. Islam, he adds, contains the hope that within each century, there will be a “renewer of the faith.”

Teaching for the year at the College of William and Mary in Virginia, Oxtoby thinks that religion, rather than blending us into homogeneity, will continue to be a major marker of group identity. And, he predicts, Muslim youth raised in Canada will have a profound effect on Islam in the 21st century. “They’re cosmopolitan. It’s this diaspora that will influence what is important, and shape the future of these traditions.” As for the rise of Christian fundamentalism in some parts of the U.S., powerful enough in 1999 to ban the teaching of evolutionary science in Kansas schools, Oxtoby says: “Conservative literalists have muzzled scientists temporarily in the past, but these attempts to hang on to literal readings [of the Bible] don’t survive in educated circles.”

Our greater connectedness to the world is nowhere more apparent than in the program for international development studies that is headed by economics professor Sue Horton at the University of Toronto at Scarborough. Horton says enrolment has increased from 30 to 90 students in 10 years. Students are no longer just well-meaning Canadians flying off to the developing world, they also come from abroad to be educated here, and return to their home countries armed with knowledge and skills to participate in economic and social development.

Along with the traditional humanitarian side of development, Horton says there’s a need for creating business, trade and export opportunities. For the future, she envisions an innovative strand of programming that would add courses in computer communications and international business management to what has traditionally been a social science-oriented approach. The Internet is allowing local populations to gain access to information and resources at a greatly accelerated pace, says Horton, and it is essential that people trained in international development tap into its potential. “The Internet can give people more say in their own destinies, but without more training and awareness, communities could be left open to control by really scary corporate agglomerations.”

For insights into how Canada might manage its own economy and communities, an excellent source is Meric Gertler, Goldring Professor of Canadian Studies, professor of geography and director of the program in planning. Gertler doesn’t believe we must inevitably follow in the shadow of the United States, where economic development often comes with greater social inequity. In fact, he argues that we can gain from increased ties with Europe. “I think Canada can occupy a unique niche between the European and American models. There are lots of benefits to trading more with Europe. It could free us from dependence on the U.S.”

Gertler also argues that while Canadians may be rightly proud of their legacy of a social safety net, there’s a danger in being smug. Ironically, after years of government restraint, Canada has been surpassed by some U.S. states in spending on social infrastructure, such as public transportation. “The foundations of our past prosperity are crumbling. We haven’t allowed ourselves to become Detroit but we need to reinvest in our infrastructures, in health care and education. People have forgotten that so many of our attributes others admire came from public financing. To go with the rhetoric of the lean, mean global economy right now is crazy.”

Others share Gertler’s concern over the decline in social spending, including Professor George Tolomiczenko of the department of psychiatry, an expert on mental illness and homelessness. “At the beginning of the new millennium we have to ask ‘how much is it a societal and moral choice, a community effort to integrate what’s become a large population of marginalized people?’” Pessimistic about finding solutions in the short term, he does hope for long-term progress.

“Psychiatry has to be more open – the answers won’t come only from drugs. The voice of patients will continue to gather force; it used to be that experts would dictate, but that doesn’t work any more. The social aspects of psychiatry will have to come more to the fore. What we need is a unified approach.” Innovative methods of caring for the homeless can go a long way, he says, such as roving teams of caregivers, including not only doctors and nurses, but patient advocates as well.

The dangers of marginalizing large segments of the population, especially the young, aren’t lost on Morley Gunderson, an expert in economics and industrial relations and new CIBC Chair in Youth Employment. One of his research topics is the possible “scarring” effects of youth unemployment. Gunderson says that making sure young people receive sufficient education and other opportunities is a real concern. “If I were young now, I would triple-emphasize education. I’m afraid there will be polarization, with some people completely bypassed [in the new economy].”

After spending a year at Stanford University in California, Gunderson compares the flurry of entrepreneurial activity in the Silicon Valley to the Gold Rush days. Some will strike it rich, says Gunderson, and others, especially the young with low levels of skills and education, will be left in the dust. Unfortunately, he adds, “global and free trade have put a lot of pressure on governments to pay attention to the cost consequences of their policies. Those that play a pure, equity-oriented role in helping the disadvantaged are going to be harder to justify because they cost more.”

To offset this trend, he thinks Canada should invest as much as possible in its young people and bring its labour laws up to date. Designed early this century primarily to protect male workers engaged in the physical labour of heavy industry, legislation must reflect the environment of increasing numbers of workers in knowledge-based industries, who are more likely to be felled by computer-related repetitive strain injuries than by workplace accidents involving heavy machinery.

No one is more firmly planted on the front lines of technological change than genetic researchers. Dr. Janet Rossant, based at the Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute, Mount Sinai Hospital, is working to understand how mouse genes function, a project that has huge potential to revolutionize medicine in the new millennium, especially in the areas of cancer and degenerative diseases. It’s exciting research happening at the same time as a worldwide effort to map mouse and human genomes. She is specifically interested in trying to understand how an egg develops from a single cell into a complex organism, to determine precisely when, where and how genes might affect development. It’s critical that the research be done on mice, Rossant says, because their genes are similar to ours, and “we can undertake many experiments with a mouse that we can’t with a human.”

Ethical questions are always at play with this kind of research, which tends to conjure up lurid scenarios in the public mind. But Rossant cautions against sensationalism; for now, she points out, we live in a society that would find experimentation using human fetal tissue morally reprehensible. Research in her lab focuses on the treatment of human disease, not wild changes in reproductive technology, and on that score, she and her colleagues are optimistic that the future will see breakthroughs.

For further insights on future scenarios in the science lab, I talked to Scott Mabury, a recent recipient of the Premier’s Research Excellence Award and two teaching awards, one from the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations, the other from the Faculty of Arts and Science.

Mabury researches “chemical architecture” to provide industry and environmental regulators with knowledge about how various substances biodegrade when discarded into the environment. As a teacher, his goal is to “make students better scientists and better citizens.” He’s optimistic about the possibilities of eliminating potential pollutants such as PCBs from the environment, and of safely extending world crop yields through research. The latter is already being done, he points out, and he argues it must be done despite the flurry of controversy surrounding the issue of genetic alteration of food.

When it comes to threats to human health, Mabury is worried about how we’ll deal with communicable diseases in the new millennium, now that many strains of virus and bacteria are resistant to antibiotics. “The tools to control disease will be more expensive and less effective.” He is also concerned about the misuse and lack of regulation of antibiotics in many parts of the world. Just as people are marginalized economically, there may also be increasing inequity when it comes to access to medical treatment and anything beyond a subsistence living. “An educated populace that takes responsibility for its actions is the hope for the 21st century.”

So, what do academics tell us about the future? Some of us, especially the well-educated young, will do very well in the rapidly shifting, technologically focused economies of the future; others will struggle with disproportionately fewer resources and opportunities. We will more successfully battle deadly diseases such as cancer, but we’ll be stymied by new viruses. We will grapple with a multitude of ethical dilemmas involving everything from our use of new medical and scientific technology to the distribution of wealth, and we will do it from a variety of thriving religious and cultural perspectives. And we will continue to find ways of celebrating. So pass the microwave popcorn – you can worry about the implications of its genetically altered contents tomorrow.

Moira Farr (BA 1982 UC) is a freelance writer. Her first book, After Daniel: A Suicide Survivor’s Tale (HarperFlamingo) was published in spring 1999.

“Pollution: Is there a future for our generation?” blared the headline of a February 24th article. Maybe it was the rousing message in bold text. Or maybe the contagious political zeal that was alive on campus: students discussed the war in Vietnam, debated the merits of Leninism versus Maoism, and continued to push the university administration for more say in the decision-making process. But nothing got them as riled as the thought of pollution in their own backyards: the story gripped students and hundreds of letters poured into The Varsity offices at 91 St. George Street.

As the letters streamed in, Brydson was unaware that she was witnessing the birth of the Canadian environmental movement. Her articles would lead U of T students to establish Pollution Probe, Canada’s first major environmental organization. With little more than a cramped office and the enthusiasm of several hundred students, the crew of activists hoped to lift environmental issues onto the public agenda with dramatic stunts. They succeeded: the group they founded has had a lasting impact on this country’s landscape and just marked its 30th anniversary.

Brydson, who was news editor of The Varsity, was in her fourth year studying political science and economics and dreaming of a career in journalism when she wrote about fluoride poisoning in Dunville, Ontario. Two CBC journalists, Stanley Burke and Larry Gosnell, had screened on campus a widely shown and controversial documentary called Air of Death about fertilizer plants at Electric Reduction Company (ERCO) puffing fluoride into the air. In her attention-grabbing story, Brydson picked up the issue. The picture she painted was bleak: farmers described their plight as their crops failed and their cows foundered, tainted by alarmingly high fluoride levels. What brought the Dunville issue close to home for U of T students was the fact that their chancellor, Omond Solandt, was a director of ERCO. He denied the connection between fluoride contamination and ill health.

“We used to get our usual dozen letters a week,” remembers Brydson. “All of a sudden we got 200 letters on the pollution issue.” The students realized that she was writing about their air, their water, their lives. “A lot of the letters asked, ‘where do I volunteer? I have some money to donate, where do I send it?’” she recalls. It was then, with encouragement from Burke and Gosnell, that she booked a room in the Ramsay Wright Zoological Laboratories and called a meeting.

Led by Professor Donald Chant, left, environmental activists recognized Survival Day in 1970.

Just down the street from The Varsity, zoology department chair Donald Chant was working away at his own environmental research, at first unaware of the ruckus Brydson’s articles had caused. He had recently returned to Toronto from the University of California where he had headed the department of biological control, a team of experts researching natural alternatives to pesticides. When Brydson and a handful of other students approached Chant to help them lobby for a cleaner environment, he jumped at the opportunity.

“I was delighted because I thought the issue of air pollution was an important one and here young people were prepared to take action,” he says. Having witnessed the student riots in California, he was impressed by the constructive U of T response to the pollution issue. But he was particularly struck by the fact that the students emerged from various departments across the campus.

Tony Barrett, a fourth-year commerce student, was one of many drawn to the group. Barrett was spending the final year of his program researching a topic that was considered unusual, at best, in his department: the corporate ethics of pollution. So when he heard about what was going on in Dunville, his curiosity was piqued. “When I saw the Dunville case I said, ‘holy mackerel this is a case in point,’” says Barrett.

He and more than 200 others packed that first lively meeting in March. Certain students believed in radical tactics (some thought the best solution was to knock off the polluters, remembers Brydson); others felt that letter-writing was more appropriate. The only consensus was that pollution was bad and something had to be done. They agreed to meet again.

Just as many people showed up at the second Pollution Probe meeting, remembers Brydson, who came up with the name. And they were just as keen. Towards the end of the school year, after just four meetings, they struck an ad hoc committee and the organization began to take shape. She offered the new group space in the advertising room of The Varsity offices. Barrett became the first staff member and the ball started to roll. It seemed as if everyone wanted to do something to help fight pollution: the first membership list had more than 300 names.

Chant was chair of the first board of directors of the new organization and acted as the focal point for the university faculty. He was motivated to lend a hand because he was thrilled that students were following through on their original plans. He was equally surprised to find that his colleagues and other faculty – including President Claude Bissell – stood behind him. They were happy to see students undertaking productive action, Chant remembers.

A few months after graduation, Brydson left for England to pursue her career. Barrett had spent his summer in the first Pollution Probe office, which consisted of a desk, a window, a couple of tables, a borrowed phone line and borrowed Varsity typists. At the end of the summer, he continued to work for free in the name of the environment, having decided at graduation not to pursue a big corporate job.

“I was full of excitement but full of doubts and anxiety, too,” says Barrett. He felt a tension between his youthful optimism and the hard facts he had learned while researching his paper on pollution and corporate ethics. “I knew from my work that we didn’t have a business world that cared about the environment,” he says. “At times I felt we were up against insurmountable odds.”

Nevertheless, the first years were filled with triumphs. One afternoon in the fall of 1969, armed with nothing more than brazen confidence, Barrett and another founding member, Rob Mills, strolled into the office of John Bassett, publisher of The Telegram, and convinced him to run a series of free full-page ads that tore into polluters. The organization was also central in the effort to ban DDT – a pesticide that crept into the food chain and was suspected of killing wildlife. But it was the inquiry into the death of ducks on the Toronto Islands that epitomized the drama and creativity of Pollution Probe’s early tactics.

Chant believed a pesticide manufactured by Shell Corporation and used by the city was causing the demise of the ducks. After the city refused to investigate, the group organized its own inquiry at City Hall. “The death of the ducks became a lightning rod for action,” Barrett remembers. “How do you crystallize [pollution] in people’s minds? You need some dead animals, you need some footage, you need some action.”

And so they put on a show. There were days of testimony, witnesses were called and prominent figures, including Marshall McLuhan, Ernest Sirluck, dean of the graduate school, and Robert McClure, moderator of the United Church, juggled the role of judge. The students caused such a stir that even Shell hired a lawyer to represent its interests. (Later, it was discovered that the ducks had actually been killed by a researcher at the University of Guelph who was trying to tranquillize them for his work.)

It was this passionate drive to personalize the issues that was Pollution Probe’s trademark. From the ads to the inquiry to a funeral for the Don River, their commitment to the cause motivated them to push the envelope. “It’s the theatre of politics, the capturing of people’s attention,” says Barrett. And it worked. “People said: ‘Those kids have got something to say.’ ”

Where are “those kids” today? After working for Pollution Probe for six years, Tony Barrett embarked on a career in venture capital and investment banking. Now based in Vancouver, he maintains his environmental interest as director and fund-raiser of the Marmot Recovery Foundation. Donald Chant is a professor emeritus of zoology at U of T and co-editor of the recently published book, Special Places: The Changing Ecosystems of the Toronto Region. Sherry Brydson, the woman who is credited with starting the movement, lives in Victoria and owns several businesses, including the Bangkok Garden restaurant in Toronto.

Pollution Probe has also matured over the years. The group moved away from the crowded university space in the mid-1980s, filling a newly bought house nearby with approximately 15 staff. A registered charity, it is no longer involved in the activist eco-theatre of the past. Today it co-operates with government and the private sector to find workable solutions to urgent environmental issues. The organization has stayed true to its university roots by relying on “sound science” to back itself up. “We’re not so much standing on top of the toxic dump site waving our hands any more,” says Ken Ogilvie, Pollution Probe’s current executive director. “But it’s still a hugely exciting place to be.”

Sarah Elton (BA 1998 UC, MA 1999) is a Toronto writer.

Instead, he points to his wall. There hangs a framed photo of an airplane – a memento of his “other life.” He has done some of his most fulfilling work aboard this plane as a member of Orbis International, a New York-based non-profit organization that flies ophthalmologists throughout the developing world. Their mission is to teach local eye doctors, nurses and other health-care personnel methods that prevent and reverse curable blindness. In a renovated DC-10 containing an operating room linked by video camera to a 50-seat onboard theatre and external classrooms, large groups benefit from the volunteers’ expertise. In the fall of 1998 Oestreicher made his fourth Orbis trip, journeying to Chongqing, China. Previous one-week missions took him to Burma, Latvia and Guiyang, China.

The 43-year-old, who completed his residency at U of T in 1989, first learned about Orbis in the late 1980s. “What drew me was the idea of teaching and going someplace and making an impact,” he says. A professor of ophthalmology at U of T, he says his overseas experiences are unlike any teaching he has done – or ever will do. Orbis doctors focus on introducing procedures that local ophthalmologists can use to help the most people. “We want fairly typical cases rather than extremely rare birds, but we have to go with the flow and see what comes.”

Sometimes what comes is anything but typical. “One woman [in China] came to us with blindness that was caused by an industrial accident and never properly treated,” he says. “Her eyelids had fused to her brow, but it wasn’t too late to repair the damage.” When he describes patients suffering from medical neglect, such as the monk with a disfigured eye who trekked through the Burmese jungles to get to the Orbis site, Oestreicher shows compassion as well as hope: he knows he can’t fix systemic health-care problems, but his work does leave behind a framework for a better future.

Another thing that keeps him going back is the interaction with local health-care teams. “They are very grateful, appreciative and always interested in learning.” He still corresponds with doctors overseas; a Chinese colleague, for one, consulted him about a child with a rare eye tumour. The standard treatment there was to remove the whole eye, and Oestreicher says the child would likely have died. So he sent medical literature on an alternative treatment. He has no idea what the outcome was, but takes comfort in knowing that he tried to make it a positive one.

“Part of the reason I’m in this field is that it’s very creative and every case is different,” he says. “Orbis extends the range of work I do from cosmetic, to functional, to going to the Third World and really making a difference. It gives my work some balance.”

You start on College Street at Queen’s Park and go west. On the right there’s the new health sciences complex that fronts on Taddle Creek Road. Next, you reach King’s College Road, where you would have looked for a parking spot two decades ago. However, the road and the front campus have since become the pedestrian-friendly Convocation Hall Plaza. You stroll up St. George Street where they built the Bahen Information Technology Centre and the John and Edna Davenport Chemical Research Building at the turn of the century (the latter used to be the east wing of the Lash Miller Chemical Laboratories). Or you go north on Huron Street, where you pass the psychology teaching and research centre south of Russell Street and make your way to the graduate student residence at Spadina Avenue and Harbord Street. The residence was a source of some debate when it opened early in 2000 because of the large letters hanging above the street and marking the gateway to the university.

If you are looking for undergraduate students, you might take a walk along Bloor Street. Remember the plans to lease the Bloor Street frontage of Varsity Stadium for commercial development? Governing Council dropped the idea in September 1999 and decided to use the area for new student residences instead. Completing the campus tour, you could drop by the Munk Centre for International Studies on Devonshire Place, formerly Devonshire House restricted to men living in residence, then renovated as a centre for world understanding – a transformation that parallels the one the University of Toronto has undergone in the past century.

The two have fond memories of their Alma Mater – they had study dates in the library – and are excited at returning to Toronto, he told a news conference at University College Nov. 30, held to announce his appointment. In fact, they have remained Canadian citizens because, as he explained with a big smile, “I felt so Canadian and hoped that some day someone would offer me a job in Canada.”

The offer of a seven-year term (with an option for a three-year renewal) as head of Canada’s largest university was made by Wendy Cecil-Cockwell, chairman of the presidential search committee and of Governing Council. Birgeneau, currently dean of the School of Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston, accepted and will become the University of Toronto’s 14th president July 1, succeeding Robert Prichard, who has led the university since 1990.

Birgeneau received his doctorate from Yale University in 1966. An internationally acclaimed physicist specializing in solid-state physics, he recently led a pioneering study on the status of women faculty members in science at MIT. He has served on numerous boards, professional societies and committees throughout his career; his current memberships include the boards of the Argonne National Labora-tory, Boston Museum of Science and Brookhaven Science Associates. He is co-chair of the Polaroid Science and Technology Board.

“Dean Birgeneau is an outstanding academic. He believes in being the best and wants to advance our mission as a great international research university,” said Cecil-Cockwell. “The search committee unanimously recommended him as best exemplifying the qualities U of T was seeking in its next leader – a sound record of commitment to first-class teaching and re-search, the ability to foster co-operation and teamwork throughout all levels of an institution, a strong belief in diversity, and proven success in facilitating partnerships with government and industry.” Governing Council made “an inspired appointment,” said Prichard.

“There could be no better choice to lead the university into the next century. Dean Birgeneau is a scholar and academic leader of the highest international standing. This is brain gain at its best – one of Canada’s great minds is returning to guide a great university. It’s wonderful news for the university, the province and the nation. It will be a pleasure to work with him over the next seven months to ensure an excellent transition between my administration and his.”

One of Birgeneau’s priorities for U of T is to enhance its international standing as a research university. He also plans to make it a leader in education and, with the help of new technologies, move away from a university education that is a four-year experience to one that is a “life-time experience,” he said. Further, he believes that every qualified student should be able to receive an education and hopes to increase the university’s endowment for needs-based assistance.

The 21st-century version of this debate is more vigorous than ever, even as the imperatives of economic growth and the labour market occasionally threaten to drown out recognition of some of the most fundamental virtues of university study. Philosophers, ethicists, scientists and other scholars argue vehemently the merits and drawbacks of modernizing the canon, and the nature of those changes. These debates and changes strengthen our curriculum and enrich our students’ experiences.

But the university’s goal of providing an outstanding undergraduate education is about more than the debate regarding what should or should not appear on a list of great books. A liberal education should not define intellectual breadth as the passive consumption of a delineated set of works, the recitation of a set of facts, or a superficial acquaintance with the very latest theories within each discipline. Our principal preoccupation must be to introduce students to the major approaches to knowledge and different types of inquiry: the tools of social analysis, historiography, literary studies, moral and quantitative reasoning, and scientific methods. In the simplest terms, we must focus on the capacity for critical thinking.

The intellectual strengths acquired as part of a liberal education are the basis for all educational endeavours that follow a first degree. They are the essential gifts of a university education, despite suggestions by some critics to the contrary. By insisting on a substantial liberal education, the university is by no means failing to prepare our students for the pace of change delivered by technological innovation and globalization. Indeed, a liberal education has never before been as valuable as it is today. The skills endowed by a liberal education permit us to sort knowledge from information; the eternal from the fashionable; the compelling from the appealing.

Neither is our commitment to liberal education in tension with our important work in science, technology and the professions. A liberal education must include the tools of scientific reasoning and quantitative analysis as essential elements. But it is equally true that any professional education must include familiarity with the different methods of reasoning, the possession of which define both an educated person and a good professional.

To advance our goals with respect to undergraduate education, U of T is introducing more structure to the baccalaureate requirements, in order to ensure that students acquire an appreciation for a wide range of analytical tools. During the 1960s and 1970s, North American students were granted much greater freedom to determine the parameters of their programs and degrees. While these changes unleashed major new interdisciplinary fields and fuelled significant innovations in the curriculum, the reduced structure risked undermining the essential requirements of a sound liberal education. As a result, U of T, like many other leading institutions, has begun to return to more curricular structure to ensure students have the necessary breadth and distribution of intellectual experiences.

The university must continue to work to ensure that this broad range of analytical tools is part of the curriculum of all our undergraduate programs. All our students – historians, engineers, lawyers, economists and scientists – should graduate with a well-developed capacity for critical thinking. This is the unique contribution of a university education and the hallmark of an educated citizenry.