Volume 29 - Number 17 - Thursday, May 29, 1997


Letters

To the Editor:
I have recently retired from McGill and since all my 34 years at the University had been spent as a cataloguer for the Islamic Studies Library, I was naturally very interested to read about the results of the cyclical review of the Institute of Islamic Studies (McGill Reporter, May 8).

I was surprised not to find a single Muslim among the members of the Committee of External Evaluators. I do not question the academic competence or integrity of those scholars. I agree with most of their recommendations. I believe, however, that the presence of at least one Muslim to present an Islamic point of view was absolutely necessary.

Reminds me of the Introduction to Islamic Civilization, a collective work published by the University of Toronto about 20 years ago. Among the 20 or so contributors there was not a single Muslim (although there were two Arab Christians).

Jan W. Weryho
Islamic Studies Cataloguing Librarian (retired)

To the Editor:
It was mentioned on page one of the last Reporter (May 8), that the Committee to Review the Principal met nine times before reaching its decision. The report makes it clear that, whether or not there was unanimity on the extension of Principal Shapiro's mandate, there was certainly no consensus on the role that committee members expected a principal of McGill to play. Perhaps it is time this question was opened up for debate.

Personally, I was profoundly depressed by the assertion of one committee member that McGill's deans saw Principal Shapiro's main achievement as getting the McGill community to accept the inevitability of government fiscal policies--policies that I imagine most would agree pose a serious threat to McGill's future as a university with an international reputation.

The tendency to represent the government as some malign force of nature that has to be appeased and cannot be influenced by rational arguments suggests that many people no longer believe that we live in a democracy. This strikes me as defeatist and dangerous. If we do not exercise the options we have, we shall probably wake up one day and find that we no longer have them.

Am I unusual in thinking that it is the primary responsibility of a university principal to represent the interests of the university to the government, rather than vice-versa?

Barbara Welch
Research Associate,
Department of Geography





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