Opinion | Rhonda Lenton is stepping down from York University. Here’s what she has to say about eight years, strikes, and upholding free speech rights

First appeared on The Toronto Star

After eight fulfilling yet tumultuous years, Rhonda Lenton recently announced she’ll step down at year’s end as York University’s president and vice-chancellor. She has overseen York’s plans to create a medical school in Vaughan (with a big reveal this week) and a new campus in Markham. But the Middle East crisis descended on her university in a major way, with some pro-Palestinian protesters calling her racist, and demanding she resign and break all ties with Israel. Furthermore, she sustained two strikes on her watch, including the longest one in Canadian university history, requiring Queen’s Park to intervene and pass back-to-work legislation. It’s been quite the run for this Winnipeg native, who moved east to attend the University of Toronto and stayed in southern Ontario.

Steve Paikin: You did your PhD at U of T. Did you ultimately want to be president there?

Rhonda Lenton: I loved my time at U of T. I had three aspirations: law, university professor, and clinical psychologist or a psychiatrist. It was a very hard choice, actually. But in the end, my passion for higher education led me to become a professor. I never even thought about administration. I got the first job I applied to, which was at McMaster University. Like all good citizens, I took a turn at administration, became the undergraduate program director in sociology. I ended up applying to York University to be the dean, thought I would do it for a term or two, and then I would move on. But I fell in love with York University. It’s very unique, the university’s commitment to combining access and excellence and very focused on impact, how we can serve the communities and improve their well-being. And I just ended up staying. It was progressive. It aligned with my views on the role of education and modern institutions that increase the participation rate and the diversity of those who have access to higher education. It was created, in fact, to increase the diversity and the participation rate of the population. It was planned to be about 7,000 students, and then it’s grown to be about 54,000. And it’s never lost sight of its purpose. There are four pillars for higher ed: access, excellence, connectedness, and impact. And I’ve stuck by those four pillars throughout the last eight years. York is so much all about that.

Let’s talk turkey. We saw three American university presidents testify before Congress and completely botch an attempt to explain the trade-offs among academic freedom, freedom of speech, keeping students safe from hate speech and the rights of demonstrators. Those issues visited your campus. How did you handle all of that?

Watching the testimony was painful, and certainly not anything that I would have done. I, of course, feel really quite terrible for those presidents, because I have to believe that they got incredibly bad advice. I will always value and protect freedom of speech, freedom of expression, and academic freedom. But we’ve spent a lot of time talking about the boundaries of freedom of speech, how that differs from academic freedom — who has access to academic freedom, who does not. Having said that, I have never shied away, nor will I ever shy away from talking specifically about antisemitism, and what is happening in the world, especially since October 7th. People start thinking, well, unless you’re disadvantaged, then you haven’t suffered discrimination. You have to really pull out issues that deal with antisemitism, Islamophobia, indigenous racism, which you can’t lump together with newcomers. Also, some presidents across North America were just oddly unwilling to come out with a clear statement that we will not accept any form of antisemitism on our campuses. So, I’ve been quite vocal in my views about needing to address antisemitism without taking anything away from people’s right to advocate for the Palestinian people. If they believe that the solution is the state of Palestine, then they have a perfect right to advocate. But don’t deny Israel. Don’t say that Israel doesn’t have a right to exist as a state, that you’re OK with expressions that have to do with eliminating all Jews from an area that they have been in for over 3,000 years. So, yeah, I was quite vocal on these matters.

In the course of trying to find that sweet spot, did you ever find that your being Jewish yourself was problematic in terms of gaining the trust of pro-Palestinian students? (Lenton converted to Judaism when she married her husband Robert Brym).

So, the accusation was that they knew who I was as a person, that they knew my position. And I said, “Look, you’re not going to pull me into sharing with you my own personal political views because that’s not appropriate. I’m a president of a university.” And I said, “In my academic work, I can do surveys, and I can report back to you about what those findings demonstrate, but that’s something different than me giving you my personal opinion.” Because if I do that, then I’ve lost my ability to advocate for the important role that universities have in creating the space for the debate. And I found that when I was sometimes talking or trying to speak about why I thought it was not appropriate to have encampments on university property, I did get accused of people saying to me, “Well, we know what you’re all about.” But my job is creating the space for civil debate and problem solving.

A little over a year ago, a young pro-Palestinian student held a news conference and accused you of anti-Palestinian racism. What was it like to be on the receiving end of that?

Of all the accusations that have ever been thrown at me, I think having that accusation of being a racist is probably the one that I’ve found to be the most hurtful, because my whole area of work is about equity in many ways. That was tough to take. I have had many conversations with different student groups on campus and really tried to reach out to different groups, especially Palestinian, Muslim, Arab, and Jewish. And so, if the accusations come, well, the accusations come. I would much rather have accusations levied against me when I can really trust that I’ve done the best I can to behave in the way that I should, than if I had been persuaded to somehow act differently, to avoid the accusations. That is not in me to do.

Did you ever consider what they were demanding from you, namely cutting ties or investments with Israel, or resigning?

No, and no, and no. Universities have played such an important role in maintaining ties and being that space to actually try to contribute to the solutions around the diplomatic tensions that are facing different countries. So why in the world would you ever consider cutting ties from our partners in strategic countries? Sometimes I remind people who talk about academic freedom that we have many faculty members who are working with colleagues at universities in Israel. And so, should I deny those faculty members that right? Isn’t that a violation of their academic freedom?

York University is famously one of the most difficult in the country to run, because labour stoppages have been a frequent part of its history. How does a university president deal with so much labour disruption?

A few episodes can leave an impression about a university that’s not truly accurate. I’m not denying that we did have the longest labour disruption in Canadian history. But because York emerged as a younger, progressive, modern university committed to social justice, you can’t have it both ways. There is going to be a great deal of advocacy for any perceived injustice.

With the province’s tuition freeze, with the foreign student visa cap, how do you get this sector back onto a steady financial footing, which you haven’t had during your entire term at York?

Let’s convince the government that this is needed now. You can’t think about students as just the students coming from grade 12. You have to think about how AI is going to impact the need for reskilling, upgrading. So, you’re going to have all these working professionals. So, you need to be thinking about flexible education, for those working professionals. So, it really is rethinking all of those fundamental issues around who, what, how you do it, if we’re going to ensure a successful university in what’s very challenging times.

When you announced your intention to step down, the York University Faculty Association put out this quote: “Her resignation caps years of tumult and mismanagement, which interfered with the excellent daily work and commitment demonstrated by York’s faculty, librarians, staff and students.” What’d you think of that?

Well, that’s their unhappiness with the change of direction that the university is going in. But for colleagues to start blaming the administration or vice versa, that’s not going to get us anywhere. We’ve really got to kind of work together. And I got many, many emails from people, reminding me that they do not share their views and it is nice to get a little bit of a balance when you have such a vocal criticism.