A letter to the President of the University of Alberta

The text of my letter to the president of my university on the violent clearance of the pro-Palestinian student-led protest encampment.

Dear Dr. Flanagan:

I am writing today as a graduate student, former staff member, and member of the broader university community as someone who grew up in Edmonton. I’m writing to express my anger and sorrow at the action taken by the University of Alberta and the Edmonton Police Service in violently clearing a nonviolent, student-led protest from the Quad on May 11, 2024. I feel a moral obligation to speak up in the face of such a shocking action that will forever be a black mark on this institution.

Growing up in this city, I believed the University of Alberta was a shining symbol of the role of academia in public life. The campus plays a role in some of my earliest memories, and I loved the way the institution welcomed the community onto its campus to attend lectures, watch live performances, and engage in continuing education. I attended the Summer Youth University program as a teen, and I watched my mother study hard and proofread her papers as she worked to complete her CMA. My best friend and I used the Rutherford Library for our research projects as high school students.

Although I did not become a student here until later in life, I always believed the university was for all of us. I was grateful for access to the library collections as I completed my undergraduate and master’s degrees. I was proud to join the university’s communications staff near completion of my MA and to celebrate that achievement with my colleagues. I was also glad to have the support of the dean of the faculty where I worked, who wrote one of my letters for my PhD application even when he knew it meant he’d have to search for a replacement.

It is this lifelong relationship with the institution, long before I became an employee and then a student, that gave me such a love for the university and even led me to donate to the institution before having any formal relationship there. Before I ever became a student, this university was part of my education because the university served the community.

The university takes pride in the words of Henry Marshall Tory, a man who dedicated much of his life to opening up university access to all:

“The modern state university has sprung from a demand on the part of the people themselves for intellectual recognition, a recognition that only a century ago was denied them… The people demand that knowledge shall not be the concern of scholars alone. The uplifting of the whole people shall be its final goal.”

This university was founded on what was then a radical new idea: that a university should be a fully public institution open to all. From its earliest days, the University of Alberta has been entwined with the life of the city and the province — created by the brand-new Legislature in its very first term, with the first classes held in a public school.

This foundation is why I was appalled by your statement issued on May 12, 2024, stating “To the best of our knowledge, only 25% of the camp’s occupants were U of A students.” The statement raises many questions: at what time of day (many people came and went), how many were faculty or other people with formal affiliation, how many were alumni, and how did the university determine this?

But even more concerning is the us-and-them framing of the statement. The university community is set up in contrast with members of the public many times throughout, but how do we draw the line between the university community and the public when we are a public institution? Our university belongs to all Albertans, both in spirit and in law. I am appalled to see this attitude towards the people to whom we owe our existence as a university.

Further, it is shocking and quite frankly not supported by evidence to claim that the encampment posed a “serious and life-threatening risk.” Encampments of this nature have taken place at universities across North America and internationally, and the serious and life-threatening risk has come not from the protesters but from violent attacks by counterprotesters and the decision of universities to use militarized police to clear nonviolent students protesting a genocide.

I remind you that hammers, axes, and screwdrivers are tools one might expect campers to have. Further, I would expect to find pallets within 150m of the encampment given the proximity of loading docks to the Quad — I question whether these pallets were cached by campers or were pallets belonging to the university now being used to allege violent intent.

The inclusion of needles in a list of weapons is also troubling. Needles are used for many purposes — for example, for insulin, for hormone treatment for transgender people, and yes, sometimes for intravenous drug use but more often for naloxone to save lives. None of those are forms of violence. To raise this is to dogwhistle the fear of unhoused people and the drug poisoning crisis, and it is shameful to see a university president use this rhetoric.

Finally, it is telling to me that the University of Alberta is pointing to the violence at the University of Calgary as cause for eviction: in Edmonton, as in Calgary, the violence was initiated by the university, not the students.

Our institution is now an international disgrace with academics calling for the boycott and censure of the University of Alberta and University of Calgary. This consequence of the university’s actions will harm students, particularly graduate students like me, far more than an encampment on Quad during the quiet of the spring term.

I join in the demand for disclosure and divestment and further add that you should apologize publicly on behalf of the university for the shameful treatment of students, faculty, and members of the broader community to which this university belongs. Additionally, the university must reverse all sanctions and disciplinary actions, including any notations on students’ records. Finally, I suggest that, given the shame this decision has brought on our university and the substantial lack of confidence demonstrated in the staff survey, you should seriously consider whether you are the leader our university deserves.

Quaecumque vera: whatsoever things are true. And what is true is that the University of Alberta is complicit in genocide.

Sincerely,

Bridget Stirling, MA (she/her)

PhD candidate, Theoretical, Cultural and International Studies in Education

University of Alberta