$35M gift helps create Global Affairs school at University of Toronto
April 13, 2010
Louise Brown
EDUCATION REPORTER
As a child, Fariya Mohiuddin hated visiting relatives in Bangladesh: “It was dirty, there was no Internet and a giant slum sat at the bottom of the hill where we lived up top in a mansion. I talked to a little girl who lived there and it hit me how lucky I was to go home to the mansion.”
Today, that poverty gap – and Bangladesh — have become a focus in Fariya’s life, something she will study as part of the historic first class in a new $35 million global affairs program at the University of Toronto.
“I knew instantly this program was for me; my bias of course is towards Bangladesh and I spent last summer doing research there for an NGO in human rights services and the problems of migrant workers,” said the student of international relations at the University of Toronto.
The two-year Master of Global Affairs will be the first degree offered by the new Munk School of Global Affairs, a professional school born Tuesday out of the prestigious Munk Centre for International Studies, which for 10 years has been a think tank and research hub that could not grant its own degrees.
But a $35 million gift from philanthropist Peter Munk and his wife Melanie, announced Tuesday, plus a $25 million capital boost from Queen’s Park, has meant the centre can “transform into a school that can award degrees and hire faculty and bring in senior fellows and create a genuine multidisciplinary degree,” said Professor Janice Stein, who has been the director of the Munk Centre for International Studies.
“This is the first degree program I know of that requires students to work abroad for a summer – not study, but work — and bring that experience back with them,” said Stein.
The donation is the largest single gift to the U of T, and is meant to create a centre for advanced learning in global issues on a par with the London School of Economics. It will be housed, once renovations are done by the fall of 2011, in a heritage building at 315 Bloor St. W., a century-old meteorology building at the corner of Bloor St. and Devonshire Place.
The mining magnate’s donation has, said Stein, allowed the “building of a dream I have had for this country for a place where students can navigate a changing world where every issue has become global, whether it’s health or finance or security,” said Stein. “There are no truly domestic issues any more.”
Professor Ron Deibert runs the computer security lab at the Munk Centre that recently uncovered a Chinese cyber-spy ring, and he said having 40 new master’s students will give the centre “more dynamic interaction. A donation of this size means more fellowships for students and makes it easier to mount the sort of research we want to do.”
Sarah Gannon will enter the program this fall; her passion for international issues was sparked by her aunt, foreign correspondent Kathy Gannon who has covered Afghanistan and Pakistan for 20 years for The Associated Press.
“My aunt took my sister and me to Kabul the summer after 9/11 – it was a little bit scary but when I saw how people respected her because she respected them and understood their culture, I realized how important it is to be fluent in other cultures as well as languages” said Sarah, 26, now a fourth-year student at the University of Guelph.
“I’m so excited to have professors like Janice Stein – hello! I’m pumped.”
With files from Lesley Ciarula Taylor