The University of Toronto's St. Michael's College is coming under fire from students, faculty and health organizations who want the school to return a controversial donation it received from a tobacco company.
The University of St. Michael's College accepted a $150,000 grant two years ago from Imperial Tobacco to help fund a program on corporate responsibility.
"How a university can use unethical money from an unethical company to fund a program in ethics is beyond belief," said Bob Willard, a former member of the advisory board of the corporate ethics program who resigned in protest over the tobacco sponsorship.
Anti-smoking and public health groups have launched a media campaign aimed at pressuring the university to hand back the money. The groups are paying for newspaper and radio ads urging all universities to sever any ties they have with the tobacco industry.
"We fail to understand why a university would agree to partner with big tobacco," said Atul Kapur, president of Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada. "We have no alternative but to ask the university to make a choice between embracing the interests of public health or legitimizing an industry whose behaviour has led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Canadians."
"So far, St. Mike's just does-n't get it," said Garfield Mahood, executive director of the Non-Smokers' Rights Association. "If St. Mike's officials enrolled in their own business ethics course, they would flunk."
A spokesperson for Montreal-based Imperial Tobacco said the company knew its donation would be used for the program on corporate responsibility, but that the money was offered with no strings attached.
But Laurent Leduc, who was one of the founders of the ethics program and one of its instructors, said an assignment outline he designed based on a case study of a tobacco donation to a British university was rejected after the donation from Imperial Tobacco was received.
"It's possible to construe that the rejection of his assignment was related to corporate funding of the program," said Rhonda Love, chair of CAUT's Academic Freedom and Tenure Committee and a University of Toronto professor of public health sciences. "Indeed, some might say it looks like Imperial Tobacco bought silence. That raises serious academic freedom concerns."
Richard Alway, president of St. Michael's College, insisted the donation did not influence the design or content of the program, and added that the college has since set up a committee to review all donations for possible ethical conflicts.
"Clearly in this area there are strongly held and diverse opinions," Alway said.
Not surprisingly, the donation is under attack from student groups who worry it may have influenced the program.
"It concerns us as students when corporations involve themselves in the curriculum," said Rocco Kusi-Achampong, president of the University of Toronto Student Administrative Council.
Bruce Buchanan, a retired Ontario Ministry of Health official and University of Toronto alumnus, is calling for all universities to stop investing in or accepting money from cigarette manufacturers.
"Universities must be committed to the pursuit of truth in science," argues Buchanan.
"But millions of pages of documents now on the public record show that the tobacco industry has suppressed the truth and undermined objective science. In fact, its disinformation campaigns have led to the premature deaths of thousands of Canadians. Any institution seriously committed to the discovery of truth should gag at the thought of taking money from this source."