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CAUT Bulletin Archives
1996-2016

September 2015

uToronto shuts down anti-vaccine class … at least for now

The University of Toronto has pulled the plug on a controversial fourth-year anti-vaccine course taught by homeopath Beth Landau-Halpern as part of the health studies program in the department of anthropology at the university’s Scarborough campus. The administration did not con­firm the reasoning behind the course’s cancellation except to say the university no longer employs Landau-Halpern, and the course will not be offered for the 2015–2016 academic year.

A university review of the course’s syllabus, undertaken by the vice-president of research and innovation, found the sessional instructor’s approach “was not unbalanced because students have already seen the other side of the vaccine debate in other courses.”