President's year-end message

Dear Concordians, 

As the year winds down, I think we all recognize this is not a normal year for season’s greetings or imagining what lies ahead in 2024. So rather than a standard holiday message I decided to reflect on the year we’ve experienced and to share some thoughts, concerns and hopes for our future.  

A year defined by successes 

Let me begin with the positive. In many respects, 2023 was a landmark year for Concordia, a year of unprecedented achievements.  

Last spring, we launched our ambitious decarbonization project, PLAN/NET ZERØ, received the largest individual research grant in our history, and were awarded the largest institutional research grant ever to support Concordia’s global leadership in the electrification of society. In October, the transformative research initiative, called Volt-age, officially kicked off.  

Our summer convocation was the second biggest on record, and about 3,000 more graduates crossed the stage at fall convocation.  

For the second time in three years, our students won Rhodes and Schwarzman scholarships. One of our PhD students was part of the inaugural cohort of Lady Mireille and Sir Dennis Gillings Global Public Health Fellows while an international master’s student in computer science won the Canadian Three Minute Thesis competition. A graduate student in Drama Arts Therapy became the first Concordia student ever to win the Mackenzie King Open Scholarship, which is awarded to only one person per year in Canada. Three of our students won gold medals in hockey at the FISU World University Games. A graduate of our creative writing program won the coveted Scotiabank Giller Prize for fiction, and one of our faculty members was named a Personality of the Year by L'actualité magazine.  

We climbed the QS World University Rankings to 387th, which is a major accomplishment for a university less than 50 years old. Concordia was one of only three Quebec universities to place in the top 100 in the 2024 QS Sustainability Rankings for our ESG work, including being ranked eighth worldwide in the Environmental Sustainability category.  

Finally, we closed off the year by reaching a new collective agreement with the Concordia University Faculty Association (CUFA).  

These accomplishments are the work of countless members of our community, and we should all be deeply proud of our collective successes.  

A moment marked by emotion and uncertainty 

At the same time, the last few months have been extraordinarily painful and, in some respects, among the most challenging in our university’s history.  

Last week, we got the news we dreaded. The Government of Quebec is going ahead with its ill-conceived policies on tuition for new international and rest-of-Canada students. There has never been a moment in our past when the government has taken such deliberate aim at anglophone universities. But we are determined to navigate this storm and proudly affirm Concordia’s role as a global university that embraces diversity and works to position Montreal as a destination city for the most-talented students from Quebec, across Canada and around the world. On a related point, I would like to add that both our Board of Governors and the Ministry of Higher Education have approved our debt recovery plan, which we will achieve over the next five years.    

On top of this, it’s abundantly clear that wider factors in the world — the financial pressures of inflation, the disruptions caused by extended strikes in Quebec’s public sector, the ongoing conflict in the Middle East and other crises less visible in the media but that should not be forgotten — are inflicting a lot of pain on our community, often with damaging consequences for campus life.  

Members of the university leadership team and I have met with and heard from many members of our community, and it’s clear that the hurt and discontent some are feeling manifests itself in ways both big and small, seen and unseen, quiet and loud. It may appear in the low grumble of an empty stomach after skipping a meal they couldn’t afford. Others feel frustrated at trying to cope with the impact of prolonged strikes in the education and health sectors — not to mention with the effects of our own budget cuts and hiring freeze. For some members of our community, there’s a sense of anxiety at hearing or seeing things on campus that make them feel physically or emotionally vulnerable, intimidated, singled out or unsafe. Anyone who values life, peace and human dignity is undoubtedly feeling profound anguish at the state of our world, coupled with a sense of powerlessness and even anger.  

Our role in society 

Concordia’s diversity — of thought, experience, culture, religion, language — forms the core of what makes us such a uniquely cosmopolitan community. There’s a richness and a beauty to the character of our university that stems from our diversity. But at times like these, when so much is fraught in the global context, inevitably our differences can rise sharply to the surface, sometimes in polarizing ways.   

Universities everywhere are struggling with how to respond to the overlapping and mounting crises playing out in distant lands as well as in our own communities. There is a marked increase in antisemitism in society, and we cannot ignore how this is perceived and experienced on university campuses, including at Concordia. There is also a marked increase in Islamophobia playing out in society and on campuses. (It’s a measure of how tense and partisan these discussions have become when, to some, it’s even offensive to reference these trends in consecutive sentences.)  

The point is we’re all trying to navigate a complex situation as best we can. But the anchor for our actions must be our mission and values as institutions of higher learning. 

Except where it concerns matters directly affecting higher education and our operations as a university — such as last year’s debate over the law on academic freedom or the Quebec government’s recent actions on tuition — our institutional role is not to intervene in the realm of politics by editorializing on or choosing sides on matters of the day. Instead, our role is to be a convenor of those conversations within our community and for the larger society of which we are part, to be a source of evidence-informed discussion, and a place for teaching and learning about the world.  

To carry out that role, however, Concordia must also be a place where voices and actions are respected and respectful of other points of view, no matter how difficult or controversial the subject. And to go further, we as a community — and I mean all members of our community — need to feel and express empathy, care and compassion, universal empathy, care and compassion for each other.  

A commitment for 2024 

I know de-escalating tensions in our community will never succeed as a top-down approach. We are in this together. Which is why, over the holiday break, I ask that we all reflect on what we can do as individuals and within our respective units, classes, associations and social groups, to make our campuses better in 2024.  

In the new year, we will announce some ideas we have for undertaking this work. Stay tuned, we will invite each of you to come forward with proposals as to how we can all be both champions of academic freedom and committed ambassadors for respectful behaviour and dialogue. There’s an opportunity for us to co-create a made-in-Concordia approach to the challenges we face. If we are successful, perhaps our findings and example can form another important contribution our university makes to Montreal and Quebec.  

I’m not a devotee of New Year’s resolutions, but this winter I’ll certainly recommit to doing everything in my power to ensure Concordia remains an open, welcoming place for everyone, and I hope all of you will do the same. Together we need to nurture the conditions that have fostered our recent successes, and which can open the door to even more profound accomplishments in the future. 

For now, however, I think we can all use a break. We need a pause to cast our thoughts elsewhere. Perhaps, considering our commitments to electrification, we should focus on metaphorically recharging our batteries.  

And with that, I wish you all a restful holiday season. May 2024 bring more peace and opportunity to our world and good fortune for Concordia.  

Graham Carr
President and Vice-Chancellor