Above photo: Photo courtesy the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy/LinkedIn.
The Munk School was founded in 2000 by one of Canada’s most infamous oligarchs.
In late March, three professors at Yale University—scholars Marci Shore and “fascism experts” Jason Stanley and Timothy Snyder—announced that they were leaving the United States to teach at the University of Toronto. They made the decision in the face of Donald Trump’s intensifying attacks on higher education, a deeply alarming trend that has seen agents from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) abduct student activists off the streets with the aim of forcibly deporting them. Stanley and Snyder cite the complicity of the Columbia University administration in Trump’s assault on student activism as a major reason for moving to Canada.
Stanley and Snyder (as well as Shore, who is leaving the US for similar reasons) are not wrong that Trump’s punitive blitz against the national student body is horrifying, but their rosy-eyed view of Canadian academia shows a misunderstanding of political and economic realities here.
It is true, however, that Trump is going much further than the Biden administration in persecuting student activists and other members of the anti-war movement (for his part, Stanely has spoken out repeatedly in defence of pro-Palestinian encampments at Yale and elsewhere). On March 7, the White House threatened to withhold $400 million in funding from Columbia unless the university implemented a suite of policies designed to suppress student activism and punish criticism of Israel. Its demands included:
suspending or expelling some of those who participated in pro-Palestinian protests; centralizing disciplinary power within the hands of the university president; banning mask wearing on campus; increasing the numbers and powers of campus police; and putting the Middle East, South Asian and African Studies department under “academic receivership” (a rare move that places a department under external/administrative control, typically because it has become dysfunctional, but in this case because it was not sufficiently pro-Israel).
The Columbia administration agreed with Trump’s proposals and has begun implementing them; not because of “capitulation,” as anthropologist Steven Striffler explains, but because the administration shares Trump’s interest in suppressing student activism.
The Yale professors’ decision to leave the US has received extensive media coverage, and outlets including Vanity Fair have described the professors as “fleeing” Trump’s America for the comparative political and academic freedoms of Canada (“the Ukraine of North America,” in Stanley’s words). While much ink has been spilled over these professors’ “flight” from Trump’s authoritarianism, less attention has been paid to their destination: the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy at the University of Toronto.
The Munk School was founded in 2000 with money from Peter Munk, one of Canada’s most infamous oligarchs, whose company Barrick Gold has been linked to massive human rights violations around the world. Munk, who died in 2018, was one of Canada’s most powerful right-wing ideologues. He counted among his friends Brian Mulroney and George H.W. Bush, both of whom served on Barrick’s International Advisory Board. The institutions that bear Munk’s name, including the Munk School in Toronto and the Peter Munk Centre for Free Enterprise Education at the Fraser Institute, a conservative think tank, promote an economic vision of private accumulation and free trade. As one of Canada’s leading oligarchs, Munk had a personal interest in promoting these ideas, given his company’s sprawling mining investments.
Barrick Gold has been deeply involved in preventing government regulation of Canada’s globe-spanning, notoriously destructive mining industry. The company lobbied against Bill C-300, a proposed act which would have held Canadian mining companies accountable for human rights abuses and environmental destruction while operating abroad. As MiningWatch Canada writes, “Canadian mining giant Barrick Gold had registered seven lobbyists to lobby on Bill C-300 and Barrick’s lobbyists met with at least 22 Members of Parliament and 3 Senators.” When Bill C-300 was voted down, Munk declared that MPs who supported the mining industry’s position should be “celebrated.”
During his lifetime, Munk’s global vision promoted right-wing political and economic ideas and targeted progressive forces for demonization. He praised Chilean military ruler Augusto Pinochet, who took power in a violent coup in 1973, for “transforming Chile from a wealth-destroying socialist state to a capital-friendly model.” At the same time, Munk compared the popular, repeatedly elected Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to Hitler. Munk was also vehemently anti-Indigenous. In 2014, the Economist asked him whether “Indigenous groups appear to have a lot more say and power in resource development these days,” to which Munk responded, “globally it’s a real problem. It’s a major, major problem.”
In Papua New Guinea, Barrick’s security guards were involved in the gang rape of locals, mass killings, and forced evictions of whole communities. Munk shrugged off these abuses and claimed “gang rape is a cultural habit. Of course, you can’t say that because it’s politically incorrect.”
In 1996, the company Kahama Mining Co. Ltd allegedly participated in the “extrajudicial killing” of dozens of artisanal miners in Tanzania. Barrick acquired the company shortly thereafter. In court proceedings about the murders, “Barrick representatives have suggested that the atrocity charges were fabricated by local miners and political opponents of the multinational in Tanzania.”
To this day, Barrick’s activities in Tanzania remain clouded by accusations of bribery and corruption. Meanwhile, company security forces in Tanzania arrest, torture, and kill local small-scale miners. These abuses led 21 Tanzanians to take Barrick to court in 2022, “accusing the company of being complicit in extrajudicial killings and beatings of residents.”
In Chile, working conditions at Barrick’s now-shuttered Pascua Lama mine were shockingly poor, with 14 Chileans dying onsite and many more exposed to noxious dust from explosions in the rock. Pascua Lama was also responsible for large-scale environmental degradation. Several freshwater rivers were endangered by Barrick’s operations, threatening the health and livelihoods of thousands of Chileans. As Catherine Solyom of the National Post reported:
There is evidence that Barrick’s exploration activities are directly responsible for the shrinkage of three smaller glaciers within the Pascua-Lama territory… Toro 1, Toro II and Esperanza glaciers have shrunk by 50 to 70% since the company began exploring for gold in 1997. There has been no other activity in the vicinity to explain the drastic shrinkage.
These are only a few examples of the countless scandals that have swirled around Barrick Gold since its inception. It is through brutal operations like these that Barrick accrued its global mining empire, and its CEO acquired the capital needed to fund the creation of the Munk School.
In 1997, a $6.4 million contract changed the name of the University of Toronto’s International Studies Department to the Munk Centre for International Studies (now the Munk School). The contract stipulated that the Munk Centre must receive advice from Barrick’s International Advisory Board. The agreement also allowed Munk to discontinue payments to the university if he disapproved of the newly renamed department’s direction. Satisfied, he continued funding the university in subsequent years.
Stanley and Snyder have shown little knowledge of, or interest in, Munk’s sordid history. In an interview with CBC, Stanley heaped praise on the school: “The Munk School at the University of Toronto has dedicated itself, really, to a future of protecting democracy in a country that is threatened by its authoritarian neighbour.” He added: “Canada, I believe, is at the forefront of the struggle for democracy.”
For his part, Snyder has said he “like[s] the vision of the Munk School: its scale and ambitions,” and that he planned to “take part in programming and institutions that improve our conceptualization of freedom and unfreedom.” In his statement on leaving Yale for the Munk School, Snyder wrote, “The business of universities is to exemplify and create the conditions of liberty…Universities are and should name themselves champions of freedom.”
But the man who bankrolled Snyder’s new employer has a history of squashing critical reportage. In 2001, Munk’s company sued a British paper for covering massacres in Tanzania linked to Barrick Gold. The author of the investigation, Gregory Palast, wrote:
The company… is charging the newspaper with libel for quoting an Amnesty International report, which alleged that 50 miners might have been buried alive in Tanzania by a company now owned by Barrick. The company has also demanded the Observer and its parent, Guardian Newspapers, force me to remove the article from my US website.
In 2019, the Toronto Star reported that Tanzanian journalists attempting to investigate Barrick’s activities “received anonymous threats” and were “censored by authorities.” One journalist fled the country for a year.
Munk’s company was partly responsible for pulling Noir Canada, an academic work detailing Canadian mining industry abuses abroad, from shelves. Barrick and another Canadian mining company, Banro, sued the authors and publisher for millions and successfully halted publication of the exposé. Because of Barrick’s aggressive legal maneuvers, this important investigation of Canadian mining capital remains inaccessible to Canadians.
The notion that the Munk School promotes democracy, liberty, and freedom is tainted by its namesake’s legacy. The centre was bankrolled by a right-wing oligarch whose fortune was drawn from global plunder, and who actively quashed critical reporting on his company’s global activities. Furthermore, he retained the right to pull funding from the school if he disagreed with ideological direction (which he apparently never did).
If the professors ditching Yale for the Munk School have any awareness of these facts, they haven’t shown it.
Editor’s note: A previous version of this article inaccurately characterized professor Jason Stanley’s position on Israel’s crimes in Gaza and his support for student anti-war protests during the Biden administration. Professor Stanley has been consistent in his defence of the encampments and has publicly decried the campaign against them. Canadian Dimension regrets the error.
Owen Schalk is a writer from rural Manitoba. He is the author of Canada in Afghanistan: A story of military, diplomatic, political and media failure, 2003-2023 and the co-author of Canada’s Long Fight Against Democracy with Yves Engler.