Author: Oliver Sutherns

The Association for Literature, Environment, and Culture in Canada (ALECC) views the cuts made to Laurentian University faculty and programs as appalling. They undermine Laurentian University’s longstanding contributions to environmental and social justice work in Sudbury, across Ontario, and throughout Canada. We view the elimination of the following as especially egregious losses: the School of the Environment, the School of Midwifery, Indigenous studies, Francophone studies, and most of the humanities and social sciences. Local and global ecosystems are fundamentally connected to health care, Indigenous leadership, and humanist as well as scientific knowledge. These programs, which are nationally and internationally known, have been built by dedicated scholars, students, and community members. The decades of outstanding work done in these programs is being tossed aside by expedient budget cuts.

ALECC stands in solidarity with Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour (BIPOC) and the protests for racial justice in the United States, Canada, and beyond. We support their expressions of grief and outrage for the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, D’Andre Campbell, and Chantel Moore, along with so many others. We condemn the deeply entrenched, systemic racism that pervades American and Canadian institutions of law enforcement, and we denounce the police violence enacted upon the bodies of Black and Brown people as a result. We support the protesters in their demands for justice for the victims of this violence, both those whose names we know and those whose names we do not. Their lives matter.