Today, as president of the University of Alberta — but also as a citizen of Alberta and Canada — I want to voice our university’s firm commitment to diversity, inclusion, and equity in the face of rising isolationism and division. These values guide our actions every day in a myriad of small ways, but sometimes, we are called to stand up for them in visible and vocal ways.
The University of Alberta is — and will remain — an open and welcoming community to people from every nation and religion in the world. Like Canadian universities across the country, we welcome thousands of students, faculty, and staff from around the globe and will continue to do so. I want to assure our students, post-doctoral fellows, faculty, staff, and applicants who are citizens or dual-citizens of the countries currently banned entry to the United States that the University of Alberta stands with you. We will do everything we can to support you during this period of uncertainty. We will continue to monitor the situation and its impact on current and future members of our university community, and will provide further information on supports and assistance as we know more.
Canada is a multicultural nation; we exist as a nation because we have learned that respecting and valuing our differences as much as our shared humanity is the basis of a just and caring democratic, civil society. Perhaps more importantly, we have also learned that this conception of society can be fragile and our ability to sustain it is imperfect — thus it is something we must continually strive to build, strengthen, and protect.
There are many reasons why a person chooses to join any university as a student and employee. I joined the University of Alberta because I felt from early visits that the values here resonated so clearly with my own. Last year, as we developed our new institutional strategic plan For the Public Good, those first intuitions were confirmed as I heard from so many individuals that one of the University of Alberta’s key strengths and defining features is its diversity of people, disciplines, and perspectives. In For the Public Good, we affirmed that longstanding commitment to diversity, inclusivity, and equity. We stressed that we value intellectual integrity, freedom of inquiry and expression and the equality and dignity of all persons as the foundation of ethical conduct in research, teaching, learning, and service.
The pursuit of knowledge is accomplished through the inclusion, interplay, and integration of different modes of knowing and perceiving the world. These values are fundamental to our work. Let us stand united in this purpose.
David H. Turpin CM, PhD, LLD, FRSC
President and Vice-Chancellor
Update:
For more information and resources connected to the U.S. ban, please visit the “Information on U.S. Travel Ban” webpage.
Statements from post-secondary colleagues:
Universities Canada
U15 Groups of Canadian Research Universities
Canadian Federation of the Humanities and Social Sciences
Association of Public and Land Grant Universities
Association of American Universities