A leader leaving
The last couple of years were especially challenging for Kwantlen’s outgoing president, Alan Davis, but he was a superb leader for most of his term. I’m grateful to have worked at our university with him at the same time. Here’s a fitting send-off from Kwantlen’s senior administrative team:
Dr. Alan Davis is not a big fan of farewells and doesn’t want a fuss about his departure as President, but we did want to recognize him and a few of the changes we have seen during his leadership over the past 13 years. What follows is just a sample of those changes.
In 2012, KPU created the Brewing and Brewery Operations program, which earned many awards and catalyzed the industry in western Canada. We have added Entertainment Arts programming that plugged into B.C.’s thriving film, television and gaming sector and KPU has also added a bachelor’s degree in Traditional Chinese Medicine. Next week, KPU will establish a Faculty of Graduate studies as it continues to work towards adding its first masters programming.
Through it all, student success remained a guiding light for Dr. Davis, which he told the Runner in January. “In the end, if we’re a strong institution, then we’re better able to fulfill our mission, which is to teach students. Student success is what we’re all about.”
The university also became deeply involved in social justice during Dr. Davis’s time. The role of Indigenous Elder in Residence was created in 2015, and the university has benefited from Indigenous writers, artists, and designers in residence. We’ve added tuition waivers for students from the seven local First Nations and developed the xéʔelɬ Pathway to Systemic Transformation Framework. In 2020, KPU launched the Task Force on Anti-racism. Flowing from that, we now have an Office of Equity and Inclusive Communities and an EDI Action Plan. The university has signed the Scarborough Charter, the 50:30 Challenge and is seeking to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050.
There has also been growth in the areas of research and scholarships. KPU added the Applied Genomics Centre, the KPU Research Farm, the Seed Lab along with many major grants and research chairs. Teaching and Learning Commons was also added to support faculty and KPU started Canada’s first Zero Textbook initiative to reduce the cost of learning for students. To support and create more opportunities for mature students, the university expanded Prior Learning Assessment and Recognition (PLAR).
We have also seen several new buildings, including: the brew lab, which was built in Langley in 2014, the new Wilson School of Design, the revamped Spruce building, which opened in 2018, and Civic Plaza became KPU’s fifth campus in 2019. KPU has received funding to build a new day care facility in Surrey and it is also working to add student housing for the first time.
Dr. Davis has been at the helm of KPU for more than a quarter of its history. He has overseen unforgettable positive development of the institution as it matured into the polytechnic university status it gained in 2008.
Despite the externally driven challenges the university faces today, KPU remains far stronger than when Dr. Davis arrived. That is great for our students and their education.
Thank you, Dr. Davis.
Gone, home
I handed in my final two sets of marks the other day. My retirement starts September 1. I have some off-boarding things to do before then – get rid of my laptop, throw out old student exams confidentially, pass off some projects, etc. Most of my department cadre is already gone, and my leaving isn’t creating any waves with the current crew. That’s OK, if notable, too.
Sunday Morning
I was finishing up the preparation for my two classes today – first ones ever on a Sunday! – when I heard a woman, in tears and sounding drunk, walking by on the sidewalk below me: “I used to LIVE here – *fuck* YOU!” We know the feeling.
July 4, 2025
When I lived in the States, July 4 was always my second-favourite holiday, after Thanksgiving. There were no particular requirements other than conviviality: hot dogs and frisbees in the park with friends. Even after I moved to Canada, that buoyant mood always came upon me on this day. Today, however, is poignant to a painful degree. I’m sending love to my American family and friends.
Image: “Three Flags,” by Jasper Johns, in The Whitney Collection.
Don’t hide.
Before I taught my class this afternoon, I visited The Pendulum Gallery downtown to view my friend Lincoln Clarkes‘ marvellous photo exhibition again (it closes tonight). The gallery is a terrific space, which I had *almost* to myself. The two women there, from England, came up to me and started a conversation – a few minutes into which the older of the two asked me whether anyone had ever told me how quite odd I seemed.
Many polite people have asked me that question, and my answer’s typically something like this: “It’s amazing that I’m even allowed outside.” (It is.)
Today, however, I was still trying to find the words when the younger companion said, “Just take the hit and go on.” I did, we all did.
I had the best morning!
Teaching
Nothing focuses the mind like the knowledge you have to walk into a class and stand in front of your students. Three or thirty, the sense of heightened anticipation and the need for ardent preparation are the same.
LeAnne Flaherty
A few days ago I had the good fortune to chat (via Skype) with advanced undergraduate students at Brooklyn College. Our topic was “parapsychology.” The gifted and nimble instructor of Psych 3585 was LeAnne Flaherty, who was a student in that same class the last time I was invited (by my genius brother-in-law Frank Grasso).
It is such a good class and important topic to study and discuss.
The syllabus says, “Students in parapsychology will learn and practice the concepts and methods of critical thinking used in the science of psychology. Parapsychology is a branch of empirical psychology that has made controversial and not widely accepted claims about the nature of the human mind and human mental abilities. … Through the critical examination of the peer-reviewed parapsychology literature and lectures on the history and methods of parapsychology, students will develop the background knowledge and use skills psychological scientists and scholars use to judge the evidence for extraordinary scientific claims.”
This is a superb way to teach some of the most important things you need to learn at university: critical thinking, the scientific method, and intelligently and ethically communicating findings and argument across disciplines and cultures. …
Brooklyn College knows how to do it right. Thank you to Leanne Flaherty for the invitation and to her students for being so involved and amazing.
LeAnne passed away a few weeks ago. Her friend Daniella wrote on the GoFundMe page she set up for LeAnne: “We all loved Lea so much and will miss her terribly. Let’s carry on her spirit of love, kindness, and silliness in our hearts as a way to keep part of her with us, and to help navigate a world that can be so unfair and difficult.”
I found LeAnne to be a charming and generous and truly friendly person – a terrific colleague, too. I liked her very much. And I could see how much her students loved and admired her.
She was still young. This really hurts.
Marilyn Suriani
From 2016 (a post called “Big Art”):
“What gets installed in Vegas, stays in Vegas.” My friend photographer Marilyn Suriani is preparing a huge installation there – the largest piece is 54-feet wide. It’s beautiful, a continuation of this remarkable phase in her career, which sees Suriani creating nature- and waterscapes in shimmering, rhapsodic colours. This work feels both abstract and earthly.
—
I learned a couple of weeks ago that Marilyn had passed away, in Atlanta, where she had lived and worked for decades. Marilyn was a Sicilian live-wire originally from Philly whom I truly really loved. I had acquired her photo-book Dancing Naked in the Material World in 1991 or so, in my Buffalo, New York publishing days. We got to know each other over the phone; listening to her voice made the sun shine; and she taught me a ton. At my desk right now, I face seven photographs by Marilyn on the wall.
Hers was the first photogallery published in my old e-zine Ellavon, in 1998 or so. You can find a wider array of her work (scanned and printed at a much higher res) on SurianiPhoto.com.
I remember when you said …
Long-time friendship provides glorious blessings that young people, no matter how precocious they are, can ever attain. I love reminding my friends of things they said to me, seeing their incredulity (when they can’t remember) or their widening eyes (when they can). Once, when I was impoverished and truly heartbroken, I was crashing at a dear friend’s place in Manhattan. One afternoon we were watching the Buffalo Bills on TV and eating Chinese food and whooping and yelling. He saw me smile and said, “Yours is the best possible miserable situation.” I have used that phrase hundreds of times over the decades.
Yesterday a friend and I were talking about times you have to cut things off with a loved one. He reminded me of what I had told him once: “The only decision you have to make now is whether to close the gate softly or to slam it shut.”
That was another good one.
Still the goal
“Good advice is something a man gives when he is too old to set a bad example.” – La Rochefoucauld
American scholars move north
Brynn Tannehill writes on Twitter this morning:
I’m going to break my personal rule about not posting on Twitter anymore because I need to get out this warning: Timothy Snyder (On Tyranny) and Jason Stanley (How Fascism Works) have left the US. I’m on my way out too. The experts know what this is.
She links to Leiter Reports:
Jason Stanley (philosophy of language, epistemology, political philosophy), Professor of Philosophy at Yale University, has accepted a senior offer from the University of Toronto, where he will be three-quarters in the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy and one-quarter in the Department of Philosophy. Professor Stanley tells me the primary reason was the deteriorating political situation in the United States, with the capitulation of Columbia University sealing his decision. (The well-known Yale historian Timothy Snyder has already moved to the Munk School as well.)
The arguments in Jason Stanley’s “How Fascism Works,” from 2018, were persuasive, and his exposition of history was plain as day.
No argument
My friend Clarissa on neoliberalism:
We need to stop wailing and wanting. We need to stand still for a bit and get a hold of ourselves. We are destroying something very imperfect for something much, much worse. There is no narrative that actually defends neoliberalism. Nobody has come up with an idea for why it’s good because there is no such narrative. This is something that simply can’t be defended. It seduces us by never even trying to argue its case. And we’ve accepted that like the weakest, most manipulable of pawns.
The same can be said of the technology imperative we see everywhere around us. Artificial Intelligence data centres use almost as much energy (and water resources) as Japan. There has been almost no public discussion of this. “It seduces us by never even trying to argue its case.”
Promise
I am 66 years old. I have spent 33 years living in the United States and 33 years living in Canada. I love both nations equally. Donald Trump’s threats to annex Canada alarm and nauseate me. I will defend Canadian sovereignty with everything in me.
Neighbour
Yuval Noah Harari said on a fairly recent episode of Bill Maher that it takes much longer to build institutions than it does to tear them down. Hearing that, I had that uncanny experience of reaching an accurate comprehension of something really, really obvious but also hidden within plain language. Perhaps it was the timing of his message.
One of my sisters used the film’s last line as her .sig file for a time back in the nineties.
[Related.]
Miles Basil’s new gig
After seven or so years living in Nashville and working at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center, my gastroenterologist son moved to the Boston area with his truly marvellous wife and my two super-alive grandsons. You can book an appointment with my son here.
Dr. Miles Basil received his medical degree from the University at Buffalo prior to completing his residency at Boston Medical Center. He completed his gastroenterology fellowship at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, after which he remained on as staff attending in the Center for Human Nutrition and Celiac Disease clinic. Dr. Basil has an interest in general gastroenterology, colon cancer screening, and celiac disease. Dr. Basil joined the faculty at Newton-Wellesley Hospital in 2024 and is an active participant in student and resident education.
Certain Days
I admire and have supported this publishing project for many years, as many dear friends who have found the calendar in their Christmas stockings know. To start the year, I go through each page day by day.
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