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Letter to Queen's Senate and Board of Trustees regarding honouring Robert Sutherland

To the Queen's Senate and Board of Trustees:

We wish to add the Queen's University Faculty Association (QUFA) to the growing list of organizations and people raising their voices against the resistance to naming the Policy Studies Building after Robert Sutherland. It would not only be a symbolic act to name the building after the first Black graduate of Queen's, but it would also be an act commensurate with the magnitude of Mr. Sutherland's extraordinary generosity to the University. If today someone donated the equivalent of Queen's University's current budget, it would be hard to imagine any argument against naming a building after that person. The fact that Robert Sutherland's actions occurred in the past do not make them any less worthy for similar consideration.

We understand that over the years efforts have been underway to correct the oversight of properly recognizing Robert Sutherland's actions. The fact that such efforts have been resisted by the University in the past and are being resisted again now by the Board of Trustees reveals more about the true culture of Queens than the statement embracing diversity on the Queens website home page. Regardless of the motivation of the resistance to what can only be considered appropriate recognition of Robert Sutherland, this resistance only serves to provide additional credibility for the perception, construed or real, that Queen's embodies a culture of whiteness.

In light of these observations, we urge you to do the right thing and name the Policy Studies Building after Robert Sutherland.

Yours truly,

Peter A. Dacin, President ,
on behalf of the Queen's University Faculty Association Executive Committee