UBC Equity, Diversity and Intercultural Understanding 
Colloquium 2012 

April 05, 2012—The Longhouse 
 

Thank you, Larry [Grant], and thank you all; it’s an honour to have 

been invited to speak at the inaugural Colloquium on Equity, 

Diversity and Intercultural Understanding, and to celebrate this 

significant ‘first’ with you. 

 

Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “We who engage in nonviolent direct 

action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the 

surface the hidden tension that is already alive.” 

 

Neglect of the needs of migrant students in our public schools. 

Student engagement theory that has no research basis in the 

experiences of international students. The line between education 

and voyeurism in using guest speakers to teach trans topics. The 

media’s responsibility for reinforcing negative perceptions of 



  Equity and Diversity Colloquium 
  April 05, 2012 
  Stephen J. Toope—Page 2 
 

Canadian racial groups. Human rights issues in acute hospital care 

for patients with disabilities. The lack of heritage language 

education in BC schools. Rates, and effects, of Aboriginal male 

incarceration. The integrity of place-based learning at a university 

that rests on traditional Aboriginal lands.1 

 

My gut clenches and at the same time my heart sings when I look 

over the topics to be presented today. The most valuable exercise 

a university can undertake is genuine dialogue. What comes up 

for discussion today may be frightening, even threatening; ideas 

may be observed, analyzed, questioned, set aside, even 

jettisoned. But not the communication itself. And perhaps the 

higher the tension, the greater the potential reward. 

 

                                                        
1 Note: All of these are paraphrased from the topics of papers to be presented by 
graduate students at this Colloquium. 



  Equity and Diversity Colloquium 
  April 05, 2012 
  Stephen J. Toope—Page 3 
 

Tension is defined as “a stretching,” or “the condition of being 

stretched.” And we are. All 19,000 faculty and staff, all 55,000 

students. All of UBC, stretched between our present state and the 

commitment we made, the promise we made to our stakeholders 

and to the community we serve, to become an institution of 

intercultural understanding and fluency. 

 

We committed to nothing less than a re-imagining of the 

University—an act of great creativity and courage that requires, 

paradoxically, a great deal of tension. 

 

Artists, perhaps better than most people, understand the dynamic 

energy inherent in tension, and its power to provoke a creative 

response. Musician James Taylor described music as a huge 

release of the tension between his vision and what he was able to 

convey with instruments and voice. Actor Annette Bening 



  Equity and Diversity Colloquium 
  April 05, 2012 
  Stephen J. Toope—Page 4 
 

described movies as lightning in a bottle, waiting for a spark of 

tension from the actors to illuminate the story and ignite the 

action. Choreographer Twyla Tharp talked about the energy that 

comes from tension, and said that when directed properly, it can 

result in laughing together! And poet Ralph Waldo Emerson said, 

“The world is all gates, all opportunities, strings of tension waiting 

to be struck.” 

 

UBC is home to every imaginable form of diversity, including 

gender, sexual orientation, indigenousness, mental and physical 

ability, religion, racial, ethno-cultural, socio-economic status, 

regional, and above all intellectual diversity. All gates, all 

opportunities, strings of tension waiting to be struck. But contact 

with diversity does not in itself produce intercultural 

understanding. Tension, in and of itself, does not engender a 

creative response. 



  Equity and Diversity Colloquium 
  April 05, 2012 
  Stephen J. Toope—Page 5 
 

 

For UBC to remain a global leader among institutions of higher 

learning, intercultural experiences must be intentionally and 

structurally embedded in both the academics and the operations 

of the University. So when we opened the office of Intercultural 

Understanding Strategy Development, our first task was to test 

our assumption that what UBC needed was more such 

experiences. We hired a Director.  We conducted a literature 

review and a University-wide activity audit. And what we learned 

surprised us. In the ‘good news’ category, we discovered within 

the first two months that there were more activities, initiatives, 

trainings, and programs happening, at every level, than we could 

actually capture. Just as one example, we found 14 training 

programs in intercultural fluency! In the ‘bad news’ category, 

within the same period of time, we quickly realized that literally 



  Equity and Diversity Colloquium 
  April 05, 2012 
  Stephen J. Toope—Page 6 
 

all of it was occurring in isolation. Of those 14 training programs, 

for example, not one of them knew the other 13 existed. 

 

The work that lies ahead of us falls not into the realm of 

generating more activity; rather, it is now a matter of 

institutionalizing these scattered but significant successes, 

providing infrastructure and resources, tapping the best practices 

they’ve created, and implementing them across the University as 

a whole. Student Services is training staff advisors to work with in-

residence and international students using the very latest theories 

and methods pertaining to equity, diversity, and intercultural 

fluency. But they don’t have the capacity to train everyone. 

Likewise, the First Nations House of Learning is the centre of 

excellence, bar none, for creating a safe environment for difficult 

conversations. But not all the tough conversations that need to 

take place at UBC can happen in the Longhouse. The Centre for 



  Equity and Diversity Colloquium 
  April 05, 2012 
  Stephen J. Toope—Page 7 
 

Intercultural Communication, in Continuing Studies, offers a full 

range of courses and a Certificate in Intercultural Studies. But 

there is no equivalent for-credit program at UBC. 

 

How do we parlay these successes into University-wide practices? 

How do we avoid adding to the heavy workloads both staff and 

faculty already bear? How do we not turn everything into another 

workshop? Most of us are workshopped out. We are almost 

certainly pilot-projected out. 

 

How do we ensure that the critical research you’re conducting, 

and will present here today, reaches not just this roomful of 

people but a campus-ful? A city- or province- or country-ful? 

 

I’m going to leave you with these questions, because I don’t have 

answers yet. I hope you’ll hear them as a challenge. You are our 



  Equity and Diversity Colloquium 
  April 05, 2012 
  Stephen J. Toope—Page 8 
 

brightest and best. I invite you to come back to my office, or to 

the Equity office or the Intercultural Strategy office, with ideas so 

bold they scare you. Ideas threaded with strings of tension waiting 

to be struck. 

 

You are learned enough to be able to play a leading role in 

creating systemic change; unfettered enough in your thinking to 

be relatively fearless; and creative and committed enough to 

direct that tension toward positive change. It’s a powerful 

combination. 

 

I have said in the past that Canadian universities too often shy 

away from the social realities of deep diversity, prizing comfort 

over robust and challenging debate. But not here, not today. From 

what I have already seen, I expect the ideas you have to share 

today will make more than a few people tense. May your guts 



  Equity and Diversity Colloquium 
  April 05, 2012 
  Stephen J. Toope—Page 9 
 

clench and your hearts sing! And may your minds always be 

asking how we take the next step forward. Thank you. 

 

-30-