Process
Recommendations for de-recognition are made by the Standing Committee on Recognition. The Standing Committee is responsible for reviewing requests to assess a person, institution, company, or similar entity honoured or commemorated by the University of Toronto in an act of naming or in the awarding of an honorary degree. Under its Terms of Reference, the Committee provides a confidential recommendation to the President and the Vice-President & Provost. If the recommendation includes some form of de-recognition, the President and Vice-President & Provost will share the recommendation with the body that originally conferred the recognition in question. In the case of Honorary Degrees this is the Committee for Honorary Degrees.
Duncan Campbell Scott
The University received a petition requesting that the University revoke the honorary degree it had awarded to Duncan Campbell Scott in 1921.
The Petition was sent to the Standing Committee on Recognition in December 2023, and it began its deliberations early in 2024. The Committee delivered its recommendations to the President and the Vice-President & Provost in January 2025.
The Committee unanimously recommended the de-recognition of Duncan Campbell Scott and the contextualization of Scott’s Honorary Degree as the form of de-recognition. The President and Vice-President & Provost accepted these recommendations and brought them forward to the Committee for Honorary Degrees for its consideration. The Committee for Honorary Degrees, at a Special Meeting on February 3, 2025, approved the de-recognition of Duncan Campbell Scott in the form of contextualization of Scott’s Honorary Degree. The decision of the Committee for Honorary Degrees was reported for information to the Executive Committee and to the Governing Council.
Statement of Contextualization (approved by the Committee for Honorary Degrees on February 3, 2025)
In February 2025, the Committee for Honorary Degrees de-recognized the degree of Doctor of Literature, Honoris Causa, awarded to Duncan Campbell Scott in 1921, with the following statement of contextualization:
Duncan Campbell Scott’s legacy is fundamentally at odds with the University’s mission and values, in particular its commitment to human rights, equity and justice. His life’s work is inextricably intertwined with the devastating history of Canada’s residential schools. He presided over the expansion of the residential school system, authorizing the use of coercion and force in defiance of both legal opinion and court ruling. Despite the clear evidence of the terrible conditions and ‘startling death rolls’ in the schools, Scott and others in the government took insufficient measures to protect the health and wellbeing of the children in their care.
These actions reveal an abhorrent disregard on the part of Scott (and Canada) for the fundamental human rights of Indigenous populations, and especially Indigenous children. In awarding Scott an honorary degree, the University of Toronto also failed to respect the human rights of Indigenous peoples and was complicit in the harms inflicted upon them. The University acknowledges and profoundly regrets its complicity. The University also recognizes that the effects of this odious history are still being felt today and it recommits to reconciliation.