Source: Toronto Star
On April 27, 2004 the Toronto Star reported, "Today, the University of Toronto will be pulsing with excitement as the Dalai Lama accepts an honorary doctorate and international peace award. But tomorrow, Buddhist studies at the school will go back to being on life support. The Dalai Lama is accepting the award from a university that over the last 30 years has cut back on Buddhist studies so much that a program barely survives. Christine Ng desperately hopes the Dalai Lama's visit will be the catalyst for reviving the school's Buddhism programs. Ng, vice-president of the university's Buddhist community, has spent the past 10 years working with other school colleagues to protect what was once a thriving area of study. 'Buddhist studies has been buried,' Ng says. 'We hope the Dalai Lama will help show it's one of the world's main religions and has a lot of rich traditions and material for academic studies that allow the U of T to interface with other universities in Canada, North America and the world.' Although the U of T was a world leader in Buddhist studies in the 1960s and '70s, today, there is virtually nothing left. Professors who are experts in Buddhism, such as Leonard Priestley and David Waterhouse, retired last year, leaving virtually no full-time staff with Buddhism expertise."