In June 2010, a planning committee of the Faculty of Arts and Science at the University of Toronto recommended that the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures be dissolvedalong with the departments of Slavic, Italian, Spanish\Portuguese, East Asian, and Comparative Literatureand incorporated, as a "program," into a proposed School of Languages and Literatures. In spite of the magnitude of this decision, it was taken without any consultation with the Department and without providing a clear account of the advantages to be gained for the university and for our discipline.

The Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures is one of the oldest and largest independent German departments in North America. It produces cutting-edge scholarship and is a vibrant entity with a strong interdisciplinary vision. Our current undergraduates and alumni, along with our successful graduate students, number in the thousands, and they constitute our departments legacy and present achievements. We are proud of our significant successes in the mandate of teaching and developing German Studies in Canada and internationally. The dissolution of the Department is more than just an organizational restructuring; it is blow to Germanistik worldwide.

We, the undersigned, urge David Naylor, the President of the University of Toronto, to retain the tradition of excellence that characterizes German at U of T, and to reverse the recommendation to dissolve the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures.