Memorial University’s Harris Centre, which has focused its work on encouraging informed public policy and regional development, is being shut down thanks to cost-cutting measures as the university grapples with a $20-million deficit.
The Harris Centre is perhaps best known for its annual Vital Signs report, a demographic snapshot of the province.
While Vital Signs will continue, the Harris Centre, named in honour of former president and scholar Dr. Leslie Harris, will no longer operate as a separate entity.
Memorial University political scientist Sean Gray laments the loss.
He operates a democracy school on Indigenous rights with a group of students, some of whom are affiliated with the Harris Centre.
Sean Gray (MUN photo)
Gray says the Harris Centre has been working with the Department of Political Science for more than three years, working on civic organizing, including a democracy school which connected with students in Cape Town, South Africa last year.
“The Harris Centre has be a real nexus for that kind of work. Really transformative,” he says, calling the closure a great loss.
He told VOCM Open Line with guest host Anthony Germain that the Harris Centre was the only organization at Memorial that had a mandate to engage the public, and solve public problems, which was training students to address civic issues.
“I know this can seem like this loss doesn’t affect lives in the province, but I would ask people to look around their communities and when you see roads that need paving, or you’re wondering about how we improve access to government services, well, you do it by training the next generation of change-makers.”
Meanwhile, Municipalities Newfoundland and Labrador is also upset to hear that the Harris Centre is losing its funding.
MNL has worked closely with the centre for more than two decades and says it values the role it played as “a vital bridge” between the university and communities across the province.
The information compiled through the Harris Centre is used by municipalities to help with planning and to get a good sense of demographic needs.
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