Q & A with the new chair of Journalism
Journalism at the Creative School welcomed Dr. Ravindra Mohabeer who began his term as the new chair on July 1, 2022. This Sept., after he and his family packed their bags in B.C. and moved to Toronto for the new position, Mohabeer sat down in his office, overlooking the Metro on Gould St., for an interview with third-year journalism student Sania Ali for the j-school newsletter.
What are you most looking forward to now that you’re in Toronto?
I left Toronto in 2009 and moving back to Toronto now, I’m really eager and excited to be among a greater number of people. There’s a level of possibilities and activity but there’s also a greater diversity. Where I was, was not unwelcoming, but it also wasn't particularly diverse. I think diversity is an extraordinary strength of Toronto. Still, some of my colleagues describe it as a bit small-town-ish; It’s not unusual for you to know people across a wide range of sectors. It’s an ideal balance.
What’s your favourite place to eat in the city?
The funny thing about living where I did is that we didn’t have a ton of food choices. We became really good at making everything. If we wanted it, we either didn’t get it or we made it ourselves. My favourite place to eat tends to be at home. My wife and I both cook. It’s at home also because we have a lot of family in the area and a lot of them come and visit. I haven’t really done a lot of exploring food-wise yet but I have the great benefit of time and a lot of choices.
What interested you in working for Toronto Metropolitan University?
Toronto Metropolitan University has a remarkable reputation. The School of Journalism has a remarkable reputation. But quite frankly, the current situation is one some people might run away from. I find it an interesting opportunity to think about how to lay a foundation that goes in a positive new direction. You can lay a foundation that will have ripple effects as students move into the industry and then move into positions of responsibility and authority. What happens here in The Creative School and particularly in the School of Journalism, the people you see or you read of in the paper, they come from here. It is quite an attractive possibility to know that level of impact can be seen over the course of your career. The people who you work with or you teach or you help develop, and inspire to find their own path. So that, to me, was a big draw.
What would you say to students who are entering the school for the first time?
The thing that I said during orientation that I will reiterate, is that The School of Journalism creates a series of opportunities. Those opportunities provide pathways to industry, lots of different versions of industry. I think part of it is that journalism is an experience that is a lifestyle kind of experience as much as it is educational. So if you embrace it that way from the beginning, you start to feel comfortable about asking difficult questions. Tomorrow’s journalism and today’s journalism, they’re constantly evolving. Right now there are multiple opportunities in a way that there never were before. Start off by being able to develop habits of curiosity, habits of storytelling and then carry those with you as you go along and they will only get better over time. You will be able to help define yourself.
What are your plans for the upcoming semester?
This semester is a whole lot of listening and learning about the space and people; engaging with various people's points of origin, where they come from, where they were before I got here and how I’m able to see this space through their eyes. What I’m hoping to do this semester is take what I hear as a foundation or as a building block. This year is a program review year, so we can look forward to the next three to five years. My fall is going to be listening and learning and trying to figure out what the next step should be so that we can collectively move forward together.
What was it like to finally meet journalism students in person?
Journalism students are an interesting lot, the ones that I’ve met so far. So much so that they are a little bit more confident in their willingness to speak or engage in a way that many students are often not in a position to be comfortable with in university. It’s not uncommon at a school this size to never speak to a professor. I don’t find that that's the case here. Journalism students are really active and eager and engaged proponents of how change should look. It’s a matter of being in a conversation so that we are working together on moving things forward.
What is your favourite part of the RCC?
I like how big the stairs are. The reason I like that is that there’s a sort of grandness to them. It also means that you pass a lot of people on them and there’s room to stop and have a spontaneous conversation. It’s not necessarily about the transit as much as it is about being able to see those different levels when you’re at the top looking down or bottom looking up and then seeing all of the activity in the space. I really kind of enjoy that because I thrive in those kinds of spontaneous opportunities.
What are you most looking forward to achieving in this role?
There are a lot of big questions that need to be asked and most of those questions are founded on the simple theme of, why is this like this? I think for me, my goal is in the next, well certainly starting actively now, but to me within the next year to two years is a certain redefining of what the School of Journalism is all about. What direction are we going, and what value proposition do we offer to students but also to the industry. So that we can start to be back in the position of what the reputation of the school is, which is a substantive contributor to the way the industry forms and shapes over time. Our goal is to figure out how to reclaim and redefine our own narrative based on listening to student experiences, and the experiences of faculty and staff, particularly equity seeking individuals but also everybody.
What will the school’s priority be in five years' time? In your opinion?
It’s hard to imagine what five years from now will look like. I think for me if the foundations that we lay are able to bear fruit, given the nature of universities and society in general, there will be a fair bit of turnover in five years. People retiring, new people coming in at different points, and shifting priorities in and outside the industry. In the School of Journalism, we will have to define for ourselves a very clear understanding of our role and core orientation and drive. At the same time, the interests and desires and directions of where students see themselves after they finish, as journalists, but perhaps in roles that journalism skills transfer into, recognizing that those are also valuable pathways. In terms of having people feel more confident in engaging in research and creation activities that are more broadly shared internally, I want a culture of constant curiosity to be the foundation of everything we do. Then that becomes an outward projection so that people will start to look at us not just as an extraordinary site for training excellent journalists which we already are, but also as a site that creates thought leadership in the field and contributes very much to what the industry can become.
How do you plan on addressing the safety concerns of student journalists who are publicly reporting?
One of the first short-term things that we have in mind is a series of panels sharing experiences and developing a dialogue around safety. We quickly recognized that it’s not enough to say “yes, it’s covered in class” and people talk about it. As a part of J-School’s Canada, we are a signatory to a letter to Justin Trudeau about online hate and online hate aimed at journalists in general, but particularly by journalists of colour and female journalists. This requires a national conversation that I’m looking forward to having with other chairs of Schools of Journalism also. You can say that this is happening in your local community, but if your local community is largely online then that’s everybody’s local community. How do you make sure those safe spaces are there? It’s a priority, it’s not a gestural priority, it’s an actual priority.
Is there anything you’d like to add?
The key is that while I’m not infinitely available in the sense that there are all sorts of things going on, if my door is open, I’m really happy to talk to students or just meet casually just to say hello. Being the Chair of a department often keeps you removed from the many things going on in classes and on the ground, but the only reason to be here is because of the people. I encourage students to think about it as a community that they have a stake in and a shared investment with all faculty and staff, me in particular. The best way that communities work is when people come to sincerely know each other.
Some of these questions were submitted via social media by students and faculty.