Biography
Jennifer S. Simpson is a Professor in the Department of Professional Communication. She also serves as the Special Adviser to the President, Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Decolonisation (Curriculum Transformation). Drawing on her interdisciplinary education as well as a career-long focus on equity, she invites students to consider their own agency and implication with an eye toward meaningful contributions to public life. She has taught courses including gender and communication, intercultural communication, persuasion, public communication, and social justice and communication.
Jennifer’s intellectual work has focused on two primary themes: the consequences of racism and other forms of oppression in university settings, and on the obligations of higher education to equity and the public good. Jennifer has served in multiple senior leadership positions, including chair, associate dean, and director of a pan-university curricular effort (University of Waterloo); and Dean, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences (Memorial University). She served as Provost and Vice-President, Academic at TMU from July 2021 to September 2022; and was chair of the University Advisory Renaming Committee at TMU.
Research Interests
Jennifer began considering racism, anti-racism, and systemic change during her graduate work. Early research focused on critical pedagogy and racism and anti-racism in universities. As an instructor who lives with white and settler privilege, her intellectual work has been grounded in attention to her own positionality and to systems and social norms. Her publications offer attention to the limits of liberalism in higher education and social thought; critical theory and pedagogy; the relevance of racism and white supremacy to being and knowing; and the role of universities in public life.
Selected Publications
Simpson, Jennifer S. “Moving toward equity: hard questions, shared conversations at Toronto Metropolitan University.” University Affairs, May 11, 2022.
Simpson, Jennifer S., Giwa, Sulaimon, and St. Denis, Verna (2021). “In Times of Racial Injustice, University Education Should Not Be ‘Neutral’.” The Conversation (September 12).
Simpson, J.S. (2014). Longing for Justice: Higher Education and Democracy’s Agenda. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Simpson, Jennifer S. (2003). “I Have Been Waiting:” Race and U.S. Higher Education. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
