Sometimes these subjects are called the social sciences. This is a sort of catch-bag for everything that is not clearly arts and not purely scientific. But in truth the humanities should be the study of human diversity, of what we have been and can achieve.

These are very important concerns for us, and inform our whole curriculum. We do not think you can understand the potential of mathematics, the depth of literature, the vocabulary of art, if you do not know the cultures from which they spring, which they express and recreate.

There are a number of key avenues along which we approach the humanities. First of all, we are not ashamed to set forth our western heritage in all its glories and horrors. The values, institutions and great ideas which dominate Canadian culture today have important roots in the cultures of the peoples of Europe and the ancient Mediterranean. We think our students should be familiar with the great works of this tradition.

But we also think our students should be familiar with the great sins and omissions of this tradition. We insist that our students should become familiar with other civilizations and cultures, many of them the source of the ancestral narratives and cultural qualities of the many nationalities which meet and mingle in our great city.

Nor do we rest in the past. We agree that you must understand where you have come from, but surely you also need to know where you are now. There is a contemporary studies element in our humanities programme. We stress understanding of contemporary world developments, many of them cutting across cultural and political boundaries, in such areas as economic globalisation, ethnic or religious conflict, environmental studies, and international political organizations.

And finally, we believe that historical and social inquiry should be open and fluid, that there is something common in our humanity beyond all the apparent differences of culture. To study the humanities in this frame of mind gives us some sense of how we construct and represent ourselves and others, and deconstructs the idea that these cultural markers are natural or fixed or necessary. Or even, to get Platonic about it, real.