The University of Western Ontario is pausing an endowed chair position named for author Alice Munro following revelations this week that she remained with her husband after he sexually assaulted her daughter.
The acclaimed short-story author, who died in May at 92, had close ties with the London, Ont., university. She studied English at Western, published her first short stories in an undergraduate magazine there in the 1950s, and served as its writer-in-residence in the mid-1970s, despite never having graduated from the school. Western announced the Alice Munro Chair in Creativity position in late 2013, on the day she won the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Also in the mid-1970s, Ms. Munro married Gerald Fremlin – the man whom her daughter Andrea Robin Skinner said this week assaulted her in 1976, when she was nine. Skinner said she told her mother about her experience with her stepfather in the 1990s. While Munro briefly left Fremlin, she eventually chose to remain with him – even after his conviction for the assault in 2005 – until his death in 2013.
“We were deeply troubled to learn of Andrea Robin Skinner’s experience of childhood sexual abuse. Ms. Skinner has our unwavering support and our thoughts are with her,” said Ileana Paul, Western’s acting dean of arts and humanities, in a statement. “At this time, we are pausing the chair appointment as we carefully consider Alice Munro’s legacy and her ties to Western.”
The university pledged $1.5-million in 2013 to match donors in establishing a $3-million endowed chair position under Munro’s name. The chair was tasked with teaching, bringing well-regarded artists to the university, presenting an annual lecture, and leading “the creative culture” of the arts-and-humanities faculty.
The novelist Nino Ricci first held the position in 2018, followed by the multihyphenate author and artist Ivan Coyote. The Governor General’s Literary Award-winning author Sheila Heti was appointed to the position in 2023; she did not respond to requests for comment this week.
Skinner revealed Munro’s decision to remain with Fremlin after her assault in the Toronto Star this week. The revelation has left much of the international literary scene reassessing her legacy, including how it will be taught in universities.
Some professors are considering teaching how the publishing sector treated Skinner’s experience, which was known to some in Munro’s orbit, including Munro’s publisher Douglas Gibson and her biographer Robert Thacker.