Congratulations Suzanne and Edward Rogers!
This weekend I was delighted to see the news on Instagram that my alma mater, Toronto Metropolitan University, is bestowing honourary degrees on two people who have a history of involvement in the university: Suzanne Rogers and Edward Rogers.
To anyone unfamiliar, Suzanne and Ed are at the head of Canada's 7th richest family according to Maclean's reporting in 2024 [source]. Ed is the latest of the family to lead the country-wide media conglomerate that shares their family name, Rogers Communications. Suzanne has been referred to as the "fairy godmother of canadian fashion" due to her donations to the industry.
Following Suzanne's donation of $1 million dollars in October 2016, or 0.0112% of the family's 2024 net worth, the fashion incubator at Toronto Metropolitan University (at the time still named Ryerson) was named after her. The Suzanne Rogers Fashion Institute serves is a fellowship program where students in the fashion programs at the university can gain support in pursuing their career.
Dinner at Mar-A-Lago
In May 2021, Suzanne posted the photo seen below to her own Instagram story:
Since the last few years have been full of breaking news and "once-in-a-lifetime" events, a quick reminder of what was taking place at the time Suzanne posted this photo:
- The first COVID-19 vaccines were administered in Canada less than 4 months prior to this photo (Dec. 14th, 2020) and the availability of vaccines was still quite limited, with only half the population receiving one dose of the vaccine by the end of the month of May [source]
- The the time of the event (May 1, 2021) there were roughly 50,000 new cases and 300 deaths per week from COVID-19 [source]
- Travel and event restrictions were still in place for most non-essential purposes, with the third wave and associated major lockdowns occurring only weeks prior (March 2021) [source]
- Less than 3 months prior, Donald Trump's supporters led an attempted coup at the U.S. Capitol and Trump did next to nothing to stop them, and according to many accounts from the day was actually supportive of their efforts
And while all of the things Donald Trump has done in the last year to undermine the sovereignty and safety of our country had not yet occurred, he was hardly acting as an ally. At this point in time he's already a former President in disgrace, facing accusations of an attempted coup in his final days in office. He has already hit us with tariffs and destroyed NAFTA, on top of the unending history he has being on the wrong side of issues that canada at least claims to support, such as the Paris Climate Agreement. Trump also has a long history of immoral and unethical business practices that played at least some part in how he accumulated his wealth, which of course all started with his "small loan" of a million dollars.
All of these are facts that a family so entrenched within the business world must be familiar with, and this doesn't even begin to touch the personal element of Donald Trump's views. From the infamous quote about grabbing any women he wants by the pussy to preying on teenage girls in pageant change rooms to the many allegations of sexual harassment – including the case with E. Jean Carroll that a jury has since found Trump liable for – there is zero excuse to not be aware that he is not someone anyone would want to associate themselves with.
Before anyone gets too far into thinking "but he's the President of course people still have to deal with him" nonsense, I'm not saying its unfathomable to have met with him or even to have attended whatever this event was. However, he wasn't President at the time of the event, and had in fact barely allowed the peaceful transfer of power tradition that every former President has partaken in to occur. More importantly, the choice to post the photo publicly and caption it "a special way to end the night!" while your entire family is beaming next to the predator-in-chief is at best a terminal indictment of one's judgment, and at worst an endorsement of the predatory and abusive behaviour that Donald Trump regularly espoused both in his personal life and his political decisions.
Is It A Big Deal?
Many people with a platform did not seem to think it was a big deal, and Suzanne and the Rogers corporate machine certainly did their best to make it seem like it wasn't. Suzanne made a public statement days later that aimed to assure people the photo meant nothing:
I have always believed in equality, diversity, inclusiveness, and respect for all, and I have worked to that end all my life. They are important in all aspects of society, especially in fashion. ... I do not have any kind of relationship with Donald Trump, good or otherwise. I had never met him before that night. ... Taking and posting it was done without considering the false assumptions and implications that would be made about my personal beliefs. I regret that my actions caused anyone to question my values or commitment to the communities and causes my family and I hold so dear."
The above quote is a shortened version of her full statement, of which I cannot find the original, but the CBC quoted what appears to be the full statement in this article:
Controversy erupts for Suzanne Rogers after philanthropist posts photo with Trump | CBC News
Others downplayed the incident, including journalist Robyn Urback who wrote an op-ed in the Globe and Mail that argues it was simply tone-deaf and ends with the following:
"A hat, or a photograph, or short video clip can’t comprehensively tell us all we need to know about an individual’s personal value system. All it can really convey, with any certainty, is that a socialite may not know when to put the camera away."
While I agree with her on the general premise of her piece that this is hardly a surprise, I believe it misses what upset people. The issue isn't that a obscenely rich person is out of touch and gallivanting across the continent and flaunting public health restrictions with her whole family to dine with an accused rapist, it is the fact that at the same time as doing all that she wants to be able to adopt the appearance of being someone who cares about inclusion and equality, or any other of the many things Donald Trump stomps on daily.
If you want to make social media posts about fancy dinners at the country club owned by the President who tried to tear the world apart in more ways than can be counted, you're free to do so. You just cannot expect to throw what amounts to scraps considering your net worth at a university program and get to claim the title of being a progressive champion.
The University's Response
When the photo first started to get noticed, the School of Fashion actually had a really great response at first, at least in my opinion. The statement was posted to Instagram and was quickly deleted, so the following is the text of the statement courtesy of my own screenshots but also verified thanks to a Global News article.
"Our curriculum and culture at the School of Fashion actively works to challenge, resist and undo the values, structures and practices of white supremacy, exclusion and discrimination that we feel Trump actively enforced and executed during his time as U.S. Present.
We invite Suzanne Rogers to enter into dialogue with our faculty, staff and students to discuss the impact that Trump and his community has had on further harming members of the fashion industry who are low income, Black, brown, Asian, disabled, Indigenous, trans, queer and/or part of other systemically marginalized communities."
I honestly would have been on board if the faculty had posted something much more inflammatory, but this was objectively an excellent statement. It doesn't call her any names or even claim she shares his harmful opinions. True to the nature of educators, it is an invitation to learn about why people are (very justifiably) upset about the post. From a PR perspective, it is also an excellent opportunity for a graceful recovery from this incident for Suzanne. The backlash to her posting this photo echoed through the whole fashion community, but if she had this offer to have a dialogue with the School of Fashion it would have been more than I think most people would expect from someone of her status and likely would cause the whole thing to blow over with minimal to zero reputational damage.
It also does the important work of making sure that none of the student's anger at the donor's actions falls back on the university. Suzanne doesn't just donate to the school, there is a whole program within the school named after her. Students that find her photo abhorrent would certainly be looking for the school to address the matter in some way.
Of course the university was worried more about the potential of upsetting an important donor and had to play its role as part of the Rogers family PR team. The statement from the School of Fashion was quickly deleted from their Instagram and replaced by a poorly written statement throwing the faculty at the School of Fashion under the bus:
"A previous post from the School of Fashion was not endorsed by Ryerson University and does not reflect Ryerson’s views. We do not believe social media is the appropriate platform to judge the actions of others.
Ryerson’s values have long defined who we are and will always guide where we are going. They are the basis upon which we have built our uniquely vibrant, diverse and inclusive culture.
We are dedicated to creating and maintaining a culture that echoes our values and demonstrates a commitment to the whole person. At the same time, we will continue to seek out new ideas, we will remain curious about perspectives we do not yet know, and we will be respectful of differing viewpoints."
In a vacuum, the claim that it is wrong to judge someone based on their social media activity is one I tend to support. There are too many unknowns with how someone uses social media, maybe someone reposted that because they wanted to be able to find it easily later or maybe the post is sarcastic but that isn't coming across online, and the classic what if that was a glitch or typo are all reasons why you shouldn't be quick to jump to conclusions. I just don't think that applies in a situation as obvious as this.
At the time of the photo being posted, Trump is one of the most known (if not the most known) man on the planet. It would be impossible to not be at least moderately aware of his scandals. The only reason I might accept for not knowing about one is that there were too many to remember. At the time she posted this photo the biggest scandal of all, so big calling it simply a scandal is almost offensive, is his not yet 4-month-old attempt to end democracy in the US.
As early as 2017, experts on authoritarianism and fascism pointed to the scary similarities between Trump and the regimes of Mussolini and Hitler, including a Holocaust historian [source]. According to former members of Trump's inner circle, he has speaks highly of Nazi generals and wished that his American generals would be more like them [source]. In his own words he called for a "Muslim ban" which even Republican politicians denounced, one going so far as to say it is "the kind of rhetoric that allowed Hitler to move forward" [source].
I'm certain nearly everyone in the world would agree flying to have dinner with Adolf Hitler or Benito Mussolini and then posting an all-smiles photo online (in an alternate reality where they were somehow alive during the same era as Instagram stories) that claims seeing them was "a special way to end the night" would be universally slammed as evil. The only difference I see is that with Trump, the world is lucky him and the 2016 Republican Party didn't have the brainpower to put their most evil authoritarian and fascist beliefs into action.
For the university to not only dismiss this photo which was proudly posted by someone whose name is attached to a program being run by the school, and whose family corporation has a name on multiple awards, buildings, and even an entire faculty – is a sad admission that they will do anything to please a rich donor. None of the values the university claims to support matter when someone with money could be upset, and if they won't stand up for those values when things are difficult then their values don't mean anything.
What good is saying "I support doing the right thing if the rich person that pays me says I can."
2026 Honourary Degrees
This brings us to present day. As if it wasn't bad enough to silence and shame the faculty calling for a respectful dialogue about the harms of her post and ignoring the hundreds of students commenting and writing about their displeasure at their handling of the incident in 2021, five years later the university has decided to bestow honorary degrees to Suzanne and Ed Rogers.
Suzanne Rogers, Canadian Fashion Icon?
In this write up announcing the honorary degree, and in all of the biographies on the institutes that Suzanne is associated with nothing is ever mentioned about her beyond that she gives money away. Her education is not highlighted or even mentioned, and I was only able to learn she studied political science at Western from a Toronto Life article that also provides the following analysis of her character:
"Suzanne has been known to call up employees in Rogers’ media division looking for personal favours, leading to much awkwardness in the office. She would request magazine coverage of herself or TV coverage for one of her charity events, such as her annual fashion show (which she calls “Suzanne Rogers Presents”), starring designers like Oscar de la Renta and Marchesa. Rumours of her million-dollar-a-year clothing allowance circulated through Rogers headquarters and beyond. The optics were unfortunate at a time when the company was being slammed for gouging customers."
On her own website, her and her husband claim to have raised $4.5 million for children's causes and that she donated $3 million towards repairing an arena in her hometown. The phrasing of the first claim means that wasn't just direct donations from their money, they encouraged others to donate through charity events and other philanthropy. Granted I am skeptical of everything billionaires do, but given a net worth in the tens of billions, raising $4.5 million through philanthropy and a single donation of $3 million to your hometown hardly seems praiseworthy.
Taking into consideration everything from her own "about Suzanne" sections across her various initiatives and the write-up for the honorary degree itself, one can only conclude that marrying one of the richest men in the country and occasionally donating a few morsels of the fortune inherited from the company your grandfather-in-law's founded is deserving of an honorary degree.
While I am far from a fashion aficionado, and this is only me speaking about what I happened across in my research for the important aspects of writing this, I find her alleged fashion taste to be tired, uninspiring, and more often than not extremely gaudy.
Photos of Suzanne and Ed Rogers at formal events
I am fairly certain that without her money and connections there would be no reason to pay attention to her opinion on the matter.
Ed Rogers, Backroom Businessman
Most of my post focused on Suzanne, but she will share this honorary degree with her husband, Ed. Most Canadians know his family name due to the universal hatred of dealing with the monopolistic nature of the company he now leads, but a few years ago many of us eagerly followed along with the 2021 saga that saw Ed's mother and siblings remove him from the board of the company only for Ed to manage to regain control thanks to the underhanded use of loopholes in the way the family trust is set up [source, source, source].
A critical moment in the saga was when Tony Staffieri, the person Ed was seeking to install as CEO, accidentally butt-dialed then-CEO Joe Natale during a secret backroom meeting where they were scheming to oust him, which is how he learned of their efforts and was one of the factors leading to the public blowup of the entire affair.
Not-so-coincidentally, Tony Staffieri was the Chair of the university's Board of Governors at the time and following Ed's successful manoeuvring to block his mother and siblings from stopping his takeover of the company, is now the President and CEO of Rogers Communications despite not being familiar enough with how phones work to avoid butt-dialing the person whose job he was trying to steal. Then-President of the university, Mohamed Lachemi, now also holds one of the 14 seats on the Rogers Board of Directors.
Seeing as the Faculty of Business at TMU (The Ted Rogers School of Management) is named after Ed's father and the founder of the company he now leads, this scheming and backstabbing doesn't sound like the type of behaviour a school would openly encourage. From my first hand experience however, I know it is exactly the way in which many of the highest level of Executives in the administration operate.
Having spent a year on the Board of Governors, along with the 8 years I spent during and after my degree being involved as a student leader and an employee on campus, I am never surprised by the university treating students as nothing more than customers to extract money from. The pursuit of meaningless prestige and funding that will be largely be used on window dressings and frivolous PR projects is always the top priority for the administration.
The university has long been run as a soulless corporation with the educators and students that should be empowered to lead it instead serving as potential assets that can be used up and thrown away in the effort to propel another executive from the administration into honourary board memberships in large corporations and government appointed positions. Offering honorary degrees to people whose only meaningful difference from any TMU graduate is the money they were lucky to inherit is both incredibly sad and entirely par for the course.
Due to the nature of how the world works, and of course thanks to the chronic under-funding from the provincial government, the university has forgotten its purpose. Very few of those with any say in how the university operates possess the spine necessary to stand up to the sad corporatization of the institution and steer the university in a direction that will preserve it long term. While a few million dollar donations here and there sustain the budget in the short term and make for good press releases, the damage caused by students and faculty having no faith in their school cannot be overstated.
Prestigious universities earn that prestige by being stalwart proponents for an academic environment where challenging power through knowledge is celebrated. When faculty at a university that made its entire brand standing up for marginalized populations cannot even call for a dialogue with a sponsor who dines with authoritarian rulers, we have slipped so far from the purpose of a university we have become unrecognizable.
By continuing to court the favour of people who care little for the school beyond its ability to sanitize their harmful contributions to the world, the university gains little in the short term and loses everything in the long term.