In Conversation with Sharma

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n 2019, a small group of students began to circulate a petition to get Political Science Professor Ajay Sharma on a tenure track. I met with Sharma earlier this month to discuss his career and his approach to teaching. During our 45-minute talk, he told me that after the petition started going around, faculty began to approach him with concerns. It was making his colleagues uncomfortable. Sharma quickly had the petition shut down, but not before it had amassed over 1,000 signatures. Since then, the frustration that some faculty felt about the possibility of Sharma side-stepping around the academic ladder has seemingly subsided, but the push to recognize Sharma for his work has not.

The draw to a Sharma class is that he is an interesting and unorthodox professor who unabashedly cares about his students.  His classes are often overenrolled, and, regardless of the day or season, attendance is likely high. It is not uncommon to see long lineups of students trying to get signed into one of his courses outside of Sharma’s office or at the podium at the end of one of his lectures. Classes, once taught by a different professor, have, in some cases, more than tripled the number of students registered. 

I reached out to current students and alumni that have taken or are taking Sharma’s classes to find out more. The response was immediate, and a pattern consistent with my own reflections began to emerge — Sharma cares about students and he is not afraid to break down traditional barriers or conventions.

In class, it is not uncommon for a late student to enter and be comically, awkwardly, and abruptly greeted by Sharma with the phrase, “How was your lunch?” 

Like a tight comedy routine, Sharma can control his audience and pivot to course material in a moment. What’s most impressive is his ability to inspire students to feel safe enough to share their personal experiences, which in turn, can help educate the class. 

To help get people to open up, Sharma will often share a brief story from his past, in a way that’s designed to make students chuckle. However, the comedy that comes with his stories is often just a way to delve deeper into the human side of complex issues. It’s for this same reason that he works to create a classroom environment where people can share openly. Under his classroom leadership, I have heard heart-wrenching first-hand accounts from fellow students about police brutality and discrimination, growing up during the Rwandan genocide, and the legal process that survivors of the residential school system must go through to collect reparations for the crimes committed under the watch of the federal government. Sharma’s teaching methodology places great importance on connecting course material to student experiences so that the humanity behind long-standing issues can be fully considered. 

There are a range of views that get explored in any political science class, and in Sharma’s classes when it’s clear that a conversation is going against the grain, Sharma is more likely to explore that conversation by asking follow-up questions, instead of shutting it down. Sharma has no issue with polarizing issues taking class time, and it is not uncommon that a planned class will go in a different direction after a debate about a controversial issue arises. These conversations are encouraged but remain controlled. If a student cannot back an overtly controversial claim, they will be cut off until they can contribute a bare factual reasoning for their argument. 

While Sharma himself publicly leans left on a variety of issues including financial (OSAP) and health benefits for students, he goes to lengths to keep a non-partisan class environment and his voting record out of the conversation. He holds the idea that you can ask him anything and he’ll answer, except who he votes for. 

The spirit of breaking down barriers and openness is also consistent with Sharma’s legacy of care for his students. Current student Sabrina Valtellini, a four-time student of Sharma, has shared her thoughts on the way Sharma goes above and beyond to ensure the mental health of his students. At the start of each semester, Sharma speaks directly to his students about how important their mental health is and how he is willing to be an active listener.

“If you walk into his office and say, ‘Hey Sharma, I need to talk,’ he will sit there with you, he will talk it out with you, he will get you connected to the resources on campus you need,” said Valtellini.

While many students do turn to Sharma as someone to talk to about their troubles, he is quick to acknowledge that he is not a trained mental health professional — although he wishes the department would offer training — and that he spends much of his time in these moments making sure students are aware and connected with the resources they need. On more than one occasion, he attests to walking students from his office directly to Counseling Services on campus to ensure they were getting the help they needed. 

I asked him why he voluntarily puts himself in the position of active listener, when he is just at the university to teach. He says he couldn’t teach any other way, but the root of his nature goes back to his lived experiences. Sharma might be the funniest professor at U of G, but like many comedians, his wellspring of confidence springs from a place of hurt, confusion, and a need to heal himself. 

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harma was born the oldest of three brothers in Northern Ireland, and growing up brown in 1980s Belfast was not easy for him. As a boy, he recalls vicious bullying and abuse at home and at school. As he saw it, these acts were pseudo-sanctioned on two cultural fronts: the schoolyard bullying was pervasive and linked to racist attitudes towards immigrants during The Troubles, and he described home as traditional and patriarchal, with a normalized culture of abuse that was imported from India when his parents immigrated to Northern Ireland. 

Sharma lived in a valley of depression and physical and mental anguish until he left to do his undergrad in Political Science and History at the University of Toronto. These struggles would develop into a series of mental health issues over time, including chronic depression, which left him wondering why he was alive and causing him to nearly abandon education. In his challenging youth, one person helped him make it through.

“There was one teacher that listened to me when I was 11, and he saw what I was going through,” said Sharma. “He helped. He listened.”

Sharma insists that the hard parts of his early life did not translate into the immediate need to help others. 

“I was a malformed human being,” said Sharma. “It’s never woe is me; it’s just reality.”

During his undergrad at U of T, Sharma worked multiple jobs to help support his family including back-to-back shifts at Walmart. Several times Sharma considered leaving school, but inspired by the advice of Political Science professor and mentor, Graham White, he stuck with it. Sharma was successful in his undergrad, and went on to complete a master’s degree in Political Science with a focus on Public Administration at McMaster University. But before Ajay could become Professor Sharma, he would face more trials while doing his Ph.D. at Western University.

“One of the things people don’t realize about grad school is that it can be one of the most incredibly lonely and frustrating experiences of your life,” Sharma told me.

He describes his unfinished Ph.D. as five years of depression that went by in a blink. During that time, Sharma met Savitha, the woman who would become his wife. He describes her as his rock and told me how she helped him get through. It was while doing his Ph.D. that something else began to emerge. In the early days of what would become his teaching career, students — only one or two a semester at first — started to come to him with personal concerns. He admits that there was a time he considered ignoring their requests to meet, but he chose not to. As he started talking with — and more importantly listening to — a greater number of students, he too began to heal. Suddenly, things started to make sense. It wasn’t research, or the idea of being a tenured professor that motivated him, it was teaching and helping others. The patterns of his life reflected at him in the faces of each student he would help. His public-school teacher, his mentor Professor White, he was them now, and he understood how important it was to just breathe and listen.

Since then, Sharma’s academic interests have changed. He has moved away from studying government policy on climate change, towards researching political variables that determine student success, Indigenous environmental rights, and ensuring that those with special needs in this province have access to vital care systems and funding. All the while, his dedication and student-first approach has remained.

In a Sharma class, you will find a professor that likes to make fun of himself, stir up academic thought, and inspire his class within an approachable learning environment. Student success, not research or progress on the tenure track, is his motivation to keep doing good work. While many instructors may feel the same, the success that Sharma manifests far exceeds intentions. He was not always the Sharma that many know as him today. He was not always a successful teacher or even a successful person, but through adversity, and by continuously exploring the potency of his teaching methods, he became the rare and needed example of someone students can learn from and rely on. No petition needed.

Photo by Alex Vialette

A version of this article appeared in print in The Ontarion issue 188.3 on Mar. 12, 2020.

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