Why the behaviour that deposed Claudine Gay should likewise be rooted out in Canada
Why the behaviour that deposed Claudine Gay should likewise be rooted out in Canada
Canadians who value free speech and moderate liberal ideals should look closely at the aberrant behaviour of their universities’ academics.
SCHADENFREUDE. Trust the German language to provide a loan-word to us English-speakers that has such an elegant and unique meaning. This concept of rejoicing at others’ misfortunes might at first bite be a sumptuous delicacy, but, like champagne and caviar, it tends to sour, leaving behind a faintly bitter after-taste.
Anyone looking for tangible evidence of the preference among university professors to resort to the white lies of consequentialism that Gad Saad has written about so eloquently in the National Post need look no farther than the University of Toronto’s Mississauga campus where a recent incident embroiled administrators at the Institute for Management & Innovation (IMI).
For context, I am currently a cross-appointed faculty member at IMI, though I had opted to step away from my role as Director of their Master of Biotechnology Program (MBiotech) early in the Fall term of 2023 to concentrate on teaching. I had—please forgive the metaphor—raised a dampened forefinger to the campus breezes and forecast inclement political weather, divining that I was one mistimed geopolitical joke, or possibly one clever chemical analogy—such as drawing on the biological reality of binary sex categories—away from a grisly academic fate. Cancellation beckoned, and the writing was on the office door, daubed in invisible ink that only I could read. I wanted to depart before Machiavellian manoeuvrings I could only guess at were able to surface.
As it turned out, my timing proved impeccable. I had vacated my post just one week ahead of the October 7 attacks. After a largely uneventful term, in early December, my inbox was clouded by an email forwarded to me, addressed to IMI’s Director, Professor Shauna Brail. Incisively written by a deputation of Jewish MBiotech alumni, it raised urgent concerns connected to the war in Gaza. The allegation was that in a series of lessons on organisational skills—a mandatory part of curriculum for these students—no less than four of the seven student teams, tasked by their professor, as a part of their coursework, with raising funds for worthwhile charities, were, in fact, doing so for UNRWA. For those readers whose lived experience, like mine, renders them acronym-challenged, Google politely identifies this to be the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East.
Now, I might not be very literate in the byzantine geopolitical history of the Levant, but my gut instinct tells me this is not a good look for the university. The fundraising had continued unabashed throughout the fall term, inattentive to the broader world, and right under the nose of the course instructor, an academic at the Rotman School of Management, one Professor Ann Armstrong. You can read about Prof. Armstrong in the University of Toronto Magazine urging corporate types to adopt “collaborative approaches used by Indigenous businesses.” Wherefore? In a competition organized for Indigenous entrepreneurs, the competing teams chose to band together, side-stepping internal conflict and uniting to “create a greater opportunity.” “That’s not something I’ve ever seen before,” Prof. Armstrong—who I suppose must be a profound anti-capitalist—recalled. Surely, she realises that such behaviour skirts perilously close to a cartel practice, something that is strictly illegal in the US and Canada. But then again, perhaps not.
To add insult to injury, the Jewish students also pointed out that one of the junior staffers in the MBiotech program, whose job it is to place the students on highly sought-after corporate internships in the pharmaceutical sector, was preoccupied plastering their social media with rubrics on common Palestinian chants such as “From the river to the sea ...” and much more.
Again, I watch from the bleachers, confident that Prof. Brail was on the case. The response itself took one whole business week and was doubtless prompted by a polite reminder from the alumni. When it came, I was not copied, but when I interviewed one of the alumni, they shared that the response was clad in legal language and dusty platitudes: “We know that this is an extremely challenging time for many members of our community” and “The University … condemns antisemitism” Essentially, we condemn antisemitism and Islamophobia in equal measure, and here are the resources to prove it. I was told our university had “created opportunities … to come together to share practices that increase a sense of welcome, belonging and respect on our campuses.” It is a shame they didn’t extend that to vetting the beneficiary of donations collected by the majority of students in our program. There was no direct response to the concerns raised, and no mention of UNRWA: not exactly a robust defence, nor anything approaching a satisfactory apology. I let it go, and we broke for Christmas.
When the winter term came around, the afternoon tea-breaks in the faculty lounge were smattered with the usual disingenuous glad-handing that academics cannot resist, the air tainted by the miasma of commonplace self-interest. Next to none of these people have held down a job in the private sector, and absolutely none think that their salaries could be curtailed by any human intervention. Aliens would need to arrive from Vega before that could be countenanced. I return to my office and look in vain for updates on the matter. Any news? No, none. By the end of January, fully eighteen separate countries and jurisdictions, including Canada, had suspended funding for UNRWA, but no conclusion was forthcoming on whether we academics had stood by and unwittingly sponsored terrorists. These young Jewish professionals proudly bearing the MBiotech badge were not so easily defeated, however. They mounted another offensive. “Where are the substantive responses to our prior concerns?” At long last, in February, an answer is provided to them. No, the funds were not donated in the name of the University of Toronto; no, they were not donated in the name of the Master of Biotechnology Program. Rest easy: nothing more to be said; no need for an apology. Where the money finally ended up is anyone’s guess. Perhaps it went to Sick Kids Hospital.
The university may have snatched the heads of its feckless faculty below the battlements, but even to the untrained eye, these professors are guilty of befuddlement and a widespread blindness to the political bias that has invaded the classroom—anaesthetised as they are by their pervasive and subliminal intersectionalist beliefs that style Jews as colonial oppressors—and much to the harm of their Jewish students. It is the law of unintended consequences. It is difficult to imagine how a Jewish student would be made to feel taking such a course, surrounded by peers busily harnessing their creativity to raise funds for a cause long criticised for its objective and undeniable antisemitism, only to find out later that UNRWA’s operatives were involved in perpetrating monstrous atrocities on October 7. Couple that to the knowledge that their career path was partly in the hands of an administrative assistant actively wallpapering their social media presence with Pro-Palestinian rhetoric, and this is hardly the welcoming climate that was promised. The correct response would have been swift and decisive action to intervene, to invoke policies not unlike those found among major corporations, specifying that charitable donations must only be raised for apolitical and uncontentious causes. But no.
Ironically, the director penning these non-committal communications is the self-same professor who I’m told chided a sessional lecturer—these are the ‘supply’ teachers the University so heavily relies on to fill the lecture schedules—about a clever phrase he had inserted into his promotional teaching dossier. The promotion was granted, but the reviewers were doubtful of his strategy for tackling thorny disputes by entreating adversaries to “sit down and discuss over a beer.” This, taken from a Heineken marketing campaign entitled ‘Worlds Apart,’ seems innocent enough; and quintessentially Canadian. But “not everyone drinks,” they inferred, no doubt aiming to shield from offence the countless Canadian teetotalers out there. Perhaps more pertinently, research published by the Peel Social Lab in 2021 shows that almost one in five students on campus are Muslims.
The events of October 7 have prompted the apparatchiks of diversity, equity and inclusion to supercharge their smorgasbord of educational modules—those that remorselessly identify today’s ever pervasive ‘phobias’—so as to include extensive lessons on antisemitism, and how to spot it. Much like a hapless raccoon crossing a Toronto street, it is a shame they did not see the juggernaut coming. They will now be left narrowing the field of legitimate targets for their campaign of ideological harassment down to Christians and atheists.
This all leaves a pervading sense of profound unease. When Claudine Gay was toppled as president of Harvard, it was ostensibly for plagiarism, but in reality she paid the price for that university’s tone-deafness on the Jewish question. Canadian universities, too, are rife with hypocrisy. They are not governed by the moral principles of normal everyday Canadians, and they will do whatever is needed to barricade themselves in, flip-flopping on a whim between consequentialist ethics (weaponising pronouns) and deontological ethics (slavishly adhering to policy). It is schadenfreude, certainly, to see them stumble so shamelessly here, but the fragrance is sickly sweet.