Lederman: The ceasefire is holding, but in Israel the fight for sustainable peace isn’t over

2025/12/15 Leave a comment

Good long read:

…Even for a Canadian who couldn’t understand more than the odd Hebrew word, it was electric.When I messaged the woman in Toronto who had let me know about the choir to tell her how profound I found the performance, Bonnie Goldberg shared some notes she wrote after her own experience.

“If the Rana Choir of Muslim, Jewish and Christian women, can find their common voice,” she wrote, “why can’t my former friends who shunned me find their way back to be my friend?”

This shunning in the diaspora has gone from shocking to almost familiar: friendships torn apart, mezuzahs ripped from doorways. For Israel, the shunning is existential, with people around the world using their platforms to question its legitimacy. Does Israel even deserve to exist? 

It was, I have to say, a relief over those 10 days to not be confronted with antisemitism and a prevailing anti-Israel sentiment. There are political arguments and debates here – very heated – but at least you can skip past the should-Israel-even-exist question.

It was also a relief to meet with so many Israelis who are fighting for justice for Palestinians, while also acknowledging the trauma of Oct. 7.

It was never lost on me – visiting art museums, strolling on the beach that I had more rights as a visitor than many of the people who live here, Palestinians, have under Israeli control. I was not able to visit Gaza, obviously. Nor was I able to get to the West Bank. But I didn’t need to go there to know, with certainly, that in those places, there is a lot less of that thing I had been searching for.

Source: The ceasefire is holding, but in Israel the fight for sustainable peace isn’t over

Filed under Antisemitism, Islamophobia, Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Levitt: At a time of widespread antisemitism, thoughtful conversations are vital

2025/12/05 Leave a comment

More such conversations needed.

…Recently, I had the pleasure, along with 1,600 people, of listening to two leading commentators share their insight on current issues. NYU’s Scott Galloway and CNN’s Van Jones were the keynote speakers at an event in Toronto hosted by Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center, the human rights organization I head. At a time of widespread antisemitism, high-profile pundits — non-Jewish and Jewish, like these respected American observers — addressing this scourge is more vital than ever.

In this limited space, it’s hard to do full justice to the hour-long discussion, moderated by Canadian journalist Steve Paikin, but the following two excerpts give a sense of the thought-provoking conversation.

Responding to Paikin’s question about whether the U.S. is facing the prospect of a civil war, Jones, a prominent Black political analyst, gave a sobering perspective.

“We are being torn apart by a couple of different factors,” he said. “The most important one is that social media companies have decided to make a bunch of money off of dividing people and now they’re waging a shadow war, a grey war, against the West, primarily on TikTok, and they’ve come up with a novel strategy, never before heard of, called ‘Blame the Jews.’

“This is brand new,” he added caustically, “and unfortunately people are stupid enough to fall for it. I keep telling people that blaming the Jews isn’t the oldest trick in the book, blaming the Jews is literally older than books … Whenever they attack Jews, it’s never about the Jews. It’s always some other thing going on. Why are they picking on the Jews? It’s always because it’s another agenda. And so there’s this very nefarious agenda to divide the West, to divide us, to have us turn on each other rather than turn to each other and one of the ramifications of that is this uncivil war in our country.”

For his part, Galloway, a bestselling Jewish author, professor and entrepreneur, was equally astute. Asked why so many U.S. universities had become cauldrons of hate, targeting especially Jewish students, he didn’t mince words.

“A lot of the fault lies with campus leadership,” he said. “In trying to come to grips with American history, unfortunately, we’ve created the very reductive construct of the oppressed and the oppressor. Figure out who you are based on your identity and that categorizes you as the oppressor or the oppressed. What we’ve done is we’ve basically trained a generation [to think] that you’re one or the other. The most reductive or lazy way of thinking for identifying an oppressor, which we’ve taught kids on campus, is that your level of oppression is directly correlated to how rich and white you are. And unfortunately, Jews have been conflated with the richest, whitest people in the world.”

Referring to the anti-Israel encampments on campus, which often openly and enthusiastically embraced antisemitism, he added:

“If I went down to the square at NYU and I said, ‘Burn the gays!” or ‘Lynch the Blacks!’ my academic career would be over by the close of business that day. There would be no need for [discussing] ‘context.’ We wouldn’t be talking about the First Amendment. My career would be over. It became clear to me that on campuses through a series of well-intentioned teachings that went too far, it ended up where free speech never became freer as long as it was hate speech against Jews.”

Long may the insightful voices of Jones and Galloway resonate far and wide. We need more like them speaking out candidly and people giving them the attention they deserve.

Source: At a time of widespread antisemitism, thoughtful conversations are vital

Filed under Multiculturalism, Antisemitism, Interculturalisme, Islamophobia Tagged with ,

Anti-Palestinian racism report calls for Canada to recognize May 15 as Nakba Day

2025/08/09 Leave a comment

Well, this will provoke some interesting discussions within the government.

Reading through the report, there appears little recognition that some of the actions, symbols and language in various pro-Palestinian protests have contributed to the rise in anti-Palestinian incidents. The description of the Hamas attack of October 7 is antiseptic and is silent on the rapes and other atrocities, also suggesting an element of denial at play “Hamas launched an attack on Israel on this date, actions which included taking 250 people hostage, some of whom remain in captivity in July 2025:”

There also appears little recognition that public and private bodies can make decisions based on public activity and statements, if these create controversy and impact communities. After all, “actions have consequences.”

Perhaps my experience in government where the line between being publicly silent despite any misgivings informs this view (post-government, of course, many public servants share their personal views fairly widely with considerable diversity of opinions.)

The existing definitions of ethnicity (Arab) and religion (Muslim and Christian) are the preferred way to assess discrimination and hate crimes against Palestinians as they bring the issues into the broader context that affect all groups. In other words, focus more on the universal rather than a plethora of individual definitions based upon individual groups (e.g. anti-Tibet, anti-Khalistan, anti-Tamil etc).

Hate crimes against Muslims increased by 8.5 percent compared to last year, against West Asian/Arab by 18.3 percent, higher than most other groups:

A new report from the Islamophobia Research Hub at York University calls on governments across Canada to increase oversight on how universities, schools, police forces and Parliament deal with the recent spike in instances of anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian racism.

The report also calls on all levels of government in Canada to officially recognize May 15 as Nakba Day. Palestinians mark the day after Israel declared independence in 1948 as the beginning of the destruction of their homeland.

“Provincial governments should develop curriculum, train staff and educate students on Palestinian culture, identity and history, including the history of the Nakba,” the report published Wednesday said.

It also wants all levels of government to “recognize and adopt” a definition of anti-Palestinian racism (APR) “as a distinct and detrimental form of racism that operates at multiple levels of state and society.”

The director of the research hub, Nadia Hasan, an assistant professor in the School of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies at York University, said recognizing both Nakba Day and an official definition for APR would set Canada apart from other countries.

“These are important things for Canada to take very seriously,” Hasan said. “I think it would be a first and an important step for Canada to lead on.”

The report examines the increase in Islamophobic verbal and physical attacks directed at Arab and Palestinian Canadians since the beginning of the conflict between Hamas and Israel.

The war was triggered when Hamas-led militants attacked Israeli communities and military bases near Gaza on Oct. 7, 2023, killing around 1,200 people, including more than 700 civilians, and taking 251 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.

Israel’s military response has devastated the tiny, crowded enclave, killing more than 61,000 people — mostly civilians — according to Palestinian health authorities.

The report says its findings are based on interviews conducted virtually with 16 Canadian community-based organizations that focus on addressing Islamophobia, APR and anti-Arab racism. Media reports were also used. The report does not include any first-hand accounts from victims or injured parties.

Recommendations and calling out the CBC

The report calls for greater oversight of post-secondary institutions by striking “advisory tables” made up of students and faculty to develop strategies for colleges and universities to use in combatting discrimination on campus.

The authors of the report also call for those institutions to undergo third-party reviews of how they responded to incidents of Islamophobia and campus protests against the war in Gaza.

They say school boards across Canada should also face province-wide reviews to determine how schools have dealt with incidents of anti-Palestinian racism and examine “cases that were insufficiently or never investigated.”

Aside from the increased scrutiny on universities, colleges and school boards across the county, the report wants to establish provincial and territorial “hate crime accountability units.”

The units would allow people alleging they have been the victims of discrimination to “report directly about law enforcement agencies’ mishandling of hate-motivated crime cases.”

The report also calls for Canada’s public broadcaster to be “reviewed to ensure fair and balanced coverage of Palestinian perspectives.”

This external review, the report says, should probe the possibility that CBC is disproportionately “rejecting Palestinian guest commentators” leading to biased media coverage.

The report provides two reasons for its focus on CBC.

The first is a report by a former employee who alleged she faced backlash for pitching “stories that would bring a balanced perspective” to the war in Gaza.

The second reason is a letter sent to CBC signed by more than 500 members of the Racial Equity Media Collective asking the public broadcaster to “address an apparent pattern of anti-Palestinian bias, Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian racism within the corporation’s news and documentary culture.”

CBC’s head of public affairs, Chuck Thompson, said an external review is not necessary because CBC is already accountable to the independent CBC Ombudsman, Maxime Bertrand, who regularly reviews complaints about the corporation’s journalism.

“CBC News has amplified countless Palestinian voices in our ongoing coverage of the conflict in Gaza,” he said. “There are now thousands of stories we’ve published and broadcast about Israel and Gaza since 2023, all archived here … we think the work speaks for itself.”

The York University report references CBC News journalism covering dozens of instances of anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian racism.

A policy for MPs

The report is also calling on Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner Konrad von Finckenstein, who administers the Conflict of Interest Act and the code of conduct for MPs, to be given increased responsibilities.

The commissioner, the report says, “should develop a clear and enforceable policy on how parliamentarians are to be held accountable when they disseminate disinformation, especially … when such acts target marginalized communities.”

It provides only one example of an MP allegedly spreading disinformation, a post on X by Conservative deputy leader Melissa Lantsman.

The post includes the line: “Stickers with ❤️s glorifying terror on campus popped up today at UBC.”

The report notes the stickers were falsely associated with the UBC Social Justice Centre.

CBC News has reached out to the Official Opposition for reaction to the allegation but has yet to receive a response.

The 15 recommendations contained in the report also call on the federal government to address issues with the temporary resident visa program for refugees fleeing Gaza and probe alleged Israeli foreign interference in Canada.

A Senate report released November 2023 found Islamophobia remains a persistent problem in Canada and concrete action is required to reverse the growing tide of hate across the country.

The report, the first of its kind in Canada, took a year and involved 21 public meetings and 138 witnesses. It said incidents of Islamophobia are a daily reality for many Muslims and that one in four Canadians do not trust Muslims.

Police and advocacy organizations have also reported increases in antisemitic incidents. In the spring, B’nai Brith Canada reported that in 2024 the total number of reported cases of acts of hatred targeting Jews had reached a record high of 6,219 incidents.

Source: Anti-Palestinian racism report calls for Canada to recognize May 15 as Nakba Day

Report link: Documenting the ‘Palestine Exception’: An Overview of Trends in Islamophobia, Anti-Palestinian, and Anti-Arab Racism in Canada in the Aftermath of October 7, 2023

Filed under Antisemitism, Islamophobia, Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

Khan: We shouldn’t turn a blind eye to assaults on Muslim women 

2025/08/07 Leave a comment

Agree:

…The scourge of hate is corrosive. It cannot be effectively addressed in a siloed fashion, where each affected group stands alone. Here’s an idea: next time when there’s a hateful incident against one group, let’s have a few representatives of all affected groups stand together to condemn the hate. There are fundamental disagreements between affected groups, but all agree that no member of our Canadian family should be subject to intimidation, threats or violence.

Source: We shouldn’t turn a blind eye to assaults on Muslim women

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Lederman: There is an abundance of shame – and rightly so – over the calamity in Gaza

2025/08/02 Leave a comment

Indeed:

…As more than 170 former Canadian diplomats, including former ambassador to Israel Jon Allen, wrote in an open letter this week: “If Israel continues on this path, it will lose its standing with the world community, placing the security and the future of the Israeli people in jeopardy.”

This isn’t the most important reason to speak out about the suffering of so many people, of course. That would be the killings, the starvation, the inhumanity.

“Food and health are basic rights,” Dorit Nitzan, director of the School of Public Health at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, told Haaretz. “When we turned them into a bargaining chip, we harmed ourselves, not just our values and morals.” 

Former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak has issued an “emergency call” for “massive nonviolent civil disobedience” to bring a total shutdown of Israel until there is a change in government. “The Israel of the Declaration of Independence and the Zionist vision is collapsing,” he wrote.

The Union for Reform Judaism also issued a statement this week: “Blocking food, water, medicine, and power—especially for children – is indefensible. Let us not allow our grief to harden into indifference, nor our love for Israel to blind us to the cries of the vulnerable. Let us rise to the moral challenge of this moment.”

Yes. Let us. The moral tragedy of this moment is abundantly clear. 

Source: There is an abundance of shame – and rightly so – over the calamity in Gaza

Filed under Antisemitism, Islamophobia Tagged with , ,

Islamophobia envoy says Mideast war is bringing back anti-Muslim tropes from 9/11

2025/08/01 Leave a comment

Hard not to disagree but she is silent on whether the nature of some of the demonstrations, their locations and the carrying Hamas related symbols likely also has played a role in reinforcing anti-Muslim tropes:

…Elghawaby spoke to The Canadian Press after the sudden retirement this month of Deborah Lyons, Canada’s special envoy on preserving Holocaust remembrance and combating antisemitism.

Lyons left her post early, saying she felt “despair” over of a growing gulf in Canadian society related to violence in the Middle East, and the failure of many Canadians to find common ground against hate.

Elghawaby said that she and Lyons worked to reinforce “the soul of Canada — a Canada where all of us, with all of our diversities, can belong and fulfil our fullest potential and feel safe to do so.”

Elghawaby said she shares Lyons’s fear that Canadians have “a sense of concern about appearing to be, for example, favouring one community over another.”

She said fighting hate means advancing the shared principle that everyone in Canada should feel safe to express their faith or political views without retribution.

“We do have rules and policies, and we have a Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and we have human-rights codes that should help be our North Star on how we navigate a time of deep social challenge, when it comes to the rise of hate toward any community,” she said.

But Elghawaby pushed back on Lyons’s claim that some Muslims have been uneasy with seeing her work to combat anti-Jewish hate.

Lyons told the Canadian Jewish News that she and Elghawaby tried to work together to counter hate, and had plans to visit provincial education ministers together.

“Neither my community, nor her community, were happy all the time to see us in pictures together,” Lyons said of Elghawaby.

Elghawaby said she’s not aware of Muslims opposing any of her work against anti-Jewish hate.

“I have had no pushback on condemning antisemitism. I have had very good conversations with members of Canadian Jewish communities,” she said.

Elghawaby said many Canadians’ discomfort with confronting the reality on the ground in Gaza is making it impossible to engage in “good faith” dialogue about a path forward.

“Many Canadians of all backgrounds do believe that there is terrible oppression happening in Palestine, that there’s an occupation,” she said. “It’s been described by human rights organizations as apartheid. Genocide scholars, and organizations have called what’s happening now a genocide.

“If we are to have true dialogue, not being able to actually name the situation as it’s being described … by human-rights organizations and experts, it means that it’s a discussion that can’t be had in in fully good faith, because of the effort to almost make invisible or erase what various Canadians are seeing or describing for themselves.”

While Elghawaby said she has no plans to quit before her term ends in February 2027, she acknowledged it’s been “very, very sad and difficult” to see the rise in hate….

Source: Islamophobia envoy says Mideast war is bringing back anti-Muslim tropes from 9/11

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Casey Babb: Canada doesn’t need an antisemitism or Islamophobia czar

2025/07/31 Leave a comment

Very one sided but one does have to ask whether these special rapporteurs are effective in improving cross community relations or not or just assuaging and reflecting the concerns of their particular groups.

Former antisemitism envoy Lyons and current islamophobia envoy Elghawaby apparently did try some joint events and initiatives but Lyons, in any case, was frustrated that neither group wished to listen to the concerns of the other.

No easy way to have such dialogues but clearly, current approach not effective:

All told, this disconnect between the positions of Canada’s special envoy on preserving Holocaust remembrance and combating antisemitism and its special representative on combating Islamophobia has rendered them not just futile, but problematic. Never in our nation’s history have we so desperately needed moral fortitude, truth tellers and courageous religious and community leaders to come together and face hard truths in unison. Yet for the last two years, this need has been met not just with inefficiencies and obstacles, but what feels like deliberate attempts to undermine relations not just between Jews and Muslims, but between Jews and everyone else.

Canada is at an inflection point — socially, culturally, politically and economically. Major issues could improve in these spheres — or gradually worsen over time as they have been now for many years. It is therefore imperative that every dollar and initiative be spent and developed with prosperity and unity in mind — not the indulgence of endless grievances, the infantilization of entire peoples and the notion that our country can only be unburdened of our sins by relentlessly confirming our guilt.

Step 1 in achieving these things: get rid of useless and divisive positions.

Source: Casey Babb: Canada doesn’t need an antisemitism or Islamophobia czar

Filed under Antisemitism, Islamophobia, Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

Lack of action on Gaza eroding Muslim-Canadians’ sense of belonging, envoy says

2025/07/30 Leave a comment

Not surprising, along with similar erosion of Jewish Canadians sense of belonging given rise in anti-semitic and anti-Israel demonstrations and incidents. Sad fraying and inability to have cross-community conversations as former antisemitism envoy Lyons pointed out:

…Elghawaby said the grief felt by Muslim-Canadian families over the suffering of loved ones in Gaza is being compounded by a sense that Ottawa isn’t doing enough to prevent the suffering, despite issuing “very clear statements” on the situation.

“‘Devastated’ is not even strong enough a word to describe how people are feeling,” she said.

“[These are] their loved ones, their family members, who are starving, who are continuing to face bombing and displacement, and who are just desperate – desperate for this to end.”

On social media, Elghawaby wrote that the fear felt by Canadians with family in the region grows “with each day that passes without meaningful action towards upholding international humanitarian law.”

In the interview, Elghawaby said she doesn’t have the mandate or enough detailed information to say whether Canada is doing enough. She said she can only convey the feeling widespread in Muslim and Arab communities that Ottawa is dropping the ball.

“How can it be – is what people are asking me – that international humanitarian law is violated in this way, and nothing is actually happening, or not enough is happening?” she said….

Source: Lack of action on Gaza eroding Muslim-Canadians’ sense of belonging, envoy says

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Antisemitism envoy says resignation prompted by frustration over ‘not connecting’ with anti-hate message

2025/07/25 Leave a comment

Dispiriting. But kudos for Lyons for opening sharing her frustrations and critiques regarding the silence of business and faith leaders. Most despairing comment to me was this reference to silos:

“Lyons told The Canadian Jewish News that Amira Elghawaby, the federal government’s special representative on combating Islamophobia, tried to work with Lyons on fighting hate, citing an apparently shelved plan to visit provincial education ministers together.

“Neither my community, nor her community, were happy all the time to see us in pictures together,” Lyons said. “There were often people who just simply didn’t want me participating in respectful dialogues, or wouldn’t come into the room.””

Ottawa’s outgoing envoy for tackling antisemitism is accusing Canada’s business sector and civil society of failing to call out a rising tide of hate against Jews and other minorities.

In an extensive interview with The Canadian Jewish News, Deborah Lyons also said she could not get a meeting with Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre during her nearly two-year term.

In a statement sent to The Canadian Press, the Conservatives said that Lyons was “powerless” in her job.

Lyons resigned early in her term as Canada’s special envoy on preserving Holocaust remembrance and combating antisemitism. She said her decision reflected her “despair” over the growing gulf in society over violence in the Middle East and the failure of many Canadians to find common ground against hate.

“People were listening and hearing on different frequencies, and so we just were not connecting,” said Lyons. “That was where the big despair comes from.”

She said her work wasn’t made any easier by the silence of corporate leaders “whom I asked many times to stand up,” and by faith leaders who seemed to keep quiet on the suffering of people from other religions.

“I was incredibly disappointed with business leaders,” she said.

“We have a tendency to want to blame politicians all the time, but where have the faith leaders been? Where have the priests and ministers and rabbis and imams and so forth (been)?”

Lyons said that some community leaders did ask for her help in finding the right words to speak out against hate — because they feared that they would offend one community if they stood up for another.

“I’ve been really quite amazed — and often become quite despondent and despairing — about the fact that it was hard to get people to speak up. To speak with clarity, to speak with conviction,” she said.

“The mark of a country is not the courage of its military. It is the courage of its bystanders.”

The Canadian Press has requested an interview with Lyons but has not yet had a response.

Lyons told The Canadian Jewish News that Amira Elghawaby, the federal government’s special representative on combating Islamophobia, tried to work with Lyons on fighting hate, citing an apparently shelved plan to visit provincial education ministers together.

“Neither my community, nor her community, were happy all the time to see us in pictures together,” Lyons said. “There were often people who just simply didn’t want me participating in respectful dialogues, or wouldn’t come into the room.”

She said that indicates a “weakening” in the ability of both Canadian society and the broader western world to stand for common human values.

Lyons said she lacked the energy at times to bridge that gap.

“I held back from having some discussions, because I knew there was going to be animosity, or I wasn’t going to be welcome in the room. It disappoints me,” she said.

Lyons said she could not get a meeting with Poilievre despite requesting one and having a cordial chat with him during an event.

“I tried to meet with Mr. Poilievre when I was in the job, and in the end I got a response that he was too busy to meet with me,” she said.

In a statement attributed to Conservative deputy leader Melissa Lantsman, the party did not dispute Lyons’ version of events.

“While communities face increasing threats, vandalism, intimidation and violence over the last 20 months, the Liberals deflected responsibility to a powerless envoy,” says the statement.

“We are ready to meet with the government at any point, because they’re the only ones with the power, the tools and the responsibility to do something — and they have done absolutely nothing to date.”

Statistics Canada reported this week a slight increase in police-reported hate crimes in 2024 compared with a year prior, and a very slight drop in those against Jewish people, who remain the most targeted group in Canada.

Lyons accused all three levels of government of failing to adequately co-ordinate their responses to hate, saying that issues like car theft or tariffs are seen as more tangible.

She said Prime Minister Mark Carney seemed engaged and requested a meeting with her, though she added it was not possible to meet with him before the July 8 date of her departure.

Lyons said she is leaving her job three months early not for health reasons but rather to restore “a little bit of the joy back into life” through retirement.

She said she would have liked to continue, but described the envoy role as more difficult than her stints as ambassador to Afghanistan and Israel.

“It was without question the toughest job I ever did.”

Source: Antisemitism envoy says resignation prompted by frustration over ‘not connecting’ with anti-hate message

Filed under Antisemitism, Islamophobia, Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

A White Nationalist Wrote a Law School Paper Promoting Racist Views. It Won Him an Award.

2025/06/23 2 Comments

Sad and sick:

…Mr. Damsky’s argument that at least some of the framers meant for the Constitution to apply only to white people is by no means a new one. Evan D. Bernick, an associate law professor at Northern Illinois University, notes that the argument can be found in the Ku Klux Klan’s founding organizational documents from the late 1860s.

Among originalists, though, this interpretation has been widely rejected. Instead, conservatives have argued that much of the text of the Constitution “tilts toward liberty” for all, said Jonathan Gienapp, an associate professor of history and law at Stanford. They also note that the post-Civil War amendments guaranteeing rights to nonwhite people “washed away whatever racial taint” there was in the original document.

While Mr. Damsky’s papers were written in a formal style consistent with legal scholarship, his social media posts have been blunt, crass and ugly. A critic of Israel’s war in Gaza, he argued in one post that President Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio were “controlled by Jews,” whom he called “the common enemy of humanity.” In posts about Guatemalan illegal immigrants, he said that “invaders” should be “done away with by any means necessary.” He lamented the “self-flagellatory mind-set” of modern-day Germans, noting their failure to revere Hitler.

Ms. Grabowski did not respond to a request for comment.

Mr. Damsky said he assumed that it was the judge who graded his paper. He also said that the judge “is not a white nationalist.”

“Don’t get me wrong,” he added. “I would prefer it if he was.”

Students took their complaints to Ms. McAlister, the interim dean. She addressed the granting of the award to Mr. Damsky in at least two town-hall-style meetings, according to an email she wrote to students and an article in The Independent Florida Alligator, the student newspaper. In the February email, the dean wrote that the law school, as a public institution, was bound by the First and 14th Amendments, meaning that no faculty member may “grade down a paper that is otherwise successful simply because he or she disagrees with the ideas the paper advances.”

Institutional neutrality, she wrote in her email, “is not agreement or complicity with the ideas that any community member advances.”

“It’s just that — neutrality,” she added. “The government — in this case, our public university — stays out of picking sides, so that, through the marketplace of ideas, you can debate and arrive at truth for yourself and for the community.”

Some at the law school agree with her stance. In an interview, John F. Stinneford, a professor at the university, said that it would be “academic misconduct” for a law professor who opposed abortion to give a lower grade to a well-argued paper advocating abortion rights.

If it were a good paper, he said, “you should put aside your moral qualms and give it an A.”

A number of students disagree, but several declined to be interviewed on the record for fear that criticizing the school, or a sitting federal judge, would harm their future job prospects.

One former student, who graduated in May, had his post-graduation job offer rescinded by a large law firm when he told them he had spoken to The New York Times for this article, criticizing Mr. Damsky’s paper and Judge Badalamenti for granting him the award. The student asked not to be identified for fear of jeopardizing other job offers.

Before his suspension, Mr. Damsky had been offered a summer internship in the local prosecutor’s office. But in early April, the prosecutor, Brian Kramer, the state attorney for the Eighth Judicial Circuit of Florida, rescinded the offer.

“You could imagine,” Mr. Kramer said in an interview, that “having someone in your office who espouses those kinds of beliefs would cause significant mistrust in the fairness of prosecutions.”

Source: A White Nationalist Wrote a Law School Paper Promoting Racist Views. It Won Him an Award.

Filed under Holocaust, Islamophobia, Multiculturalism, Racism Tagged with , , , ,

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