College campus follies

2021/03/15 Leave a comment

Good long read by my fried at AWAV.

Arun's avatarArun with a View

American college campus follies, to be precise. Hardly two weeks goes by, or so it seems of late, without some crazy story from a US college or university about an identity-related incident or protest by performative woke student activists. The latest we’ve learned about, which actually happened in 2018, is described in detail in a front page article in The New York Times, dated Feb. 25th, by national reporter Michael Powell—whose beat includes “issues around free speech and expression, and stories capturing intellectual and campus debate”—that carried the click-bait title “Inside a battle over race, class and power at Smith College: A student said she was racially profiled while eating in a college dorm. An investigation found no evidence of bias. But the incident will not fade away.” A great elite liberal arts college in a wonderful town (if I had had a proper academic career, I would…

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He passed his Canadian citizenship test — then came a call saying there was a problem

2021/03/13 Leave a comment

Hopefully, just teething pains of the online testing system. But why officials wouldn’t be more transparent on the extent of the problem is hard to understand and citing “program integrity reasons” is not an adequate explanation:

Yaseen Alshehadat said he carefully followed each step to proceed with his citizenship exam, scanning a photo ID and taking a selfie with his computer camera, before writing the online test in late February.

The Mississauga man was relieved when he got an email from the immigration department right away congratulating him for passing the test. Maybe now he could finally get some sleep after moving one step closer to fulfilling his dream to become a Canadian citizen.

But the next day, Alshehadat received a call from an immigration official informing him that his exam result was invalidated because the image of his OHIP card, the piece of photo ID he used for the test, did not register in the system.

“I worked 14 hours a day, and for weeks, I came home and stayed up to study the citizenship guide. It was very stressful and I had very little sleep,” said Alshehadat, whose family fled Syria in 2011 and resettled in Canada in 2016 via Jordan under a government refugee sponsorship.

“I had two dreams. My first dream was to open my own business in Canada. I did that last year. My second dream was to become a Canadian. I’m so disappointed at the news,” added the father of six, who opened Yaseen’s Shawarma in October.

Alshehadat and his wife, Ikhlas Alnaseer, applied for Canadian citizenship in November 2019 and were thrilled when they were finally invited in February to take the online test after citizenship processing had stalled due to the pandemic. The immigration department began hosting virtual citizenship ceremonies last spring but only resumed remote citizenship tests in late November.

Alshehadat took his test at 4 a.m. on Feb. 25; his wife had hers the following day. They said that’s the only time they could quietly sit for the exam in front of their daughter’s laptop. Alshehadat answered 18 of the 20 multiple-choice questions correctly and Alnaseer scored 16 — both above the passing mark of 15.

Then came the call from the immigration department that their test scores were invalidated “due to lack of ID,” even though officials had a record of the individuals in front of the screen sitting the exam. They would not accept the couple’s missing ID documents afterward but insisted Alshehadat and Alnaseer retake the test.

“Whether through applicant error, technical glitch or other reason, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) did not receive photo identification from either applicant as required prior to taking the exam,” department spokesperson Derek Abma told the Star in an email.

“Verifying applicants’ identities is essential to ensuring the security and integrity of our immigration system. This is true across all of IRCC’s processes, but especially when it comes to obtaining Canadian citizenship.”

Abma said an applicant’s identity must be confirmed at the time each requirement is being met. An official verifies the identity of the candidate by comparing faces on the identity document provided at the time of the test, the citizenship photo provided with the application and the applicant’s proctored webcam photos. A candidate can provide a permanent resident card, a driver’s licence or health card prior to starting the test. This must be provided before starting the test, said Abma, and cannot be added after.

There are instances when verification of identity through photo identification is unable to take place during the citizenship test, he said, but they are rare.

“Regardless of whether it’s due to an applicant error or technical glitch, IRCC officials must invalidate the online test results and invite the applicant to retake the knowledge test in a timely manner,” Abma said.

More than 9,300 people had completed their online citizenship test by the end of January. However, officials would not say how many test results have been invalidated or why, citing “program integrity reasons.”

If someone fails twice, he or she will be referred to an oral knowledge hearing with an immigration officer.

Abma said Alshehadat and his wife would be rescheduled to retake their test, which will be counted as their first attempt at writing the exam.

Source: He passed his Canadian citizenship test — then came a call saying there was a problem

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Douglas Todd: ‘If I say I don’t see skin colour, am I racist?’ asks B.C. government agency

2021/03/13 Leave a comment

Personally, I find the debates over nomenclature less interesting than the substantive issues of discrimination and inequality. That being said, a reasonable billboard campaign, just as the Toronto one “where are you from” was:

Would you ask Doris Day that question?”

That’s how famed jazz singer Billie Holiday responds during a 1957 interview to a journalist who asks, “What it’s like to be a coloured woman?” The scene is in the new movie, The United States vs. Billie Holiday.

The acclaimed singer’s answer reflected the anti-racism approach of that era, which had civil rights leaders urging Americans to see beyond the skin colour of Blacks and other minorities — to treat them equally, like everyone else.

Source: Douglas Todd: ‘If I say I don’t see skin colour, am I racist?’ asks B.C. government agency

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Switzerland’s Mid-Pandemic Burqa Ban Doesn’t Protect Liberal Values or Security. It Marginalizes Muslim Women.

2021/03/13 Leave a comment

Of note:

Switzerland, hard-hit by the coronavirus pandemic, has been in a partial shutdown since January. Face masks are mandatory everywhere from public transportation to the country’s idyllic ski slopes. But that reality didn’t stop a slim majority of Swiss voters from approving a ban on full-face coverings in public spaces in a March 7 referendum.

The new ban wasn’t motivated by anti-mask sentiment. In fact, it won’t apply to facial coverings worn for health reasons—now or after the pandemic. Rather, the measure was aimed at a minuscule minority of Muslim women who wear the burqa or niqab. And while similar initiatives in France, Belgium, Bulgaria, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Austria have always been controversial, the deeply ironic timing of Switzerland’s burqa ban proves once and for all that efforts to ban face coverings were never really about supposed security concerns surrounding face concealment in public spaces. At their core, burqa bans have always been an attempt to marginalize Muslim women—and they have succeeded in bringing anti-Muslim sentiment into the mainstream.

Switzerland’s referendum was the product of a people’s initiative launched by the Egerkinger Komitee, an advocacy group that includes members of the right-wing, national conservative Swiss People’s Party (SVP) and aimsto organize against “the claims to power of political Islam in Switzerland.” Arguing that “free people show their face” and “the burqa and niqab are not normal clothes,” the group in 2017 collected the required 100,000 petition signatures to put the issue to a referendum. On March 7, 51.2 percent of Swiss voters approved it.

The deeply ironic timing of Switzerland’s burqa ban proves it was never about supposed security concerns.

Clamping down on the visibility of Muslims in Switzerland is nothing new. Swiss Muslims have been under scrutiny since 2004, when Switzerland held a pair of referendums on measures that would have eased access to citizenship for second- and third-generation immigrants. The SVP’s strong mobilization against the initiatives transformed them instead into cultural referendums on whether Muslims are part of the Swiss national community, a notion the majority of Swiss voters rejected. Then, in 2009, the Egerkinger Komitee proposed an initiative that sought to ban minarets on the grounds that they are a symbol of political Islam. It was approved by 57.5 percent of Swiss voters despite the opposition of domestic Muslim organizations and church leaders from other religious groups.

In December 2014, the SVP first sought to prohibit full-face coverings via a parliamentary initiative to amend the Federal Constitution, arguing that burqas are a threat to national security. But the Swiss Council of States rejected it in March 2017 on the grounds that the small number of burqa-clad women in Switzerland meant public order was not disturbed. There was also concern that a ban would have a negative impact on tourism from Gulf countries.

Though the SVP and Egerkinger Komitee have been active for decades, Switzerland’s burqa referendum can’t be explained without the broader regional context: namely, Europe’s crisis of identity in a globalized, multicultural world. Switzerland is only the latest country to express and assuage this cultural insecurity by managing the visibility of Muslims and Islam, which are perceived as a political, ideological, and national security threat to European values and civilization.

Muslims have been part of Europe’s fabric for centuries, but they continue to be misunderstood and misrepresented in media and politics, where Islam is often framed as an inherently violent religion and Muslims are portrayed as incapable of integrating into European societies. While there is certainly some cultural anxiety—the natural result of rapidly changing demographics on the continent—most of the sensationalism is constructed, encouraged, and egged on by political parties that have a vested interest in creating a supposed “Muslim problem.” The purveyors of these ideas seek to convince the broad populace that Islam is a religion inherently at odds with Western values and that Muslims must be tamed and domesticated. Right now, they are winning.

In Switzerland, demonizing Islam, Muslims, and immigrants as hostile to human rights and freedom—of expression, religion, and sexual orientation—has long been a pillar of the SVP’s electoral strategy, as well as that of other populist national conservative parties such as the Federal Democratic Union of Switzerland and the Ticino League. Because this fixation has contributed to countless electoral victories for the SVP—transforming it into one of the most powerful parties in the country—others have adopted its strategy.

In left-wing circles, too, there is now a narrative claiming that Islam violates democratic standards and practices. Many Swiss leftists believe that Muslims are particularly susceptible to the use of violence or terrorism, and that they seek to create a society based on religion as a pillar of the social, cultural, and political order. In Geneva, the far-left is split between advocates of a hard-line interpretations of secularism—like the Swiss Party of Labor and its coalition partners—and those supportive of an open and inclusive model that recognizes multiculturalism, like the Solidarity party.

The nascent Swiss debate about secularism mirrors that of its more established French neighbor. In France, the promotion of laïcité—the French brand of secularism—has become a rallying cry for the political and intellectual elite who wish to erase Muslim visibility and enforce assimilation under the guise of legal neutrality.

Once a liberal tool that protected religious freedom and freedom of conscience, laïcité has been weaponized to target the public expressions of Islam that are deemed incompatible with French values, however vaguely defined. In recent years, both the right and the gauche laïcarde (the secularist left) have expressed support for a more restrictive and narrow understanding of laïcité that effectively makes religious Muslims—especially women—disappear from public spaces.

Keeping “political Islam” ill-defined is a boon for Islamophobes.

The French debate about laïcité and Islamic dress reached a fever pitch in the summer of 2016, when several cities across France banned the wearing of burkinis. The bans, which have since been overturned by the Council of State, were introduced as an ostensible effort to curb “political Islam.” At the time, former President Nicolas Sarkozy denounced the full-coverage bathing suits as a “provocation” in support of radical Islam. Likewise, in Switzerland, the new burqa ban was won through allusions to the specter of “political Islam.” Across Europe, the term has proved an effective electoral weapon

The problem is that “political Islam” is a vague notion that can mean virtually anything when alluded to under the mantra of fighting terrorism. For some, wearing a visible Muslim religious garment, eating halal food, or simply having conservative social beliefs is considered a step too far. As a result, authorities can interpret a mandate against “political Islam” very broadly, which can lead to the curtailment of civil liberties. France’s controversial new bill “strengthening republican principles,” which aims to fight “separatism,” is a case in point.

Keeping “political Islam” ill-defined is also a boon for Islamophobes. The SVP’s initiatives have succeeded largely because the party has been able to convince broad swaths of the public that Muslims who choose to make their presence visible simply by practicing their religion—whether by constructing a minaret or wearing a burqa—are attempting to “Islamize” the Swiss public. Then come referendums aimed at erasing any sign of a Muslim presence in Switzerland, with the implication that Muslims must remain invisible to fit into Swiss society. But these bans create an inevitable paradox: Targeting Muslims makes them even more visible, only contributing to an increase of racism and Islamophobia. The process is cyclical.

While Muslims are targeted as a collective, veiled Muslim women bear the brunt of Islamophobic outrage—framed as being victims of patriarchal norms or blindly following religious dictates. But far from liberating, burqa and burkini bans often only serve to exclude Muslim women from public life. Authorities, politicians, pundits, and certain groups of feminists claim to want to “free” Muslim women without including them in that process. And if these women do speak up, there is a systematic distrust of the true freedom of their choice, and therefore of their moral autonomy.

In all of this, it is important to remember that the number of Muslim women who conceal their faces remains vanishingly small in Europe. In 2009, the French newspaper Le Figaro estimated that only 2,000 women in France—out of a total French population of 65 million—wore a face veil for religious or philosophical reasons. In Switzerland, population 8.5 million, that number is estimated between 21 and 37. These are fractions so small they barely register on a calculator.

If the statistical insignificance of Europe’s burqa-clad population seems surprising, that’s because anti-Muslim parties across the political spectrum have successfully inflated the Muslim population in order to provoke fear in voters. In a 2017 survey conducted by Tamedia, a Swiss media company, respondents estimated—on average—that Muslims make up 17.2 percent of the Swiss population. In reality, that number lies at 5.1 percent, according to the Swiss Federal Statistical Office.

Besides burqa bans, it’s hard to think of another instance where the public would support a government initiative that targets so few people. But it makes sense in a climate where political success depends on fear—convincing voters that the “traditional culture” of Europe (whatever that may be) is in decline.

What Europe must recognize is that the hypersecuritization of Islam will only lead to deeper-entrenched segregation, thereby jeopardizing the liberal values it claims to stand for. Switzerland’s burqa ban is proof that the continent has yet to view its Muslim citizens as fully capable of autonomy and self-determination and able to formulate their own political will. If Europe really wants to save itself from cultural decline, recognizing Muslims as full citizens is where it should start.

Filed under Multiculturalism, Religion Tagged with , ,

How to Reach the Unvaccinated: To counter online misinformation, it helps to knock on doors.

2021/03/12 Leave a comment

Of note, likely similar in Canada:

What does it take to get credible information about the coronavirus vaccine, and the vaccines themselves, to more people?

My colleague Sheera Frenkel spoke to experts and followed a community group as it went door to door in an ethnically diverse neighborhood in Northern California to understand the reasons behind the low vaccination rates for Black and Hispanic Americanscompared with non-Hispanic white people.

What Sheera found, as she detailed in an article on Wednesday, was how online vaccine myths reinforce people’s fears and the ways that personal outreach and easier access to doses can make a big difference.

Shira: What surprised you from your reporting?

Sheera: One question I was trying to answer was whether the incorrect narratives floating around online about the vaccines — that they change people’s DNA or are a means of government control — were reaching Black and Hispanic communities and other people of color in the real world. I heard false information like that firsthand. It was eye opening.

The other surprise was how effective it was for someone to stand on a person’s doorstep and talk about their own experience getting a coronavirus vaccine and answer questions. The outreach group talked to each household for half an hour or longer sometimes. That may make more of a difference than any online health campaign ever could.

But it’s laborious to go door to door. Can reliable information ever travel as far and fast as misinformation?

Internet platforms amplify misinformation, and countering it isn’t simple. It takes more than a celebrity posting a vaccine selfie on Instagram.

Are we overstating the impact of vaccine hesitancy? The pediatrician Rhea Boyd recently wrote in our Opinion section that the primary barrier to Covid-19 vaccinations among Black Americans is a lack of access, not wariness about getting the shot.

It’s both.

Two things struck me from my reporting. First, false vaccine information is persuasive because it builds on something that people know to be true: The medical community has mistreatedpeople of color, and the bias continues. And second, vaccine hesitancy is different in each community.

That makes reaching Black Americans different than reaching new immigrants who are reading articles in Vietnamese or Chinese that make them concerned about vaccine safety. It’s an opportunity for community leaders to address what’s keeping people who trust them from getting vaccinated.YOUR CORONAVIRUS TRACKER: We’ll send you the latest data for places you care about each day.Sign Up

You’ve written about Russian propaganda in Latin America that fanned concerns about European and American coronavirus vaccines. Is that also reaching people in the United States?

Yes. Two Russian state-backed media networks, Sputnik and Russia Today, have among the most popular Spanish-language Facebook pages in the world. Their news reaches Spanish speakers in the United States.

I heard people ask in my reporting, Why should they get an American vaccine when the Russian one is better? (Those articles tend to cite real statistics but in misleading contexts.) I asked one man I met, George Rodriguez, where he had read that, and we figured out that it was from one of those Russian news sites.

What has been effective at increasing the coronavirus vaccination rates among Black and Latino Americans?

It seems effective to hold walk-in vaccination clinics. People can show up, ask questions they have and get a shot.

What about Republicans? Surveysshow that they are among the wariest Americans about coronavirus vaccines.

There have been concerns among some Republicans that people will be forced to get vaccinated, but that isn’t happening. 

It’s clear that among Republicans and other groups with vaccine hesitancy, once we know more people who are getting vaccinated, we’re more willing to do it, too.

How do you see this moving forward?

In just the last few weeks, I’ve gotten more optimistic about closing the vaccination gap. There have been huge strides in reaching people, getting those walk-in vaccination clinics open or taking vaccines to people, and addressing people’s concerns.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/10/technology/vaccine-misinformation-access.html

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More racially diverse areas reported much higher numbers of COVID-19 deaths: StatsCan

2021/03/12 Leave a comment

Confirmation of what we have seen in other studies with respect to minorities being more affected given many are employed in healthcare and other front line occupations:

The most racially diverse neighbourhoods in Canada reported COVID-19 mortality rates more than twice as high as those reported by districts that are overwhelmingly white, according to new data released Wednesday by Statistics Canada.

The report, titled Year in Review, lays bare the uneven effects of this pandemic on Canadians of different racial backgrounds.

The data affirms what some Canadians have reported anecdotally for months: Black people in particular have been far more likely to succumb to the virus than members of other groups.

Source: More racially diverse areas reported much higher numbers of COVID-19 deaths: StatsCan

StatCan report: https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/11-631-x/11-631-x2021001-eng.htm

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Stephens: California’s Ethnic Studies Follies: A proposed curriculum magnifies differences, encourages tribal loyalties and advances ideological group think.

2021/03/11 Leave a comment

Some exaggeration regarding divisiveness but valid points regarding over-reach and the risks in not using ethnic studies to look at both the commonalities and differences:

The first time California’s Department of Education published a draft of an ethnic studies “model curriculum” for high school students, in 2019, it managed the neat trick of omitting anti-Semitism while committing it.

More than a million Jews live in California. They are also among the state’s leading victims of hate crimes.

Yet in a lengthy draft otherwise rich with references to various forms of bigotry, there was no mention of bigotry toward Jews. There was, however, an endorsement of the Boycott, Divest and Sanction movement, which essentially calls for the elimination of the Jewish state. There was also an approving mention of a Palestinian singer rapping that Israelis “use the press so they can manufacture” — the old refrain that lying Jews control the media.

The draft outraged many Jews. And they were joined by Armenian, Assyrian, Hellenic, Hindu and Korean civic groups in a statementurging the California Department of Education to “completely redraft the curriculum.” In its original form, they said, the document was “replete with mischaracterizations and omissions of major California ethnoreligious groups.”

Last September, Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed a bill that would mandate ethnic studies as a graduation requirement in California’s high schools, pending further review of the model curriculum. While some maintained that a critical ethnic studies curriculum was a mistake, and not just for Jews, others took the view that, when it came to those revisions, it was better to be at the table than on it. Progressive Jews helped redraft a curriculum that included two sample lessons on the Jewish-American experience, along with testimonials about Jewishness from the likes of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Dianne Feinstein.

A victory? One can still quarrel with the curriculum’s tendentiously racialized view of the American-Jewish experience. But at least the anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist dog whistles have been taken out and the history of anti-Semitism has been put in.

Yet as the Board of Education is set to vote on the new curriculum this month, it is likelier than before to enthrone ethnic studies, an older relative to critical race theory, into the largest public school system in the United States. This is a big deal in America’s ongoing culture wars. And it’s a bad deal for California’s students, at least for those whose school districts decide to make the curriculum their own.

What is “ethnic studies”? Contrary to first impressions, it is not multiculturalism. It is not a way of exploring, much less celebrating, America’s pluralistic society. It is an assault on it. “A multiculturalist framework that views our people through a colonialist lens is what literally led to the need for ethnic studies,” Sharif Zakout of the Arab Resource and Organizing Center told a state Education Department panel last year.

Ethnic studies is less an academic discipline than it is the recruiting arm of a radical ideological movement masquerading as mainstream pedagogy. From the opening pages of the model curriculum, students are expected not just to “challenge racist, bigoted, discriminatory, imperialist/colonial beliefs,” but to “critique empire-building in history” and “connect ourselves to past and contemporary social movements that struggle for social justice.”

That would be fine if it appeared in the pages of, say, The Nation. It would be fine, too, if students were exposed to critical race theory the way they might be exposed to Marxist philosophy or some other ideology — as a subject to be examined, not a lens through which to do the examining. The former is education. The latter is indoctrination. The ethnic studies curriculum conceals the difference.

It also does so in a uniquely lopsided way. “Ethnic studies is for all students,” the curriculum announces. Actually, not so much. Irish-Americans have faced a long history of discrimination in the U.S. and are famously proud of their heritage. But the word “Irish” hardly appears anywhere in the model curriculum, and nowhere in its sample lessons. Russians, Italians, Poles and others rate only the briefest mentions.

Perhaps this is because all of them, like most Jews, have a new identity, known in the jargon of ethnic studies as “conditional whiteness,” which simultaneously erases their past and racializes their present. Leave aside the ignorance this fosters regarding the long history of differences, struggles and achievements by various European ethnic groups in America. It’s also the mirror image of longstanding prejudices regarding “Asians” or “Hispanics” as ethnically undifferentiated masses of mainly identical people.

When the main thing left-wing progressives see about America is its allegedly oppressive systems of ethnicity or color, they aren’t seeing America at all. Nor should they be surprised when right-wing reactionaries adopt a perverse version of their views. To treat “whiteness” — conditional or otherwise — not as an accident of pigmentation but as an ethnicity unto itself is what the David Dukes of the world have always wanted.

It shouldn’t be like this. Public education is supposed to create a sense of common citizenship while cultivating the habits of independent thinking. This is a curriculum that magnifies differences, encourages tribal loyalties and advances ideological groupthink.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/09/opinion/californias-ethnic-studies.html

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Immigrant Minorities in Canada at Higher Risk for PTSD

2021/03/10 Leave a comment

Of note:

Immigrant minority groups had higher rates of PTSD than both Canada-born minorities and white immigrants. Socioeconomic status, health, and nutrition also played a role according to a study published in Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology.

The researchers used data from the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging (CLSA), which includes Canadians age 45-85. A random selection of participants were invited to participate. More than 30,000 adults participated. Researchers assessed PTSD, ethnicity, immigration status, demographic information, health status, and nutrition information.

PTSD prevalence among minority immigrants (7.5%) was more than double that of white immigrants (3.6%, p < 0.001), and about 50% higher than Canada-born whites (5.6%, p = 0.008). Prevalence did not differ significantly between immigrant and Canada-born minority members (4.9%, p = 0.19). Researchers attribute this to the small sample size of the latter.

Looking at demographic and socioeconomic variables, adults age 45-55, those who earned less than C$100,000 per year, and those who were widowed, divorced, or separated had higher odds of PTSD. Participants who reported at least 2 health conditions, who had chronic pain, who smoked, and who had a low waist-to-height ratio had higher odds of PTSD.

Adults who consumed fiber-rich foods less than 3 times a day had lower rates of PTSD than adults who consumed only 1 source of fiber. Adults who ate a lot of pastries and chocolate also had higher rates of PTSD than their non-sweets-eating counterparts.

The study was limited by a sample size restricted to those aged 55 and over and cross-sectional data. Information about traumatic experiences which may have caused PTSD was not available.

“This investigation provides important insights for policy and program development to mitigate PTSD among mid-age and older adults, particularly for marginalized groups such as visible minority immigrants,” the researchers concluded. “Future investigations that use estimate models such as these as well as longitudinal analyses may better inform mental health practice and policies to both prevent and treat PTSD.”

Reference

Davison KM, Hyland CE, West ML, et al. Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in mid-age and older adults differs by immigrant status and ethnicity, nutrition, and other determinants of health in the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging (CLSA). Soc Psychiatry Psychiatr Epidemiol. Published online February 3, 2021. doi:10.1007/s00127-020-02003-7

Source: Immigrant Minorities in Canada at Higher Risk for PTSD

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Ryerson School of Journalism leaders step down amid calls to address racism

2021/03/10 Leave a comment

The “woke brigade” at work. Lasting change takes time:

The heads of a prestigious journalism program at a Toronto university have stepped down amid calls for sweeping changes at the school to address systemic racism and discrimination.

Janice Neil, the chair of the Ryerson School of Journalism, and Lisa Taylor, associate chair and the school’s undergraduate program director, resigned on Sunday.

Both noted in their resignation letters that they had worked to address issues of systemic racism and discrimination at the school during their years as leaders.

On Monday morning, Ryerson journalism students issued a public letter accusing the school of failing to represent and support Black, Indigenous, people of colour and LGBTQ students in the program.

The letter said the school has contributed to an unsafe learning environment rife with discrimination that has left students traumatized.

In an email to The Canadian Press on Monday evening, Neil said that under her leadership, the school had increased diversity of the teaching faculty, introduced new courses about reporting on race, Indigenous issues and the LGBTQ community, and offered mental health supports for students.

But Neil also acknowledged that many students think change has not come fast enough or is broad enough to make an impact,.

“One of the things I’ve learned as a leader is to recognize when It’s time for a major reset and that time is now,” she wrote. “To get to the next level will require different leadership.”

In her resignation letter, Lisa Taylor explained her reason for stepping down.

“Some students don’t believe that I’m in their corner, which means they may not turn to me if they’re in need, and having an undergraduate program director who is a trusted resource for only some students is truly inequitable,” she wrote.

A spokeswoman for Ryerson said the school “continues to acknowledge the work that needs to be done to address systemic racism” and will continue to take concrete steps to address the students’ concerns.

Source: Ryerson School of Journalism leaders step down amid calls to address racism

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Are We Ready for a Novel Narrated by a Terrorist? – The Daily Beast

2021/03/10 Leave a comment

Similar but different to The Reluctant Fundamentalist:

Would you read a book in which the protagonist is a radicalized terrorist?

This is the premise of Khalil, a novel by Algerian-born, France-based author Yasmina Khadra. When it was first published in France in 2018, there was a certain reticence towards the book. “Frankly, what interest is there in finding yourself in the mind of one of the perpetrators of the attacks of November 13, 2015 in Paris?” a cultural critic in French newspaper Libération bluntly queried. “Khadra’s new novel provokes an impulse to retreat: don’t want to read it, don’t want to check it out.”

And yet, the reviewer concluded just as firmly: “Such prejudices show that the author was right to write his book.”

The desire to dismiss rather than deconstruct dangerous figures is, in a way, its own danger. Their unfathomable and unconscionable actions shape our anarchic society; avoidance doesn’t eradicate their presence or power. Nor does an engagement with their narrative validate what they do. Confronting our malaise around these figures helps identify how the past has metastasized into the present moment.

Khadra wrote the first part of the novel less than a month after the November 2015 attacks in Paris; he then took more than a year to resume the narrative. He was already well acquainted with the phenomenon of extremism: “I fought fundamentalist terrorism for eight years. In Algeria, the horror was daily,” Khadra recounted, via email, of his military role during the Algerian civil war. (Yasmina Khadra is a pen name he began using in 1990 to avoid military censorship; his given name is Mohammed Moulessehoul.) “I thought I had seen it all, that I was immune to the atrocity, yet each attack that occurs anywhere on earth brings me back to the barbarism that almost took over my country.”

Khalil is narrated by a 23-year-old first-generation Belgian from a Moroccan family. The reader first encounters him in a car full of men driving from Belgium to Paris, intending to blow up the Stade de France while a soccer match is in progress. Khalil—accompanied by Driss, his childhood friend and also-radicalized compatriot—is dispatched to set off a bomb on the RER, the train connecting central Paris to the banlieue. It is Khalil’s first time setting foot in the French capital.

“Khalil is not the ‘hero.’ He is the main character,” the author said. “It’s not the same thing. The use of the first person is a pedagogical choice. I wanted the terrorist to confide fully in the reader, without an intermediary. The immediate proximity makes it more explicit. It is a total immersion in the absurd world of murderous ideologies.”

When his explosive vest does not go off, Khalil flees the chaos that ensues. He is not relieved to be alive—he is furious he didn’t get to carry out his radicalized apotheosis. Unsure of what to do next, he slinks back to Brussels, avoiding people he knows in Molenbeek, the disenfranchised neighborhood he grew up in and which qualifies as a “mass of misfortune and submission.” He skulks around kebab shops, in public parks, imposing himself at his older sister’s apartment, lying his way into a childhood friend’s place, while he frantically seeks an explanation about his failed equipment.

The shock of the attacks in Paris reverberates back to Belgium and changes security measures immediately: bags searched, identity papers checked, ethnic profiling at an all-time high. Yet Khalil is less worried about the authorities than that the members of the Fraternal Solidarity might think he chickened out.

When it turns out his Paris-based cousin died in the attack on Le Bataclan—the concert venue targeted the same night as the Stade de France, an unthinkable massacre—it shakes not one iota of empathy loose. Khalil espouses nihilistically: “When you’ve chosen to sacrifice yourself for a cause, everything that has to do with life loses its importance.” He shrugs: “Whether you die for your convictions or because you were in the wrong place at the wrong time changes nothing… Such are the whims of destiny.”

Khalil encounters people from his past—his older sister, his twin sister, his childhood friend—yet one of the most telling moments in the novel is a conversation Khalil passively overhears between a group of young North Africans, heatedly discussing the Paris attacks and the effects seeping into Brussels. (Their dialogue is, unfortunately, awkwardly translated… the word choices are distractingly out of step with the slang actual young people would use.) They parse the omnipresent cops, the heightened suspicions, the collective feeling of hchouma, or shame, but also the resistance to feeling this, given that there is no link between Muslims and those twisting the religion into fanatical perversions. One man finds it only natural for ethnicities to be singled out; another retorts that extremist ideology should have no bearing on peaceful Muslims, let alone non-practicing ones. Someone pipes up that the violence is a natural progression of cultural exclusion: that Belgians—born and raised—with immigrant roots are unceasingly treated like unwelcome outsiders.

Khalil falls back in with members of the Fraternal Solidarity and is given a new mission. He is enthusiastic to deliver it, until a brush with grief rattles his convictions. Khadra concludes Khalil with—for this incredulous reader—an inauthentic attempt at redemption. Ultimately, where the author succeeds most is in addressing the statelessness many first generations feel, in which neither conformity nor diversity is rewarded. The systemic contempt of these communities erodes any possibility of hope, and this is a form of violence too.

Filed under Multiculturalism, Radicalization Tagged with , ,

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