Geist: TMU Picks Damage Control Over Fixing the Damage: Behind Its Shameful Response to the Devastating Benotto Report on Campus Antisemitism

2026/08/26 Leave a comment

The contrast is telling:

…A report like this should have sparked immediate action, and it is difficult to believe that findings of this kind involving any other group would have been met with anything less. For example, in November 2020, amid mounting pressure over Egerton Ryerson’s residential schools legacy, TMU established a task force that issued its report within a year (during which time the Ryerson statue was toppled), and the Board of Governors adopted all 22 recommendations immediately (including changing the name of the university to TMU). But when the issue involves Jewish students, TMU’s response is far different. It sat on the report for nearly two weeks, released it with disciplinary findings redacted, and announced a President’s Implementation Task Force that will report back on the report in 2027. That means students arriving on campus in the next few weeks will face another year of antisemitism with the university signalling that there is no urgency to address the issue.

In fact, the task force membership leaves little doubt that the university intends to reject many of the report’s recommendations. Nearly half of the committee’s members have signed public petitions opposing some of the recommendations, including the adoption of the IHRA definition, and rejecting the report’s findings on the links between anti-Zionism and antisemitism. Simply put, delaying the implementation of the Benotto report and stacking a new task force with opponents of its recommendations is precisely what you do when you don’t take the antisemitism report seriously and want to kill its recommendations. As a result, TMU is home to two problems: its antisemitism problem is now the most thoroughly documented in the country, and its leadership is more interested in damage control than fixing the damage. If the university is unable or unwilling to establish a safe environment for all of its students and faculty, it falls to the Ontario government, which already requires universities to implement policies to address and combat hate, including antisemitism, to ensure that it does.

Source: TMU Picks Damage Control Over Fixing the Damage: Behind Its Shameful Response to the Devastating Benotto Report on Campus Antisemitism

From the Globe editorial:

….As both reports show, Jews who don’t renounce Israel’s existence are treated as outcasts: “The redefinition of Zionism to incorporate genocide and the insistence that anyone who fails to actively support anti-Zionism is likewise culpable,” Ms. Benotto writes, “have contributed to an environment that has enabled antisemitism to flourish.” A Jewish lecturer says it’s “incredibly unsafe” to wear a Star of David, and even organizing a non-political Sabbath dinner requires a risk assessment, Ms. Benotto reported.

This is not about isolated episodes. It is about a poisoned environment. Our learning institutions should consistently stand up for the values they claim to represent. As Ms. Benotto documents, TMU already has policies against violence, threats of violence, and discriminatory, intimidating or harassing words and conduct. Every school should, as she urges for TMU, “establish clear behavioural expectations, protect the rights of all members of the community, and enforce its policies consistently, transparently, and predictably.”

It hardly seems too much to ask. Yet TMU has not responded to the eight recommendations of the Benotto report, instead announcing an “implementation committee” that has until next March to come up with a “blueprint.”

The report – again, commissioned by TMU – already lays out a course of action. No blueprint is needed, just a spine.

Source: The betrayal of Jewish students needs to end

Filed under Antisemitism, Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Austin Harper: The Truths That Failed Jason Arday

2026/08/26 2 Comments

One of the more balanced treatment of Arday and how his case is being used by both the right and left:

…I have been dwelling on these two images—the theatrical interracial handclasp; the pages and pages of monomaniacal media coverage of what was ultimately a niche academic scandal—because together they speak to a terrible reality. Arday was fetishized in his ascendancy by white liberals, for whom he served as a mirror in which they could see their own goodness. And he was fetishized in his downfall by white conservatives who saw him as a test case for their own obsessions with an academic apparatus that they believe is not meritocratic enough—which is to say, not white enough.

The right would have us believe that the Arday scandal is a story of affirmative action taken to its most caricaturish conclusion. Many progressives see it as something else: a racist witch hunt in which self-righteous zealots with suspect motives hounded a man to death. The problem with these narratives—and it is a sticky problem—is that they are both right.

To be a Black person in elite institutions, and particularly in elite academia, is to have the standards simultaneously set too low and too high: too low because only a Black person with Arday’s dubious qualifications and seemingly invented biography could have been elevated to the top of the mountain in academia and publishing; and too high because only a Black person could have been pushed off that mountain with such nakedly racist enthusiasm, his tumbling fall so ruthlessly documented, analyzed, and cheered. When a famous white man errs, people tend to rightly understand his mistakes or transgressions as an individual’s missteps. When a famous Black man does, the errors are typically turned into spectacle, characterized as proof of the inferiority, suspected all along, of his race….

Source: The Truths That Failed Jason Arday

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Black Canadians face barriers when donating blood despite critical need, study says 

2026/08/26 2 Comments

The data is concerning but why must academics automatically point to “racist policies” with more general than specific points although I understand the impact of historical policies:

Black people in Canada who want to donate blood face barriers, despite a critical need for specific blood types to treat sickle-cell disease, says a study published on Monday in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.

Researchers from the Interdisciplinary Centre for Black Health at the University of Ottawa shared their findings after interviewing 42 Black adults from March to June, 2023.

The study does not touch on the time period between gathering research and publishing findings.

The research findings offer new insights into complex factors at the root of why few Black individuals donate blood.

One of the co-authors, Jude Mary Cénat, a professor of psychology at the university and its research chair on Black health, said the barriers to blood donation are “predominantly rooted in the restrictive and racist policies adopted by blood donation systems in Canada.” 

As of last year, Canadian Blood Services said that Black donors accounted for just under one per cent of its entire blood donor base, about two per cent of stem-cell registrants and five per cent of cord-blood donors. By contrast, the Black population in Canada is growing and is expected to reach more than three million people by 2041. 

CBS says people in Canada from ethnically diverse backgrounds are less likely to find a matching donor because these communities are underrepresented. For its stem registry alone, 66 per cent of registrants are Caucasian. …

Source: Black Canadians face barriers when donating blood despite critical need, study says

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The Jason Arday story was never going to be just about him. That’s a shame

2026/08/17 1 Comment

Well, it never is. And yes, the focus should be on the institutional failure, not just the individual. Media organizations and commentators need to be more careful, both those on the left defending and those on the right criticizing:

…Black scholars know how a white scholar’s error tends to remain a story about that individual, while a Black scholar’s error often becomes a collective indictment, used to question Black presence in elite institutions more broadly. For some Black scholars, that generalization is part of a co-ordinated political campaign rooted in the belief that Black people do not belong there. Accountability therefore cannot stop with Mr. Arday. Cambridge must answer for its appointment, oversight and response; media organizations and commentators must answer for how allegations and speculation are framed and amplified; and political actors who extend one case to Black scholars collectively must answer for the wider harm they help produce. 

If they fail to do so, there will be lasting damage, because one controversy can easily harden into a presumption about who belongs in the academy.

Malinda S. Smith is a professor of political science at the University of Calgary. Debra Thompson is an associate professor of political science and Canada Research Chair in Racial Inequality in Democratic Societies at McGill University.

Source: The Jason Arday story was never going to be just about him. That’s a shame

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New organization works to support Black politicians as they face barriers, discrimination

2026/08/17 2 Comments

Of note:

A newly incorporated organization is working to support Black politicians across Canada as they continue to face challenges with representation and discrimination.

The Canadian Congress of Black Politicians formally announced it was incorporated as a national organization this month.

Liberal MP Michael Coteau, who helped to assemble the group about a decade ago, told a press conference last week that it’s “refreshing” to see growth in the organization.

“This organization was established to build a network across the country so Black politicians from all levels of government and from all political stripes could come together,” he said.

The non-partisan group says it’s the only national organization that represents Black elected officials. With 150 members across the country in all levels of government, the congress encourages collaboration and mentorship and works to strengthen Black political representation and advocate for issues that affect Black communities across Canada.

“Those who want to do this work, be in elected office, there is a support system and there is an organization that is there for them now and going forward,” Colleen James, the group’s chair and councillor for the region of Waterloo, said at a press conference last week…

Source: New organization works to support Black politicians as they face barriers, discrimination

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Lowman: 5 countries, 5 approaches: How the Anglosphere is—and isn’t—fighting antisemitism on campus

2026/08/17 Leave a comment

Useful comparisons and reminder of the limits of government in terms of culture change:

….But policy may only go so far. A funding freeze can force a university to write a new complaints procedure. A report card can force administrators to define antisemitism on paper. Neither can write the syllabus of an antisemitic professor, or talk a 19-year-old student out of despising the Jewish student sitting next to him in the lecture hall. Governments can regulate what institutions do; they cannot legislate what students and faculty believe.

Whether Washington’s funding cudgel, Canberra’s grading system, London’s disclosure regime, Ottawa’s diffusion, or Wellington’s silence proves most effective will ultimately matter less than something none of these governments can directly control: whether campus culture itself changes at all.

Source: 5 countries, 5 approaches: How the Anglosphere is—and isn’t—fighting antisemitism on campus

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Global Affairs tight-lipped on fate of Canadian men being held in Iraq

2026/08/14 Leave a comment

Not sympathetic as choices have consequences:

…Ottawa-based lawyer Nicholas Pope said he believes at least five Canadian men are being held in Iraq.

Pope said in an interview that a number of the men were recently permitted to phone family members.

He said he spoke directly with one of his detainee clients in June.

Pope said a common message emerged from these calls. “That the prison officials there, and all the officials that they’re talking to are saying, ‘We want you gone, we want Canada to take you, and we’re reluctantly putting you through the judicial system right now, only because Canada is not doing anything,’” he said.

“The big, really frustrating thing here is that we keep telling Canada this. We keep sending them letters saying Iraq wants these men gone.”

The names of the detained Canadian men are not publicly known, with the exception of Jack Letts, whose parents have waged a public campaign to urge Ottawa to help secure his release and passage to Canada.

Amnesty International has warned of serious rights violations and poor conditions in Iraq’s justice system, including overcrowded and unsanitary prisons, unfair trials and mass executions.

Pope said the detained Canadian men face serious risks in Iraq’s system.

“It’s well documented that Iraq’s judicial processes are not exactly fair, don’t have the same due process that we have in Canada,” he said.

“There’s a lot of bias against people who are perceived to have been involved with (the Islamic State) and there’s a huge risk of human rights abuses, torture to extract confessions, as well as these men receiving the death penalty.”

The Embassy of Iraq in Ottawa had no immediate response to a request from The Canadian Press for information on the status of the detained Canadians.

Matthew Behrens, co-ordinator of Stop Canadian Involvement in Torture, said in a recent media statement that Ottawa effectively holds the keys to the jail cells holding the Canadian men.

“By refusing to open those prison doors, we remain deeply complicit in their decade-long arbitrary detention,” Behrens said.

Source: Global Affairs tight-lipped on fate of Canadian men being held in Iraq

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The antisemitism report that erases a century of Jewish debate

2026/08/14 2 Comments

From the minority Independent Jewish Voices perspective:

…But beneath the report’s stark figures and shocking examples of antisemitism lies a partisan move. The report treats opposition to Zionism as evidence of antisemitism, a move that provides institutions grounds for disciplining scholars for what they teach and for policing students over how they protest. 

We write as members of the Jewish Faculty Network, a group of Jewish Canadian academics who share a commitment to social justice. This includes criticism of, and opposition to, Zionism. 

The report defines “anti-Zionism” as a movement that calls for the “erasure” or “annihilation” of Israel. This is incorrect, and it attempts to turn a legitimate political position into a synonym for hatred before a single survey question is even asked.

Anti-Zionism is a 100-year-old, well-documented current of Jewish thought that has never called for erasing or annihilating anyone. Reform Judaism’s 19th-century founders argued that Jews were a religious community, not a nation awaiting a state. A few decades later, the Jewish Labour Bund, a mass socialist movement across Eastern Europe, built a political program based on doikayt, the idea that Jewish safety comes from equal rights where Jews already live, not from a state somewhere else. Some Hasidic communities have opposed Jewish sovereignty on religious grounds for over a century. …

Yves Winter is an associate professor of political science at McGill University. Noah Brender is a faculty member in the humanities department at Dawson College. Danielle Bobker is a professor of English at Concordia University. Michael Blum is a professor in the École des arts visuels et médiatiques at the Université du Québec à Montréal.

Source: The antisemitism report that erases a century of Jewish debate

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Grammond: Lutte contre le profilage racial: Passer de la parole aux actes

2026/08/14 Leave a comment

Mais oui. Similar problems date from my time in the multiculturalism programme, some 15 years ago:

Mais il faudra plus que des paroles pour rétablir la confiance des citoyens ébranlés par les gestes racistes qui seraient survenus au poste 39 de Montréal-Nord, dans l’un des quartiers les plus multiethniques de la métropole.

Des policiers auraient coupé les cheveux d’individus appréhendés pour garder leurs dreads comme un trophée, à la manière d’un « scalp ». Une équipe entière aurait tenu des propos anti-noirs, anti-arabes, ses membres s’encourageant mutuellement à commettre des abus.

En soi, ces comportements sont odieux. Ils ont mené à la dissolution de l’équipe de 16 personnes, en juin, d’ici la conclusion de l’enquête.

Mais ce qui est encore plus atterrant, c’est que la grande majorité des policiers en cause sont de jeunes agents avec quelques années d’expérience.

Cela donne l’impression que les mentalités n’évoluent pas dans la bonne direction au Service de police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM), malgré les réels efforts en matière de recrutement et de formation.

Au-delà de cette affaire accablante, les statistiques ne sont pas encourageantes. Le profilage racial perdure, selon une analyse récente réalisée par des experts de quatre universités québécoises1.

À Montréal, les personnes noires ont 3,78 fois plus de risques de se faire interpeller que les blanches, un chiffre qui s’élève à 5,18 fois pour les personnes arabes.

Certains diront que c’est parce qu’elles commettent plus d’infractions. Mais l’argument n’est pas suffisant pour justifier l’intensité du profilage dont elles font l’objet.

Voyez les chiffres : les personnes noires représentent 9,5 % de la population montréalaise, 20 % des personnes associées à une infraction criminelle… mais 25 % des interpellations. Il est aussi possible que le nombre des infractions soit plus élevé parce qu’il y a davantage d’interpellations. Difficile à dire….

Source: Lutte contre le profilage racial: Passer de la parole aux actes

But it will take more than words to restore the confidence of citizens shaken by the racist gestures that allegedly occurred at post 39 of Montreal North, in one of the most multi-ethnic neighborhoods in the metropolis.

Police officers allegedly cut the hair of apprehended individuals to keep their dreads as a trophy, like a “scalp”. An entire team would have made anti-black, anti-Arab remarks, its members encouraging each other to commit abuses.

In itself, these behaviors are odious. They led to the dissolution of the 16-person team in June, until the conclusion of the investigation.

But what is even more shocking is that the vast majority of the police officers involved are young agents with a few years of experience.

This gives the impression that mentalities are not moving in the right direction at the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM), despite real efforts in terms of recruitment and training.

Beyond this overwhelming case, the statistics are not encouraging. Racial profiling persists, according to a recent analysis conducted by experts from four Quebec universities1.

In Montreal, black people are 3.78 times more likely to be arrested than white people, a figure that is 5.18 times for Arab people.

Some will say it’s because they commit more offenses. But the argument is not enough to justify the intensity of the profiling to which they are subjected.

See the numbers: black people represent 9.5% of the Montreal population, 20% of people associated with a criminal offense… but 25% of the arrests. It is also possible that the number of offences is higher because there are more arrests. Hard to say….

Filed under Multiculturalism, Racism Tagged with , ,

Geist: Denial, Hate, and Silence: The Three Responses to Overwhelming Evidence of Canada’s Campus Antisemitism Crisis

2026/08/13 Leave a comment

Valid:

…The first response is denial, with some groups claiming the survey is unrepresentative, its methodology flawed, and that it conflates Jewish identity with Zionism. The objections do not withstand scrutiny. The survey’s community-recruited, non-probability approach is the standard methodology for researching discrimination against small, hard-to-reach populations. Indeed, it served as the methodology for surveys on 2SLGBTQ youth, urban Indigenous health studies, anti-Asian racism data, and trans communities. Governments have used the resulting data for policy development and few demanded probability samples before treating that research as a basis for action. Moreover, while relying on the IHRA definition is precisely what a study backed by a government that has itself adopted that definition should do, the findings do not depend on definitions. Set aside every Israel and Zionism-related item in the survey and the data still shows 56% of Jewish students witnessing discriminatory treatment of Jews as Jews, 54% witnessing intimidation or threats, 22% witnessing physical violence, and 45% regularly encountering Holocaust denial. No definition is required to classify “Hitler should have finished you off”, “the Holocaust did not really happen”, or “Jews, Jews, you cannot hide.” Critics themselves concede that the report documents “unmistakable antisemitism,” but are left to quibble at the edges by debating definitions rather than confronting what the data shows.

The second response is hate. Once again, my posts about the survey attracted replies on my social media that read like a live enactment of the report’s findings, validating a national dataset in real time. The survey found that 45% of Jewish students regularly encounter Holocaust denial or distortion; the replies included the claim that the Holocaust is “fake, just exaggerated slop to position yourselves as victims.” The survey found that more than 70% of Jewish students report harm to their mental health; the replies mocked that finding with comments about “mental illnesses suffered by Ashkenazi jews” lying “in the genes.” The survey documented students hiding their identity and considering leaving their universities; the replies suggested Jewish students “should transfer to Tel Aviv” and dismissed them as “professional victims.”

The most important response, however, was the non-response or silence from those who must act. One week after a government-backed report found that 70% of Jewish students believe their universities do not take antisemitism seriously, I could find no responses from university presidents, Universities Canada or other organizations. Political leaders have been little better: Culture Minister Marc Miller called the findings “alarming”, but a broader response or sense of urgency from governments has been missing. The Advisory Council on Rights, Equality and Inclusion, which serves as the government’s replacement for the Special Envoy on Preserving Holocaust Remembrance and Combatting Antisemitism (who commissioned the CASE report), continues to signal that it is not a serious effort to combat antisemitism. At the report’s release, Council member and former senator Marc Gold read the Minister’s statement, declined to respond to criticism of the government’s approach, and described the council’s progress as: “we’re getting to know each other and we are providing input into a work plan.” The house is on fire and they are getting to know each other.

Simply put, silence is not neutral, as it confirms students’ worst fears and risks making them even more skeptical about reporting their experiences. The NECA recommendations released alongside the report provide a ready-made starting point, beginning with enforcing the policies universities already have. With the fall term just weeks away, no university leader can claim to be unaware of what returning Jewish students face.

The report’s findings were overwhelming, and so is what the past week has revealed. The deniers cannot bring themselves to accept what the data shows, the haters keep demonstrating it, and the institutions with the power to act have said nothing at all. It is time for a fourth response: action.

Source: Denial, Hate, and Silence: The Three Responses to Overwhelming Evidence of Canada’s Campus Antisemitism Crisis

Filed under Antisemitism, Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

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