Yakabuski | Ne pas apprendre de ses erreurs [Dattani]

2024/07/02 Leave a comment

Agreed. Where is the vetting? And for not disclosing this information, Dattani shouild be automatically disqualified:

Lors de la Journée internationale dédiée à la mémoire des victimes de l’Holocauste de cette année, la présidente intérimaire de la Commission canadienne des droits de la personne (CCDP), Charlotte-Anne Malischewski, s’est déclarée « profondément préoccupée par la montée fulgurante de l’antisémitisme » qui s’observe au Canada depuis les attaques du Hamas sur Israël commises en octobre dernier.

« Lorsque la haine se présente dans nos communautés, elle menace la sécurité publique, la démocratie et les droits de la personne, a-t-elle tenu à rappeler. La haine nous divise et nous oppose les uns aux autres. »

Dans le contexte actuel, où la guerre à Gaza a fait de la communauté juive canadienne le bouc émissaire des critiques visant le gouvernement israélien de Benjamin Nétanyahou, on se serait attendu à ce que le ministre fédéral de la Justice, Arif Virani, s’efforce de trouver un digne successeur à Mme Malischewski pour occuper sur une base permanente ce poste se trouvant au sommet de la hiérarchie des instances des droits de la personne au Canada.

D’autant plus que la CCDP se verra octroyer de nouveaux pouvoirs en vertu du projet de loi C-63 sur les préjudices en ligne afin de déterminer la validité des plaintes concernant le contenu haineux. Le nouveau président de la CCDP doit lui-même être au-dessus de tout soupçon de parti pris pour ou contre tout plaignant qui s’adressera à la commission.

Or, en nommant Birju Dattani à la présidence de la CCDP, le 15 juin dernier, M. Virani semble avoir surtout cherché à plaire à l’aile progressiste du Parti libéral du Canada. La nomination de cet ancien directeur de la Commission des droits de la personne du Yukon et « défenseur de l’équité, de la diversité et de l’inclusion » rappelle celle d’Amira Elghawaby, devenue l’an dernier représentante spéciale chargée de la lutte contre l’islamophobie, qui s’est vue hantée par ses écrits considérés comme antiquébécois après l’annonce de sa nomination.

Mme Elghawaby s’est vite excusée. Mais son acte de contrition a aussitôt été remis en doute par les politiciens québécois, et sa crédibilité en a irrémédiablement été entachée. Si elle a pu garder son poste, elle est toutefois devenue quasi invisible depuis son entrée en fonction.

Le cas de Birju Dattani est beaucoup plus grave. Selon les révélations publiées cette semaine dans les médias torontois, le passé de cet ancien président de l’Association des étudiants musulmans de l’Université de Calgary est semé de propos antisémites et d’associations douteuses. Alors qu’il étudiait à Londres, en 2012, il a participé à une manifestation devant l’ambassade d’Israël au cours de laquelle les manifestants répétaient le slogan « le sionisme, c’est du terrorisme ». En 2015, alors qu’il était chargé de cours dans la capitale britannique, il a participé à une conférence aux côtés d’un membre du groupe fondamentaliste islamiste Hizb ut-Tahrir, qui prône la charia et que le gouvernement britannique a inscrit sur sa liste des organisations terroristes prohibées cette année.

Le Centre consultatif des relations juives et israéliennes ne demande rien de moins que le retrait de sa nomination. Selon l’organisme, M. Dattani « a partagé des articles comparant Israël à l’Allemagne nazie, a participé à une table ronde au Royaume-Uni avec un membre du Hizb ut-Tahrir, […] qui cherche à établir un nouveau califat et s’oppose à l’existence d’un État israélien, et a donné à plusieurs reprises des conférences sur le mouvement Boycott, désinvestissement et sanctions (BDS) lors de la Semaine contre l’apartheid israélien dans des universités britanniques ».

Le bureau d’Arif Virani a plaidé l’ignorance en disant que M. Dattani ne l’avait pas informé de ses gazouillis controversés ou de son militantisme anti-Israël lors du processus de nomination à la présidence de la CCDP. À l’époque où il vivait à Londres, M. Dattani utilisait un autre prénom. Cela n’épargne toutefois pas le ministre d’être accusé d’avoir failli à la tâche de procéder à des vérifications rigoureuses avant de le nommer.

M. Virani promet maintenant d’effectuer un examen officiel de la nomination de M. Dattani avant le 8 août, soit la date de son entrée en fonction à la tête de la CCDP, et de rendre le rapport de cet examen public. Pour sa part, M. Dattani s’est excusé cette semaine dans une entrevue au Globe and Mail, où il reconnaît que ses propos et ses gazouillis antérieurs ont pu blesser des membres de la communauté juive. « Je ne le ferais pas maintenant », a-t-il souligné, en précisant que son opinion avait « évolué » depuis.

Tant mieux si Birju Dattani reconnaît ses torts. Sa nomination reste néanmoins irrecevable. Après tout, il a manifestement essayé de cacher ses propos antérieurs aux membres du bureau du ministre de la Justice, qui lui ont certainement demandé, lors du processus de nomination, de leur faire part de toute information potentiellement compromettante sur son passé. Les Canadiens doivent pouvoir croire en l’impartialité de la CCDP pour que cette instance conserve la crédibilité nécessaire au bon accomplissement de sa fonction critique, qui est celle de protéger la population canadienne contre la discrimination.

Quant au gouvernement de Justin Trudeau, disons que la nomination de M. Dattani est un autre exemple d’un excès de zèle progressiste, qui se retourne encore une fois contre lui. Disons qu’il ne semble pas apprendre de ses erreurs.

Source: Chronique | Ne pas apprendre de ses erreurs

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USA: Newly naturalized citizens could theoretically swing the election: Report

2024/06/29 Leave a comment

Tends to assume that new voters are potentially monolithic in their voting intentions:

The number of foreign nationals in the U.S. currently eligible for naturalization outnumbers the 2020 presidential margin of victory in five battleground states.

A report released by the American Immigration Council (AIC) on Thursday concluded that if some or all of the country’s 7.4 million not-yet-naturalized-but-eligible residents got their citizenship before November, they could swing the 2024 election.

That’s unlikely to happen, as the naturalization process for eligible foreign nationals takes roughly eight months from application to receiving a certificate of citizenship.

But the report highlights the disconnect between the size of immigrant communities, their economic impact and their political power.

It says immigrants make up 13.8 percent of the U.S. population, but only 10 percent of eligible voters.

And potential citizens could in theory sway both battleground states and a couple of key red ones.

The researchers found that 574,800 immigrants in Florida are likely eligible to naturalize, while former President Trump’s margin of victory there was 371,686 votes.

In Texas, the naturalization-eligible population is estimated at 789,500, and the 2020 presidential margin of victory was 631,221.

The margin of victory in some battleground states pales in comparison to the number of potential new voters.

In Arizona, 164,000 people can apply for citizenship, and the vote difference was 10,457, about a 16-to-1 ratio; in Georgia, the ratio is about 13-to-1.

Pennsylvania, Nevada, North Carolina and Wisconsin all show up on the list, with naturalization-eligible resident to 2020 victory margin ratios of around 8-to-1, 3-to-1, 2-to-1, and 5-to-2, respectively.

The report also found that immigrants paid 16.2 percent of all taxes paid by U.S. households in 2022, despite having less political representation.

Source: Newly naturalized citizens could theoretically swing the election: Report

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Rioux | La gauche et l’antisémitisme

2024/06/29 Leave a comment

On current French debates in the lead up to the elections and in general:

« Nous ne vivons pas un antisémitisme résiduel, mais un antisémitisme pesant, visible, palpable. Notre fille l’a vécu dans sa chair. » Ceux qui parlent ainsi sont les parents de cette enfant de 12 ans violée la semaine dernière dans un local désaffecté de Courbevoie.

Un geste d’une sauvagerie tellement inconcevable qu’il est devenu, à quelques jours du premier tour, l’un des événements marquants de cette campagne éclair des élections législatives en France. L’enfant a été violée, torturée, menacée d’être brûlée et soumise à une tentative d’extorsion par trois jeunes musulmans de 12 et 13 ans pour la seule et unique raison qu’elle aurait dissimulé à son petit ami qu’elle était juive. Celui-ci lui aurait « clairement reproché d’être juive, en affirmant qu’elle était forcément pro-Israël et complice d’un génocide en Palestine », selon son avocate, Muriel Ouaknine-Melki, présidente de l’Organisation juive européenne.

Craignant des représailles depuis le pogrom du 7 octobre, sa mère avait conseillé à la jeune fille de se faire discrète. La petite avait déjà perdu des amies à cause de la religion de ses parents.

Ce viol antisémite n’est pas un fait divers. C’est un fait de société qui illustre la peur croissante dans laquelle vivent des milliers de Juifs en France. Les actes antisémites recensés ont bondi de 300 % au premier trimestre de 2024, comparativement à la même période en 2023, année où ils étaient déjà en hausse.

Certains feront mine de s’en étonner, nombreux sont pourtant ceux qui nous avaient mis en garde. Cela va de Boulaem Sansal à Kamel Daoud, en passant par Smaïn Laacher et Georges Bensoussan, qui avait été poursuivi pour avoir affirmé que, dans nombre de familles influencées par l’islamisme, « l’antisémitisme, on le tète avec le lait de la mère ». Traîné devant les tribunaux, il sera relaxé en 2019 « de toute accusation de racisme et d’incitation à la haine ».

On pourra chipoter sur la formulation, reste que l’antisémitisme est consubstantiel à cet islamisme qui se répand en France. Nombre de familles juives fuient d’ailleurs les banlieues pour protéger leurs enfants ; certaines envisagent même de quitter le pays.

Qui aurait pu s’imaginer que 80 ans après la Seconde Guerre mondiale et 37 ans après les déclarations antisémites de Jean-Marie Le Pen, la France serait à nouveau déchirée par un tel débat ? À la différence près que cet antisémitisme est aujourd’hui associé à la gauche.

Depuis des mois, La France insoumise (LFI) refuse de qualifier le Hamas d’organisation « terroriste ». Un jour, son leader, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, accuse la première ministre d’origine juive, Élisabeth Borne, de défendre un « point de vue étranger ». Le lendemain, il reproche à la présidente de l’Assemblée, Yaël Braun-Pivet, elle aussi d’origine juive, de « camper à Tel-Aviv ». Selon lui, l’antisémitisme serait « résiduel en France ». Une déclaration qualifiée de « scandale » par le socialiste Raphaël Glucksmann, lui-même victime de tags antisémites.

Cette complaisance relève-t-elle d’une conviction profonde ou d’une simple stratégie électorale ? Chose certaine, depuis des mois, LFI a multiplié les signes en direction de l’électorat musulman où, selon un sondage de l’IFOP publié en 2020, 57 % des jeunes de 15 à 24 ans considèrent que la loi islamique devrait avoir préséance sur celle de la République.

Hier symboles de l’« Argent », les Juifs seraient-ils devenus celui du « Colonialisme », comme on dit dans le vocabulaire woke ? Ce ne serait pas la première fois qu’une partie de la gauche pactise avec l’antisémitisme, une attitude qu’à son époque, le social-démocrate August Bebel avait qualifiée de « socialisme des imbéciles ». Les exemples vont de Jean Jaurès, qui disait que « l’oeuvre de salubrité socialiste culmine dans l’extirpation de l’être juif », à l’Humanité, qui qualifia Léon Blum de « Shylock », en passant par Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, qui désignait « le Juif » comme « l’ennemi du genre humain » et voulait « abolir les synagogues ».

Un peu d’histoire permet de constater que personne n’a le monopole de la vertu. Elle permet aussi de relativiser cette affirmation pour le moins étonnante de l’avocat Arié Alimi et de l’historien Vincent Lemire, selon qui l’antisémitisme du Rassemblement national serait « ontologique » alors que celui de LFI ne serait que « contextuel ». L’histoire montre qu’il n’y a pas d’atavisme antisémite. Jaurès n’a-t-il pas finalement défendu Dreyfus ? L’écrivain Georges Bernanos, disciple de l’antisémite Drumont, n’a-t-il pas combattu courageusement le franquisme et le régime de Vichy ?

On comprend pourquoi, en refusant de participer à la grande manifestation unitaire contre l’antisémitisme du 12 novembre dernier, Emmanuel Macron a commis l’une des fautes les plus graves de son quinquennat. Quant à Jean-Luc Mélenchon, il n’a de cesse de flatter son électorat dans le sens du poil. « Certains discours politiques ont fait des Juifs des cibles légitimes », dit le président du Conseil représentatif des institutions juives de France (CRIF), Yonathan Arfi, d’ailleurs traité d’« extrême droite » par Mélenchon. Selon une récente étude réalisée par l’IFOP, 35 % des jeunes de 18 à 24 ans estiment qu’il est justifié de s’en prendre à des juifs en raison de leur soutien à Israël.

Les parents de la jeune martyre de Courbevoie ont dénoncé avec raison un « mimétisme » sordide entre les actes perpétrés par les terroristes du Hamas et ce que leur fille a subi. Nul doute que ces événements pèseront sur les résultats de dimanche prochain.

Source: Chronique | La gauche et l’antisémitisme

Filed under Antisemitism, Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

Korea’s multicultural demographic changes call for new youth support policies

2024/06/27 Leave a comment

Of interest:

As the number of preschoolers from multicultural families dwindles due to the low birthrate, calls grow for systemic support for youth, away from current multicultural policies that focus primarily on underage children.

Experts underscore the importance of bolstering bilingual education. Rather than specifically differentiating children with multicultural backgrounds, they advocate for a more inclusive approach that benefits multicultural children.

According to a new report from the Korean Education Statistics Service, released Sunday, which highlights the major trends and challenges in multicultural education through statistics, there were 12,526 multicultural births in 2022. This accounts for 5 percent of the 249,186 total births in Korea in the same year.

Multicultural births in the report refer to cases where at least one parent is foreign or a naturalized citizen.

Considering there were 22,908 multicultural births in 2012, the number has declined sharply by more than 10,000 births, or approximately 45.3 percent, over the past decade. During this period, the decline in multicultural births mirrored the overall decrease in domestic births.

The average age for marriage within multicultural families is rising, and fewer babies are being born to women under 30, according to the report.

Specifically, the proportion of multicultural couples marrying under 24 fell from 30.8 percent in 2012 to 17.4 percent in 2022. Conversely, marriages involving individuals over 30 increased from 44.4 percent to 58.6 percent over the same period.

Additionally, the percentage of multicultural babies born to mothers under 29 dropped significantly, from 61.8 percent in 2012 to 31.3 percent in 2022.

A notable demographic shift is expected within Korea’s multicultural population, with a decrease in preschoolers and a gradual increase in middle and high school students, as well as adults in their early 20s.

As of 2022, 89.7 percent of all multicultural students are in elementary and middle school. Looking ahead, the proportion of middle and high school students, along with youth aged 19 to 24, is projected to rise.

Mo Young-min, vice chairman for research at the Korean Education Development Institute and author of the report, emphasized the necessity of policy-level attention and establishing a support system for youth with multicultural backgrounds, pointing out that current multicultural policies focus primarily on young children.

According to the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, it is expanding projects to provide fundamental education and career guidance, facilitating the smooth adaptation of children from multicultural families to school life.

Meanwhile, experts stress the need to prioritize bilingual education in support measures for children from multicultural families. They advocate for an approach that respects and incorporates the culture and language of their parents’ countries….

Source: Korea’s multicultural demographic changes call for new youth support policies

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Big majority of Canadian Gen Z, millennials support values-testing immigrants: poll

2024/06/26 Leave a comment

No easy approaches to value testing, ranging from defining the values, managing, implementing, monitoring and enforcing them. The valid general interest in common values generally breaks down when specifics are discussed beyond the general respect for the rule of law, the constitutional order and respect for others. And terminology becomes an issue: “barbaric cultural practices” versus stating which practices like FGM are against the law; one inflames, the other informs.:

Gen Z and millennials are split on whether Canada’s aggressive immigration targets are good for the country, and 70 per cent say the government should be ensuring new arrivals “share common Canadian values,” such as respect for minority groups, according to a new Postmedia-Leger poll.

Since 2021, Canada has been aiming for an intake of 500,000 new Canadians each year and the government plans to keep this steady until 2026. But only 11 per cent of Canadians aged 18 to 39 say this is overall a good thing, while 34 per cent say it is generally good for the country but has also created some problems.

Twenty per cent say it has created more problems than benefits, while 19 per cent say it is overall a bad thing. Atlantic Canadians are more likely to be skeptical of the higher immigration levels, while people in B.C., and the Prairies are more likely to favour it.

“The attitudes are shifting a little bit with respect to immigration. I think it’s actually becoming a little easier for people to start to raise the concern about immigration, because it’s not necessarily about the people coming into the country, but it’s the country’s ability to support the people coming in,” said Leger vice-president Andrew Enns.

Women are more likely to say the current immigration levels are generally good for Canada, at 38 per cent, compared to 31 per cent for men. Men are more likely to say it has created more problems than benefits, at 24 per cent, compared to 17 per cent for women.

Canadians are seeing the effects of the government’s intentional increase of permanent residents, but also a largely unanticipated cohort of millions of temporary immigrants who arrived through student visas and the temporary worker program, said Mikal Skuterud, a labour economist at the University of Waterloo.

“I think most Canadians understand that the absorptive capacity may be pushed a bit. We might be pushing up against it too much in the past couple of years. And there’s concerns around that,” said Skuterud….

Source: Big majority of Canadian Gen Z, millennials support values-testing immigrants: poll

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‘Minimizing the danger the far right would represent for Jews if it came to power is naïve and dangerous’

2024/06/25 Leave a comment

French debate of note:

Serge Klarsfeld’s recent statements describing the Rassemblement National (RN) as a “pro-Jewish party” that “supports the State of Israel” and justifying a possible vote for this party against a La France Insoumise (LFI, radical left) candidate have provoked astonishment and sadness among many historians, including us. Is it necessary to recall the considerable role Klarsfeld has played in favor of understanding Vichy’s mechanisms and responsibility in the deportation of Jews? When one has worked on these subjects, it is even more astonishing.

We will not go back over the reasons behind Klarsfeld’s statement: There is no doubt that some more-than-ambiguous, if not anti-Semitic, positions have been expressed within the ranks of LFI – not least certain statements made by its leader. Whether these positions are the result of a calculated electioneering move aimed at an Arab-Muslim electorate or of more deeply rooted prejudices does not change their seriousness. However, minimizing the danger that the far right would represent if it came to power today, for Jews and for all minorities, is naïve and dangerous.

One could criticize the position of choosing a political party solely on the basis of its declared support for a minority as hardly being a universalist one. One could also explain that the RN’s “transformation” into a respectable party remains superficial, and that it has never truly condemned the historical heritage from which it stems, as political scientists and historians of the far right have repeatedly pointed out.

A form of blindness

By posing as “self-proclaimed defenders of the Jews of France,” the RN’s leaders are not only seeking to break the last barrier to their de-demonization. In a position mirroring the open anti-Zionism of certain LFI leaders, they are trying to appeal to an electorate that is paralyzed by anti-Semitism, whose disturbing resurgence is flourishing against the backdrop of the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Yet to give in to this temptation would be nothing more than a form of blindness that consists of ignoring the intimate link between xenophobia and anti-Semitism, which has been amply documented by the work of Klarsfeld himself. Need it be recalled that most contemporary anti-Jewish policies were preceded by measures against foreigners and that, despite the initial differences that persecuting states often professed between so-called “national” Jews and foreign Jews, discrimination eventually became widespread?

History shows that anti-Jewish accusations, or “anti-Semyths” [a neologism coined by Marie-Anne Matard-Bonucci], are liable to be reactivated in particular contexts when certain players see them as politically useful. Need we recall that the great universalist anti-racist associations did not conceive, and rightly so, of the fight against anti-Semitism without taking into account all forms of racism? On the other hand, communitarism and competition over historical legacies, encouraged by both the Soral-Dieudonné far right and the Parti des Indigènes de la République, provide a breeding ground for identity-based hostilities….

Source: ‘Minimizing the danger the far right would represent for Jews if it came to power is naïve and dangerous’

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Hewitt: In its progress and pain, Windrush brought us the birth of modern, multicultural Britain

2024/06/24 Leave a comment

Of interest:

Being London-born of Barbadian and Indian parentage, racial difference was part of my upbringing. However, my first experiences of racism would be transmitted subliminally. I was a child of the 1970s, and programming such as The Fosters, Desmond’s and Empire Road, which portrayed the Black experience in Britain, couldn’t counteract the effects of the dominant media messaging coming from The Black and White Minstrel Show, nor overcome the persistent characterisation of Africa as the “dark continent”, and as “backward” and “savage”.

This racism came back into view with the Windrush scandal in 2018. The assertion that the affair was the unintended consequence of the hostile environment immigration policy was best countered by former Guardian columnist Gary Younge who argued that this persecution was “no accident” but rather “cruelty by design”. For Younge, a chronicler of the Black experience in Britain, the Caribbean and US, “this is not a glitch in the system. It is the system … A system cannot fail those it was never meant to protect.”

Too often, racism is perceived as bad acts perpetrated by the warped mindsets of unsavoury individuals. However, this oversimplification neglects to recognise the embedded racialised policies, procedures, practices and power relations that undermine the equity of systems and the fairness of institutions. The Home Office is one such institution where racism was embedded in its culture.

The Windrush victims found genuine sympathy among large swathes of British society. But also some resistance. There is undoubtedly a reticence among some Britons to really listen to arguments for racial justice. The reasons are many: an English tradition of avoiding uncomfortable conversations; the highly contested and polarised debates dominated by a small, vociferous group for whom colonialism was an act of benevolence; a zero-sum mindset perceiving benefits to some coming at the expense of others; and a selective memory when it comes to our colonial history – and wilful misunderstanding, too.

These rationalisations serve to place the burden of responsibility for tackling racism on to victims rather than the perpetrators – and have made it difficult for the Windrush victims to receive the justice they deserve.

Black and other minority ethnic groups are held to a different standard compared to the victims of other miscarriages of justice. Windrush victims have been required to prove their case “beyond reasonable doubt” rather than “on the balance of probabilities” in order to access compensation, with some suffering the ignominious request to undergo DNA testing to prove they are related to their immediate family. The government has also rolled back three key recommendations of the Windrush Lessons Learned Review. But I am ecstatic, as I am sure are the wider Windrush generation, that this decision was found to be unlawful in a high court ruling this month.

In 2022, I was appointed the Church of England’s director of racial justice to implement From Lament to Action, the Church’s commitment to overcoming its institutional racism. The report of the Archbishops’ Antiracism Taskforce affirmed the “urgency of now” noting: “A failure to act now will be seen as another indication, potentially a last straw for many, that the Church is not serious about racial sin.”

A journey of healing and repair has already begun. In 2020, the Church of England’s ruling body, the General Synod, issued an apology for the racismdirected at the Windrush generation, whether through direct hostility by some congregations or the absence of welcome by others, since their arrival in the 1940s and 1950s. While 69% of West Indians attended a historic denominational church in the Caribbean (Anglican, Catholic, Methodist, Presbyterian, Congregational or Baptist), only 4% of those arriving in Britain continued to worship in the same tradition.

This apology was accompanied by a statement from the archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, accepting that the church was “still deeply institutionally racist”. Since then, research has concluded into the historic linkages between the church and African chattel enslavement and a £100m Fund for Healing, Repair and Justice established, with aims to increase it to £1bn. Racial justice is not yet embedded in the church’s mission, but I can attest to the fact that we as an institution choose to stand against the evil and pernicious sin of racism. There is much work to do, but I hope we can be a model for genuine reflection on the injustices experienced by Black and ethnic minority communities in the UK – and for how true justice can be achieved.

James Baldwin, once, briefly, a neighbour of my parents in London, wrote: “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” At the heart of all racial progress in Britain must lie an acceptance that there are inequities to be challenged – the Windrush scandalproved that to be true. So let us use this day to honour those West Indians whose landing at Tilbury Docks on 22 June 1948 symbolised the birth of modern, multicultural Britain. For they, for I – for we all – belong here.

Guy Hewitt is the inaugural director of racial justice in the Church of England, a priest and former high commissioner to the UK. He was born in London and raised in Barbados

Source: In its progress and pain, Windrush brought us the birth of modern, multicultural Britain

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Chris Selley: Toronto’s Dundas debacle proves education matters, even in a pandemic

2024/06/22 Leave a comment

Valid points:

…On the latter point, especially with a world of information a mouse click away, I am very sympathetic. You can know history’s names and dates and understand nothing about it, for example, or you can draw a blank on the names and dates but have a very firm grasp of history’s overall arc and its relevance for today.

And on that point, this week, Ontario offered up a case study to show where crappy education, especially in history, can lead us. Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow’s executive committee, the last step before city council, approved plans to rename the city’s Yonge-Dundas Square — think Times Square but even more antiseptic and soulless — as Sankofa Square.

Sankofa is a Ghanaian term referring “to the act of reflecting on and reclaiming teachings from the past, enabling us to move forward together,” CBC reports. The rebranding is framed as a sort of recompense for the city having named it previously after Henry Dundas, an 18th-century abolitionist politician who, among other feats, managed to invalidate all slave contracts on Scottish soil.

But Dundas disagreed with other abolitionists on whether it was best as a practical, political matter to try to abolish slavery immediately or incrementally. And that was enough to get him cancelled in Toronto, just as Egerton Ryerson was cancelled before him on the spurious charge that he helped design an abusive residential-school system for Indigenous children.

Councillors exhibited sub-zero levels of Sankofa in debating the matter, it must be said. Coun. Chris Moisie accused one anti-renaming deputant of being a racist. Non-Black councillor Gord Perks complained that the opponents just don’t understand anti-Black racism.

Well nor does Toronto City Council, if it’s stripping an abolitionist’s name from a public square as an apology for slavery.

Education matters. It separates us from the apes and grounds us in a basic shared understanding of how the world works, and worked in the past, and it informs debate on how it should work in the future. By rights, the COVID nightmare should have produced a call to arms: Let’s get serious about education again. Some, however, seem prepared to use it to speed up a race to the bottom.

Source: Chris Selley: Toronto’s Dundas debacle proves education matters, even in a pandemic

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Yakabuski: McGill’s pro-Palestinian encampment’s ‘revolutionary’ curriculum has no place on campus

2024/06/22 Leave a comment

Yep:

…Lest you get the impression that the McGill protesters are just peaceniks in keffiyehs, consider the “revolutionary” youth summer program that the McGill chapter of SPHR launched this week at the encampment. An Instagram post touting the program included a 1970 photo of Palestinian Liberation Organization fighters, most with their faces covered and two of whom are holding assault rifles.

“We pledge to educate the youth of Montreal and redefine McGill’s ‘elite’ instutional [sic] legacy by transformining [sic] its space into one of revolutionary education,” the post said. “The daily schedule will include physical activity, Arabic language instruction, cultural crafts, political discussions, historical and revolutionary lessons.”…

Source: McGill’s pro-Palestinian encampment’s ‘revolutionary’ curriculum has no place on campus

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Chris Selley: TMU’s anti-Israel meltdown is a warning sign for Canada’s legal community

2024/06/20 Leave a comment

Cutting but all too accurate. Thanks agin to Robyn Doolittle and the Globe for the in-depth article:

….The “wording that questioned Israel’s legitimacy” was expressed in the letter as follows: “‘Israel’ is not a country.”

But … it is, though. That’s precisely what the signatories are angry about, isn’t it? This is the sort of non-argument you make through a megaphone out front of the student union when you’re, say, 19, not once you’ve invested tens of thousands of dollars in a legal education.

Some in the legal community worry about the free-speech implications of this metropolitan meltdown. On the bright side, these students have helpfully taken that concern out of play by indicating they’re happy to sign very sensitive documents that they haven’t read. There might be a place for them in future on Donald Trump’s legal team, but probably not at one of Canada’s top firms.

And hang on, what the hell is the point of a petition that isn’t public?

It’s as if these people thought they had enrolled in some kind of activist-lawyer fantasy camp, rather than an actual law school. Tough error to make, one would have thought, as it’s a bloody expensive fantasy camp: Upwards of $22,000 per annum; upwards of $25,000 if you’re from outside Ontario. How do you make it to law school not knowing actions have consequences?

Source: Chris Selley: TMU’s anti-Israel meltdown is a warning sign for Canada’s legal community

Filed under Antisemitism, Multiculturalism Tagged with , , , ,

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