Irwin Cotler: Canada needs to fundamentally rethink its approach to the Israel-Palestine conflict

2024/04/03 Leave a comment

Missed opportunity in not addressing the blockage by the current Israeli government over many years and the need for political renewal on the Israeli side and reduced political influence by religious hardliners and extremists, although I agree on how the debate reflects poorly on parliamentarians:

The debate, amendment and passing of the NDP motion on Palestine on March 18 was a perfect representation of the current state of discourse on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in Canada today: chaotic, toxic, reactive and polarized; grounded in disinformation and misrepresentations; and performative rather than productive.

From a procedural standpoint, the motion made a mockery of the parliamentary process. After hours of polarized debate, it was amended significantly. These amendments were presented with mere minutes to spare, leading to parliamentarians raising concerns about the lack of debate on the substantially changed motion. Notably, the amendments were initially tabled without any French translation, characterizing the chaotic and ad-hoc nature of the process.

The substance of the debate was similarly flawed. Members of Parliament speaking in favour of the motion consistently relied on statistics provided by the Gaza Health Ministry — an arm of Hamas, a listed terrorist group in Canada. Even the text of the motion itself relies on these flawed statistics. Sadly, this is emblematic of the preponderance of disinformation and misrepresentations in current Canadian discussions on Israel and the Palestinian territories.

The ultimate result — the adoption of a watered-down motion that served primarily to inflame sectarian tensions and incentivize the anti-democratic behaviours of a domestic mob — is representative of Canada’s unproductive, performative and harmful approach to this issue.

It is clear that Canada needs a new framework for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — one that is coherent, principled, fact-based and characterized by long-term strategic thinking; one that promotes both coexistence in Canada and peace in the Middle East.

This new framework should encompass four dimensions: (1) it must be informed by, and anchored in, the global context; (2) it must contribute to a new regional reality; (3) it must centre on justice and accountability in Israel and the Palestinian territories; and (4) it must involve responsible leadership here at home.

The first dimension is necessary because the global context plays a substantial role in shaping the conflict and our perceptions of it. We are in the midst of a new global struggle between liberal democracies and authoritarian regimes that are seeking to undermine liberal democracies and dismantle the rules-based international order.

The new authoritarian “axis of evil” — led by Iran, Russia and China — is using the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a powerful tool to further their destabilizing agenda. They are spreading Hamas propaganda and disinformation, co-opting international institutions, weaponizing international law and directly funding, arming and supporting Hamas and other terrorist groups.

This facilitates their efforts to weaken and divide liberal democracies, undermine international norms and distract the West from their ongoing crimes — including the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Uyghur genocide in China and the horrific repression of Iranian women.

This authoritarian destabilization campaign is aided by pervasive, systemic, global antisemitism, which has been used by autocrats to further their repressive ends for centuries. Antisemitism is responsible for Israel being held to higher levels of scrutiny than any other country, and enables hatred of, and lies about, Israel to spread with unparalleled ease. Canada’s new policy framework on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict must both account for, and actively counter, these harmful global factors.

The second dimension is that discourse and policy on Israel and the Palestinian territories must both acknowledge and support the new regional reality in the Middle East. The Abraham Accords provide new opportunities for working towards peace. Canada should encourage these new and potential allies to play a key role in regional peace-building.

As part of this, Arab countries must take greater responsibility for supporting and aiding the Palestinian people, rather than simply criticizing Israel. They should provide funding, humanitarian aid and other forms of assistance to Gaza and the West Bank. Arab countries should also be held accountable for their cynical treatment of Palestinians within their own countries, keeping them stateless and dispossessed as a political tool against Israel.

Crucially, Canada must also work with its regional partners to counter the malign influence of Iran and its proxies — the greatest enemies of peace in the Middle East — which are currently instigating a multi-front war against Israel, an asymmetrical dynamic that is noticeably absent from Canadian discourse.

The third dimension is the most important: ensuring justice and accountability for actors on the ground in Israel and the Palestinian territories. The status quo — for international institutions, governments, the media, human rights organizations and grassroots activists — is to hold Israel to an inequitably high threshold of accountability, while allowing the Palestinian leadership to shirk accountability altogether.

While it is true that democracies can be expected to demonstrate greater adherence to international laws and norms, it is an inversion of justice to impose stringent accountability on the lesser rule-breaker, and minimal accountability on the greater rule-breaker. Basic principles of fundamental justice demand the precise opposite — graver crimes and more persistent rule-breaking must result in greater sanctions and more accountability.

In addition to being unjust, the status quo creates perverse incentive structures that facilitate a continuous cycle of hatred and violence. Although, like any other state, Israel must be held accountable for any violations of international law, it is demonized and attacked no matter what it does, which contributes to its threat perception and domestic support for leaders who are obstacles to peace.

Hamas is able to garner global sympathy no matter how abhorrent its crimes, thus enabling its continued criminality, which culminated in the heinous mass atrocities of Oct. 7. Furthermore, Hamas is incentivized to ensure maximum Palestinian casualties and suffering, because it knows that all the blame will be placed on Israel.

This informs and emboldens Hamas’s comprehensive strategy of using its own citizens as human shields, including by placing its headquarters, weapons arsenals and rocket launchers under hospitals, next to mosques and in schools.

To bring justice and accountability, Canada must dedicate vastly more resources and energy towards holding Hamas, other Palestinian terrorist groups and the Palestinian Authority accountable for their contraventions of international law, their role in the continuation and deepening of the conflict, and their repression of their own citizens.

For Hamas, this requires more than lip-service condemnations. It requires pressure to be put on its allies in Qatar, Iran, South Africa and elsewhere; the mobilization of international legal mechanisms to put Hamas, rather than Israel, in the docket of the accused; and combating the spread of Hamas propaganda and disinformation on social media and in the mainstream media.

For the Palestinian Authority, accountability means refusing to accept its continued corruption and refusing to ignore the fact that its leader is in the 19th year of his four-year term and frequently engages in antisemitic incitement and Holocaust denial.

Accountability means ensuring that terrorism is not incentivized through the PA’s infamous “pay-for-slay” program. Accountability means the media shining a light on how Hamas and the Palestinian Authority repress their own citizens. Accountability also means putting strict conditions on funding for organizations such as UNRWA, which was not only complicit in the Oct. 7 crimes against humanity, but has indoctrinated children with hate and helped to keep Palestinians stateless for decades.

The fourth and final dimension is that of responsible leadership here at home. Responsible leadership means actively combating hatred and incitement rather than merely condemning it. A simple way for policymakers, pundits, the media and activists alike to embody responsible leadership on this charged and complicated issue is by always “starting with the endpoint.”

Hopefully, Canadians broadly agree that the ideal endpoint is: (a) peaceful coexistence in Canada, characterized by lowering tensions, reducing hate and polarization, and bridging communities; and (b) peace in the Middle East, characterized by a two-state solution, with mutual acknowledgement of each other’s legitimacy — two democratic states for two peoples.

When making statements or taking policy actions, responsible leadership means stopping to consider whether those statements or actions will bring us closer to that endpoint, or move us further away from it. Divisive and polarizing motions, such as the NDP’s opposition motion, fail this test by creating greater rifts between Canadians and perpetuating the perverse incentives that feed the cycle of hatred and violence in the Middle East.

Source: Irwin Cotler: Canada needs to fundamentally rethink its approach to the Israel-Palestine conflict

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Poilievre wades into Middle East conflict during speech to Montreal-area synagogue

2024/04/03 Leave a comment

More fulsome account of CPC leader Poilievre’s views on Israel, Palestine, Gaza/Hamas that let to the CP analysis of political fall-out with Canadian Muslims (‘We won’t forget’: How Muslims view Pierre Poilievre’s stance on Israel-Hamas war):

It can be one of the thorniest issues for Canadian politicians — highly divisive and filled with decades of fighting, with potential for political blowback from one side or the other.

While conflict has raged in the Middle East in recent months, federal Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has tended to focus on bread-and-butter domestic issues, such as inflation and the Liberal government’s carbon tax.

In the House of Commons, Poilievre has referred to Israel or Gaza only a handful of times.

However, during a speech at a Montreal-area synagogue last week, Poilievre provided one of the most comprehensive glimpses since becoming Conservative leader of his relationship with Israel, his views on the conflict in the Middle East and the history of the Jewish people.

His speech at Beth Israel Beth Aaron Congregation — an Orthodox synagogue in Côte Saint-Luc, Que. — also potentially foreshadows the approach a Poilievre government would take on issues such as the Middle East, which he described as a difficult question, and antisemitism.

Officials from Poilievre’s office have not yet responded to requests from CBC News for comment.

The synagogue is located in Liberal MP Anthony Housefather’s riding of Mount Royal. Housefather, a longtime Liberal who is Jewish, is currently reflecting on his future in the party after most of his fellow caucus members voted on March 18 in favour of a controversial but non-binding NDP motion to work toward the recognition of the State of Palestine as part of a negotiated two-state solution.

Conservatives, three Liberals, including Housefather, and independent MP Kevin Vuong voted against the motion.

Speech gets standing ovation

At the March 26 event at the Quebec synagogue, Poilievre was introduced as the “next prime minister of Canada.” A video of the event that was shot by a member of the audience, who allowed CBC News to view it, shows Poilievre’s 33-minute speech peppered by applause and standing ovations. Conservative MP Melissa Lantsman, the party’s deputy leader, later posted video of the speech to YouTube.

The event provided a showcase for Poilievre’s knowledge of Jewish religion and culture. He recounted the story of Purim, where the Jewish people refused to relinquish their religion, and sprinkled his speech with familiar expressions, referring to himself as “a simple goy from the Prairies.”

Poilievre recounted his hitchhiking trip to Israel in his youth and the impressions it left on him — such as participating in a Shabbat in Betar and hearing songs being sung in Hebrew.

“The Jewish people are the only people I know of who, in the same language, worship the same faith on the same land in the same country as they did 3,000 years ago. That is a true indigenous people,” Poilievre said to applause and cheers.

Israelis and Palestinians both maintain that they are indigenous to the area.

Poilievre talked about staying in a kibbutz near Ein Gedi, a historic site and nature reserve located near Masada and the Dead Sea — then standing in the Golan Heights in the north, watching missiles being fired from Lebanon.

“We literally witnessed with our own eyes Hezbollah lobbing missiles into northern Israel and the courageous IDF forces flying back into south Lebanon to retaliate against the attack,” he said.

The Canadian government does not recognize permanent Israeli control over the Golan Heights.

Poilievre said when he returned to Canada, he helped launch “a full-scale campaign to criminalize Hezbollah.”

Palestinians ‘a chess piece in an evil chess game’

As he has done in recent months, Poilievre blamed the Oct. 7 attacks in Israel on Iran, saying it has been occupying Gaza through its intermediary, Hamas, and wanted to prevent peace accords.

About 1,200 people were killed in the Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel and about 250 people were taken hostage, according to Israeli tallies. More than 32,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed during Israel’s military response since then, health officials in the territory say.

“It was the fear that discord would come to an end and that hope would take root that most terrified the regime in Iran,” Poilievre told the audience. “And so, they orchestrated the attack. The Hamas leaders travelled to Tehran. They got funding and weapons from Tehran and ultimately co-ordination.”

Duration 1:17Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, asked about civilian deaths in Gaza, said Israel has the right to defend itself and Hamas is ‘in violation of international law by using human shields.’

“I’m sorry, but I refuse to believe that rag-tag terrorists in Gaza were able to accumulate all of those weapons and all of that intelligence and co-ordination on their own,” the Conservative leader said to applause. “This was an outside job.”

Poilievre repeated his past call for Canada to ban Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, saying it was responsible for the downing in 2020 of a Ukraine International Airlines plane that killed 55 Canadian citizens and 30 Canadian permanent residents.

“This group operates legally on Canadian territory,” he said. “It can recruit, co-ordinate, mobilize, fundraise legally on Canadian soil over three years after they murdered 55 of our citizens.”

Poilievre said his heart goes out to the families of dispossessed Palestinians, saying the “Palestinian people have been made by the Iranian regime and other dictators in the regime, in the region, into a chess piece in an evil chess game.”

“I understand why the political pressures are high, and I understand why our Muslim friends and neighbours are suffering and are legitimately speaking out for the suffering of their loved ones in Gaza and in the West Bank.”

Poilievre told the audience he says the same things in mosques as he does in synagogues: “I love meeting with the Muslim people. They are wonderful people. When the issue of Israel comes up, I say, ‘I’m going to be honest with you. I am a friend of the State of Israel, and I will be a friend of the State of Israel everywhere I go.'”

Poilievre wants UN relief agency to be defunded

Poilievre accused Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of delivering different messages to different groups for political gain.

“He sends one group into synagogues to say one thing, and then he sends another group of MPs into mosques to say precisely the opposite.”

Poilievre said he believes in a negotiated two-state solution, with Palestinians and Israel living in peace and harmony. He said a Conservative government would stand up for Israel’s right to defend itself and would reject any motions or resolutions at the United Nations that it believes unfairly target Israel.

The Canadian government should defund the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) and ensure that “Canadian aid actually goes to the suffering Palestinian people and not to those promoting terrorism in UNRWA,” he said.

“We, as a rule, around the world, common-sense Conservatives under my leadership will be cutting back foreign aid to terrorist dictators and multinational bureaucracies and using the money to rebuild the Canadian Armed Forces.”

Poilievre pledged to “remove the bureaucracy and streamline the funding” for the federal government program that funds security infrastructure for places of worship and to “defund antisemitism.”

“We will go line by line through all the groups that get dollars from the federal government, and we will defund every single one of those that promote antisemitism in our country.”

Poilievre recalled a trip he made to Auschwitz, a concentration and extermination camp primarily for Jews that was run by Nazi Germany in Poland during the Second World War, and said it left him in tears. In April 2009, when he was parliamentary secretary to then-prime minister Stephen Harper, Poilievre attended the Conference Against Racism, Discrimination and Persecution in Geneva, and also visited Auschwitz and Birkenau to commemorate the victims of the Holocaust.

He praised the resilience of the Jewish people.

“I don’t know what the world will bring tomorrow. I don’t know, much less 100 years from now. But I do know this, that a thousand years from now, whatever is going on, on Fridays, as the sun goes down, there will be a Shabbat in Israel,” Poilievre said to a standing ovation. “Those songs will be sung. The Jewish people will go on.”

Source: Poilievre wades into Middle East conflict during speech to Montreal-area synagogue

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Dave Snow: The federal government is spending millions on equity, diversity, and inclusion research

2024/04/03 Leave a comment

Informative data-based analysis of SSHRC funding for its Race, Diversity and Gender Initiative, revealing an overtly ideological and activist social justice and equity agenda:

…A year before, SSHRC awarded $19.2 million in funding for 46 grants of up to $450,000 for its Race, Diversity, and Gender Initiative to create partnerships to study disadvantaged groups. The program description encouraged projects that seek to “achieve greater justice and equity,” and its list of “possible research topics” included questions such as “How can cisgender and straight masculinity be reinvented for a gender-equitable world?” and “Which mechanisms perpetuate White privilege and how can such privilege best be challenged?” The language used in these new grants denotes the clearest shift yet towards more activist priorities in federal research grant funding.

SSHRC data on EDI

To determine whether the “hard” EDI of social justice activism has had a real effect on the types of projects that received funding for SSHRC grants, I conducted a content analysis of the titles of 680 grants awarded under four programs between 2022-23, the latter two of which are explicitly EDI-focused: 

  1. Insight Grants announced in 2023, which “support research excellence in the social sciences and humanities,” valued between $7,000 and $400,000 over five years. (504 total)
  2. Partnership Engage Grants announced in 2023, which provide short-term support for a partnership with a “single partner organization from the public, private or not-for-profit sector,” valued between $7,000 and $25,000 for one year. (100 total)
  3. Knowledge Synthesis Grants to study “Shifting Dynamics of Privilege and Marginalization” announced in 2023, valued at $30,000 for one year. (30 total)
  4. Race, Gender, and Diversity Initiative grants announced in 2022, which support partnerships “on issues relating to systemic racism and discrimination of underrepresented and disadvantaged groups,” valued at “up to $450,000” over three years. (46 total)

First, I categorized each grant recipient according to whether their project title was clearly adopting a critical activist perspective (if there was any uncertainty, it was categorized as “no”). 

I then categorized each grant according to which EDI identity markers the projects covered—Indigenous Peoples, women/gender, LGBTQ+, race, and disability (including mental health). 

As Table 1 shows, the contrast between the two “traditional” grants and the two new EDI-focused grants was striking. Fully one-third of grants in the Race, Gender, and Diversity initiative focused on Indigenous Peoples, and 30 percent mentioned race or racism (compared with 3 percent and 1 percent of the Insight Grants). 

The disparity is especially pronounced when you compare the Race, Gender, and Diversity grants to the Insight Grants, where there was an 11-1 ratio in the proportion of grants awarded on the topic of Indigenous peoples (33 percent versus 3 percent). There was also a 30-1 ratio in the proportion of grants awarded on the topic of race (30 percent versus 1 percent).

Graphic credit: Janice Nelson

It might seem obvious that the two EDI-focused grants produced so many recipients with explicitly activist titles (63 percent compared with 9 percent of traditional grants). Yet it didn’t need to be this way. Examples of non-activist titles of Race, Gender, and Diversity Initiative recipients included “Understanding Race and Racism in Immigration Detention” and “Open-Access Education Resources in Deaf Education Electronic Books as Pedagogy and Curriculum.” One can study marginalized communities without engaging in social justice activism. 

However, most of the EDI-focused grants awarded left no doubt as to the type of research that would be undertaken. Choice titles included:

  • “‘So what do we do now?’: Moving intersectionality from academic theory to recreation-based praxis” ($450,000 grant awarded)
  • “Queering Leadership, Indigenizing Governance: Building Intersectional Pathways for Two Spirit, Trans, and Queer Communities to Lead Social and Institutional Change” ($446,000 grant awarded)
  • “Carceral Intersections of Gender Identity, Sexual Orientation and Trans Experience in Confronting Anti-Black Racism and Structural Violence in the Prisoner Reentry Industrial Complex” ($400,075 grant awarded)

In addition to grant titles, I also examined SSHRC’s diversity data on grant recipients from “underrepresented groups” for all major grants in SSHRC’s own EDI dashboard. This included Insight Grants, Insight Development Grants, Partnership Grants, and Connection Grants contained in SSHRCs (diversity data for the two new EDI-focused grants described above were not available). 

Table 2 provides these numbers alongside SSHRC’s equity targets for 2024/2025 and the groups’ proportion of Canadian university faculty as of 2019. Numbers in red show “under-performance” in the applicant-recipient ratio and SSHRC’s own targets.

Graphic credit: Janice Nelson

Four things are notable. First, only one of SSHRC’s four target groups (visible minority applicants) has been underrepresented in terms of the applicant-recipient ratio. Second, while women are the only group who have exceeded SSHRC’s equity target, the percentage of recipients has been growing rapidly for visible minority applicants and persons with a disability. Third, no target group is underrepresented relative to its proportion of university faculty members, with women (56 percent of recipients) especially outperforming their faculty proportion (49 percent). Finally, Indigenous grant recipients (2 percent) are underrepresented relative to their proportion of the overall population (5 percent), but not relative to their proportion of university faculty members.

Damaging the pursuit of truth

The above analysis leads me to three broad conclusions. First, while the language of EDI has permeated SSHRC, the federal agency oscillates between the “soft” EDI of affirmative action and the “hard” EDI of critical social justice activism. Most of the time, SSHRC focuses on achieving “equity targets” and frames EDI as complementary to research excellence. However, SSHRC’s new EDI-themed grants explicitly adopt activist language, and it is little wonder that those awards have been dominated by activist projects.  

Second, when it comes to the “soft” EDI of affirmative action, SSHRC’s policies are clearly having their intended effect for all groups except Indigenous Peoples. The number of grants awarded to women, visible minority applicants, and persons with a disability is rising. Grants are being awarded to members of these three groups at a proportion equal to or greater than their share of university faculty, and in the case of women, well above their share of the overall population. At this rate, it will soon be inaccurate for SSHRC to refer to “underrepresented groups” when it comes to prestigious national grants.

Finally, the “hard” EDI of critical social justice activism poses the biggest threat to SSHRC’s commitment to research excellence. While there are important critiques of the effects of “soft” EDI of affirmative action, it does not necessarily pose the same existential threat to research excellence. But the “hard” EDI of critical social justice activism is utterly incompatible with the objective pursuit of truth. One need only skim the titles of grants awarded under SSHRC’s two new EDI-focused initiatives to see how far they have strayed from the objective, empirical knowledge creation that we expect our national granting agencies to fund. Ironically, the more an award is pitched in terms of “diversity,” the less intellectually diverse the recipients seem to be. Thankfully, such activist research remains primarily confined to the new (and for now temporary) EDI-focused grants. 

If the federal government wants universities to keep the public’s trust, it should avoid any future activist-themed grants and ensure that granting agencies eschew social justice priorities. Federal granting agencies using taxpayer dollars should be explicit that their primary commitment is to promote excellence via the creation and dissemination of objective, falsifiable research knowledge. The university is supposed to function as a system of knowledge production. Policies that openly tie research to activist political ends threaten to undermine that very system.

Source: Dave Snow: The federal government is spending millions on equity, diversity, and inclusion research

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Sunstein: The Nobel Prize-Winning Professor Who Liked to Collaborate With His Adversaries

2024/04/02 Leave a comment

More on Kahneman and his all too rare enthusiasm for collaborating with intellectual adversaries.

One of the lessons I drew from my experience in working under the former Conservative government was the dangers and limitations of living in an intellectual and ideological bubble. Ironically, the process repeated itself while writing Policy Arrogance or Innocent Bias) working with Gilles Paquet and Robin Higham, as they tended to ascribe most if not all of the blame to public servants, rather than the more nuanced view of respective political and bureaucratic dynamics and responsibilities (in the end, I self-published given they wanted their perspective to prevail).

A similar effort took place with respect to birth tourism, where academics Jamie Chai Yun Liew, Megan Gaucher and I submitted a research proposal to further study the practice, which was rejected by the funding council with Megan subsequently successfully obtaining funding on her own for a separate proposal focussing on the discourse around birth tourism.

So, from personal experience, much easier to work with the like-minded but I learned from these efforts to work with others. But I do try to ensure that my networks and readings include those who I do not necessarily agree with, recognizing I need to be challenged and can always learn from others:

Our all-American belief that money really does buy happiness is roughly correct for about 85 percent of us. We know this thanks to the latest and perhaps final work of Daniel Kahneman, the Nobel Prize winner who insisted on the value of working with those with whom we disagree.

Professor Kahneman, who died last week at the age of 90, is best known for his pathbreaking explorations of human judgment and decision-making, and of how people deviate from perfect rationality. He should also be remembered for a living and working philosophy that has never been more relevant: his enthusiasm for collaborating with his intellectual adversaries. This enthusiasm was deeply personal. He experienced real joy working with others to discover the truth, even if he learned that he was wrong (something that often delighted him).

Back to that finding, published last year, that for a strong majority of us, more is better when it comes to money. In 2010, Professor Kahneman and the Princeton economist Angus Deaton (also a Nobel Prize winner) published a highly influential essay that found that on average higher-income groups show higher levels of happiness — but only to a point. Beyond a threshold at or below $90,000, Professor Kahneman and Professor Deaton found, there is no further progress in average happiness as income increases.

Eleven years later, Matthew Killingsworth, a senior fellow at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, found exactly the opposite: People with higher income reported higher levels of average happiness. Period. The more money people have, the happier they are likely to be.

What gives? You could imagine some furious exchange in which Professor Kahneman and Professor Deaton made sharp objections to Dr. Killingsworth’s paper, to which Dr. Killingsworth answered equally sharply, leaving readers confused and exhausted.

Professor Kahneman saw such a dynamic as “angry science,” which he described as a “nasty world of critiques, replies and rejoinders,” and “as a contest, where the aim is to embarrass.” As Professor Kahneman put it, those who live in that nasty world offer “a summary caricature of the target position, refute the weakest argument in that caricature, and declare the total destruction of the adversary’s position.” In his account, angry science is “a demeaning experience.” That dynamic might sound familiar, particularly in our politics.

Instead, Professor Kahneman favored an alternative that he termed “adversarial collaboration.” When people who disagree work together to test a hypothesis, they are involved in a common endeavor. They are trying not to win, but to figure out what’s true. They might even become friends.

In that spirit, Professor Kahneman, well into his 80s, asked Dr. Killingsworth to collaborate, with the help of a friendly arbiter, Professor Barbara Mellers, an influential and widely admired psychologist. Their task was to look closely at Dr. Killingsworth’s data to see whether he had analyzed it properly, and also to understand what, if anything, had been missed by Professor Kahneman and Professor Deaton.

Their central conclusion was simple. Dr. Killingsworth missed a threshold effect in his data that affected only one group: the least happy 15 percent. For these largely unhappy people, average happiness does grow with rising income, up to a level of around $100,000; but it stops growing after that. For a majority of us, by contrast, average happiness keeps growing with increases in income.

Both sides were partly right and partly wrong. Their adversarial collaboration showed that the real story is more interesting and more complicated than anyone saw individually.

Professor Kahneman engaged in a number of adversarial collaborations, with varying degrees of success. His first (and funniest) try was with his wife, the distinguished psychologist Anne Treisman. Their disagreement never did get resolved (Dr. Treisman passed away in 2018). Each of them was able to explain away the results of their experiments — a tribute to what Professor Kahneman called “the stubborn persistence of challenged beliefs.” Still, adversarial collaborations sometimes do produce both agreement and truth, and Professor Kahneman added that “a common feature of all my experiences has been that the adversaries ended up on friendlier terms than they started.”

Professor Kahneman meant both to encourage better science and to strengthen the better angels of our nature. In academic life, adversarial collaborations hold great value. We could easily imagine a situation in which adversaries routinely collaborated to see if they could resolve disputes about the health effects of air pollutants, the consequences of increases in the minimum wage, the harms of climate change or the deterrent effects of the death penalty.

And the idea can be understood more broadly. In fact, the United States Constitution should be seen as an effort to create the conditions for adversarial collaboration. Before the founding, it was often thought that republics could work only if people were relatively homogeneous — if they were broadly in agreement with one another. Objecting to the proposed Constitution, the pseudonymous antifederalist Brutus emphasized this point: “In a republic, the manners, sentiments and interests of the people should be similar. If this be not the case, there will be a constant clashing of opinions; and the representatives of one part will be continually striving against those of the other.”

Those who favored the Constitution thought that Brutus had it exactly backward. In their view, the constant clashing of opinions was something not to fear but to welcome, at least if people collaborate — if they act as if they are engaged in a common endeavor. Sounding a lot like Professor Kahneman, Alexander Hamilton put it this way: “The differences of opinion, and the jarrings of parties” in the legislative department of the government “often promote deliberation and circumspection, and serve to check excesses in the majority.”

Angry science is paralleled by angry democracy, a “nasty world of critiques, replies and rejoinders,” whose “aim is to embarrass.” That’s especially true, of course, in the midst of political campaigns, when the whole point is to win.

Still, the idea of adversarial collaboration has never been more important. Within organizations of all kinds — including corporations, nonprofits, think tanks and government agencies — sustained efforts should be made to lower the volume by isolating the points of disagreement and specifying tests to establish what’s right. Asking how a disagreement might actually be resolved tends to turn enemies, focused on winning and losing, into teammates, focused on truth.

As usual, Professor Kahneman was right. We could use a lot more of that. 

Source: The Nobel Prize-Winning Professor Who Liked to Collaborate With His Adversaries

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‘We won’t forget’: How Muslims view Pierre Poilievre’s stance on Israel-Hamas war

2024/04/01 Leave a comment

We shall see, look forwards to any comments on my analysis of the possible impact:

….The National Council of Canadian Muslims and dozens of Muslim organizations, mosques and groups signed an open letter to MPs ahead of Ramadan, asking them to stay away from events during the holy month if they couldn’t commit to taking several stances, including support for an immediate ceasefire and condemning some of the actions of Israeli forces.

When asked about Polievre’s outreach this year, Conservative spokesman Sebastian Skamski said Poilievre has articulated a clear position that Israel has a right to defend itself and that Palestinians need humanitarian relief “as a result of the war that Hamas has started.”

Andrew Griffith, a former director of multiculturalism policy for the federal government, said while Muslims are not a monolithic group, it’s likely Poilievre’s loud pro-Israel stance will cause some people to turn from the party, including in key ridings around Toronto.

However, he said, given the current polling numbers, it would be unlikely to do much damage to Conservative fortunes when the next election rolls around.

Skamski also pointed to a speech Poilievre delivered Tuesday in Montreal to the Beth Israel Beth Aaron Jewish congregation, where he addressed the matter head-on.

“I want you to know,” Poilievre the crowd, “I say all of these things in mosques. I do go to mosques. I love meeting with the Muslim people, they are wonderful people.”

He went on to say that when the issue of Israel is raised, “I say, ‘I’m going to be honest with you — I’m a friend of the state of Israel and I will be a friend of the state of Israel everywhere I go.'”

That runs counter to the approach taken by Justin Trudeau, continued Poilievre, accusing the prime minister of muddying the government’s position.

“While it might make for good politics to have one individual MP who says the right thing in order to get a seat back and keep Justin Trudeau in power, it does not solve the problem of having Canada take a right and principled position,” he said.

Skamski said Poilievre has met with thousands of Muslim Canadians during his team as leader and has connected on their shared values of “faith, family and freedom.”

“You can’t talk to Muslim Canadians about faith, about family values, all of those things, while at the same time turning a blind eye to 30,000 dead,” Tahir said, referring to the number of people killed in Gaza since Israel began bombarding the territory in October.

Tahir said many were disappointed in Poilievre’s opposition to funding the UN aid agency UNRWA….

Source: ‘We won’t forget’: How Muslims view Pierre Poilievre’s stance on Israel-Hamas war

Filed under Multiculturalism, Politics Tagged with , , , , , ,

How African Immigrants Have Revived a Remote Corner of Quebec

2024/04/01 Leave a comment

Nice story from rural Quebec, undermining some of the common narratives:

Not long ago, the handful of African immigrants in Rouyn-Noranda, a remote city in northern Quebec, all knew one another.

There was the Nigerian woman long married to a Québécois man. The odd researchers from Cameroon or the Ivory Coast. And, of course, the doyen, a Congolese chemist who first made a name for himself driving a Zamboni at hockey games.

Today, newcomers from Africa are everywhere — in the streets, supermarkets, factories, hotels, even at the church-basement boxing club.

A couple from Benin has taken over Chez Morasse, a city institution that introduced a greasy spoon favorite, poutine, to this region. And women from several corners of West and Central Africa were chatting at the city’s new African grocery store, Épicerie Interculturelle.

“Since last year, it’s like the gate of hell or the gate of heaven, something opened, and everybody just kept trooping in — I’ve never seen so many Africans in my life,” Folake Lawanson Savard, 51, the Nigerian whose husband is Québécois, said to loud laughter in the store.

Rouyn-Noranda’s transformation followed a surge of immigrants Canada has allowed in as temporary workers in recent years to address widespread labor shortages. Many have been able to eventually turn their temporary status into permanent residency, the final step before citizenship.

The influx of immigrants has also raised concerns, contributing to the nation’s housing crisis and straining public services in some areas, leading the government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to announce plans to rein in their numbers.

The increase has created African communities in the unlikeliest places in the French-speaking province of Quebec. Some are working in logging in boreal forests. Others, after becoming permanent residents or citizens, are government workers in Indigenous towns accessible only by boat or small propeller planes.

While African immigrants have long lived in the province’s large cities, the newcomers are a recent phenomenon in rural areas.

Driven by a graying population and declining birthrates, the labor shortage has drawn many from Francophone Africa to Quebec, including to Rouyn-Noranda, a mining city of 42,000 people about 90 minutes north of Montreal — by plane.

Across Canada, the number of temporary residents, a category that includes foreign workers but also foreign students and asylum seekers, has soared in recent years. It has doubled in the past two years alone to 2.7 million, out of Canada’s total population of 41 million.

Canada’s immigration policy has traditionally focused on attracting highly educated and skilled immigrants.

But many temporary foreign workers are now being hired by companies for less skilled jobs in manufacturing and the service industry, fueling debates about whether they will contribute as much to Canada’s economy as past immigrants did.

Rouyn-Noranda’s once tiny African population was made up of individuals who were hired for technical positions in the mining industry or as researchers at the local university.

“We had professors and engineers,” said Valentin Brin, the director of La Mosaïque, a private organization that helps new immigrants. “And then there was a shift.”

The shift occurred partly because of the city government’s decision in 2021 to increase efforts to help local companies recruit foreign workers, said Mariève Migneault, the director of the Local Development Center, the city’s economic development arm.

“Our companies were suffering from such a shortage of workers that it was slowing down Rouyn-Noranda’s economic development,” Ms. Migneault said.

For G5, a family-owned company that owns and operates hotels and restaurants in the city, the pool of local workers had been shrinking for years, said Tatiana Gabrysz, who oversees the company’s two hotels. Young people were more drawn to highly paid mining jobs.

Immigrants, most from Colombia, are soon expected to make up about 10 percent of the company’s 200-person work force, Ms. Gabrysz said, adding that they allowed the company to operate without constantly worrying about staff shortages.

“It’s changed my life,” Ms. Gabrysz said.

Precise numbers are difficult to find, but Africans are believed to make up the largest group of temporary foreign workers in the city. About 4,000 to 4,500 temporary foreign workers are now in the Rouyn-Noranda region, following a sharp increase since 2021, according to the Local Development Center.

When Aimé Pingi arrived in the region from the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2008, Africans were so few that they all were able to know one another….

Source: How African Immigrants Have Revived a Remote Corner of Quebec

Filed under Immigration, Integration, Multiculturalism Tagged with

Coyne: On foreign interference, Canada has been a sitting duck

2024/04/01 Leave a comment

Sadly true:

..Representatives of the various diaspora communities most affected – Chinese, Russian, Iranian, Indian – testified of the threats, violence and other coercive tactics to which they have been subjected by agents of their respective countries of origin, including threats against family members still there.

More to the point, they testified of the indifference and inaction that greeted them when they sought the protection of Canadian authorities: the police officers who told them there was nothing they could do, the political parties who refused to take up their cause, the governments that appeared to actively collude in their repression – from the City of Ottawa banning protests outside the Chinese embassy to the federal Immigration department granting residency permits to former high-ranking officials in the Iranian regime….

Source: On foreign interference, Canada has been a sitting duck

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

Next U.S. census will have new boxes for ‘Middle Eastern or North African,’ ‘Latino’

2024/04/01 Leave a comment

Overdue. Good discussion of some of the issues involved:

On the next U.S. census and future federal government forms, the list of checkboxes for a person’s race and ethnicity is officially getting longer.

The Biden administration has approved proposals for a new response option for “Middle Eastern or North African” and a “Hispanic or Latino” box that appears under a reformatted question that asks: “What is your race and/or ethnicity?”

Going forward, participants in federal surveys will be presented with at least seven “race and/or ethnicity” categories, along with instructions that say: “Select all that apply.”

After years of research and discussion by federal officials for a complicated review process that goes back to 2014, the decision was announced Thursday in a Federal Register notice, which was made available for public inspection before its official publication.

Officials at the White House’s Office of Management and Budget revived these Obama-era proposals after they were shelved by the Trump administration. Supporters of these changes say they could help the racial and ethnic data used to redraw maps of voting districts, enforce civil rights protections and guide policymaking and research better reflect people’s identities today.

“These revisions will enhance our ability to compare information and data across federal agencies, and also to understand how well federal programs serve a diverse America,” Karin Orvis, U.S. chief statistician within OMB, said in a blog post.

Most people living in the U.S. are not expected to see the changes on the census until forms for the next once-a-decade head count of the country’s residents are distributed in 2030.

But a sea change is coming as federal agencies — plus many state and local governments and private institutions participating in federal programs — figure out how to update their forms and databases in order to meet the U.S. government’s new statistical standards.

Federal agencies that release data about race and ethnicity are required to each turn in a public action plan to OMB by late September 2025 and get all of their surveys and statistics in line with the new requirements by late March 2029.

The “White” definition has changed, and “Latino” is now a “race and/or ethnicity”

OMB’s decision to change its statistical standards on race and ethnicity for the first time in more than a quarter-century also marks a major shift in the U.S. government’s definition of “White,” which no longer includes people who identify with Middle Eastern or North African groups such as Egyptian, Iranian, Iraqi, Israeli, Jordanian, Kurdish, Lebanese, Moroccan, Palestinian, Syrian and Yemeni.

That move sets up “Middle Eastern or North African” as the first completely new racial or ethnic category to be required on federal government forms since officials first issued in 1977 standards on racial and ethnic data that the Census Bureau and other federal agencies must follow.

For more than three decades, advocates for Arab Americans and other MENA groups have campaigned for their own checkbox on the U.S. census and other government forms, and recent research suggests that many people of MENA descent do not see themselves as white, a category that the federal government previously considered to include people with “origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa.”

Studies by the bureau show that the government’s previous standards have also been out of step with many Latinos. Those standards required asking about a person’s Hispanic or Latino identity — which the federal government considers to be an ethnicity that can be any race — before asking about their racial identity.

Combining a question about Hispanic origins with a question about race into one question, while allowing people to check as many boxes as they want, is likely to lower the share of Latinos who mark the “Some other race” categoryon census forms, the bureau’s research from 2015 suggests.

Recent research, however, suggests it’s not clear how someone who identifies as Afro Latino is likely to respond to a combined race-ethnicity question. According to the Federal Register notice, about half of participants in a recent study for OMB selected only the “Hispanic or Latino” box when presented with a combined question after previously selecting both the Latino and Black categories.

This new question format, along with the addition of a “Middle Eastern or North African” box, could also decrease the number of people who mark the “White” box.

Other changes coming to federal forms

Among the other proposals OMB has greenlit is a general requirement for federal agencies to ask for detailed responses about people’s identities beyond the seven minimum racial and ethnic categories. This change, advocates say, will produce more insightful statistics about differences in health care outcomes and socioeconomic disparities within the minimum categories.

OMB has also approved removing from its standards outdated language about allowing “Negro” as a term to describe the “Black” category and “Far East” to describe a geographic region of origin for people of Asian descent, which, according to the U.S. government’s revised definition, now includes individuals “with origins in any of the original peoples of Central or East Asia, Southeast Asia, or South Asia.”

The federal government’s new definitions of the seven minimum racial and ethnic categories list the six largest groups, based on 2020 census results, that the government considers to be part of that category. For example, its definition of “Black or African American” now reads: “Individuals with origins in any of the Black racial groups of Africa, including, for example, African American, Jamaican, Haitian, Nigerian, Ethiopian, and Somali.”

For the standards’ official description for “American Indian or Alaska Native,” OMB is removing a phrase about maintaining “tribal affiliation or community attachment.” The revised definition says: “Individuals with origins in any of the original peoples of North, Central, and South America, including, for example, Navajo Nation, Blackfeet Tribe of the Blackfeet Indian Reservation of Montana, Native Village of Barrow Inupiat Traditional Government, Nome Eskimo Community, Aztec, and Maya.”

OMB decided not to move forward with calls to require agencies to gather data to better understand the descendants of enslaved people originally from Africa, which included suggestions to use “American Descendants of Slavery” or “American Freedman” to describe the group. OMB said in the Federal Register notice that “further research is needed,” adding that there was opposition to this proposal from civil rights groups and others because of concerns over “the difficulty of verifying that identification is accurate, the usefulness or necessity of the data, the exclusion of other groups of historically enslaved people, and the creation of confusion that could make the Black or African American community harder to count.”

A changing conversation about race and ethnicity

OMB says it plans to create a standing committee to formally review these standards at least once a decade going forward. Among the key questions OMB says the committee may review is how to encourage people to select multiple categories when appropriate so that there are complete and accurate estimates about groups such as Afro Latinos.

While the revised standards go into many minute details about how surveys and data tables should be presented, there are many unanswered questions.

It’s not clear, for example, how the federal government will consider people who identify as MENA when monitoring and enforcing civil rights. OMB’s previous guidance, which was rescinded Thursday, used the earlier “White” definition, which included people with roots in the Middle East or North Africa and was not categorized as a “minority race” that would face “disparate impact or discriminatory patterns.” The new standards offer no new guidance about which specific groups the government considers to be a “minority race.”

Still, changes to how the government asks about people’s identities could also reset the national conversation about race and ethnicity.

Some critics of using one question to ask about both a person’s race and ethnicity, including researchers behind a campaign called “Latino Is Not A Race,” have raised concerns about blurring the distinctions between the two concepts.

In response to OMB’s decision, the AfroLatino Coalition called for the Census Bureau to do more research about how these changes will affect how Afro Latinos report their identities, including those in Puerto Rico.

“By listing Latino ethnicity as co-equal with racial categories, Latinos are inaccurately portrayed as a population without racial differences despite all the research showing how Black Latinos are treated differently from other Latinos,” the coalition said in a statement. “Separating ethnicity from race is essential for making visible the actual and intersectional racial disparities that exist within a racially diverse ethnic group like Latinos in access to important public goods such as access to education, employment, housing, medical services, etc. Without it, systemic racism, especially when discussing Latino populations, is rendered invisible.”

The introduction of a “Middle Eastern or North African” category may reopen unresolved questions and tensions over the fact that the Middle East and North Africa are regions with no universally agreed-upon borders and with transnational groups.

OMB received public feedback in support of including Armenian, Somali and Sudanese among MENA groups, but it said in its Federal Register notice that the Census Bureau’s research has found that most people who identify with those groups did not select a MENA checkbox when presented with one. “Additional research is needed on these groups to monitor their preferred identification,” OMB added in the notice. Many advocates of a MENA category, including the Arab American Institute, have criticized the bureau’s previous research for not specifically testing “Middle Eastern or North African” as an ethnic category whose members can be of any race.

Maya Berry, the Arab American Institute’s executive director, says after decades of campaigning for a MENA checkbox on federal forms, OMB’s announcement made Thursday “a pretty significant and big day.”

“The fact that Arab-Americans have been rendered invisible and other populations from MENA have been rendered invisible without that checkbox has really been harmful to communities,” Berry says.

But at the same time, Berry says she is concerned that the example groups representing the MENA category in OMB’s new definition for “Middle Eastern or North African” do not represent the full racial and geographic diversity of MENA communities in the U.S., including those from Black diaspora communities. That, in turn, could discourage some people with roots in the Middle East or North Africa from selecting the MENA box, Berry worries.

“I didn’t want to go from being rendered invisible to being undercounted,” she adds.

How OMB decided which groups have to be represented in the checkboxes under the racial and ethnic categories on forms has also drawn criticism from Meeta Anand, senior director of the census and data equity program at The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.

“We are concerned that the Office of Management and Budget has already specified the required detailed categories prior to engaging in the due diligence, research, and testing as to what would elicit inclusive and accurate responses for those who identify with more than one racial or ethnic category,” Anand said in a statement.

More work is needed, says Arturo Vargas, a longtime census watcher, who is the CEO of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials Educational Fund.

“There is going to be a significant need for a public education effort going forward by the Census Bureau and all federal agencies that collect data on race and ethnicity so that all respondents to surveys understand what is being asked,” Vargas adds. “The Census Bureau needs to continue testing to see how people are interpreting this question so that the question can be improved over the short term, so that we have the best ideal question possible when we get to the 2030 decennial.”

OMB announced the last major changes to its standards in 1997, when it approved allowing survey participants to report more than one race and splitting the “Asian or Pacific Islander” category into “Asian” and “Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander,” which OMB has now shortened by removing the word “Other.”

Source: Next U.S. census will have new boxes for ‘Middle Eastern or North African,’ ‘Latino’

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

Chait: Does the Left Think Young Left-Wing Protesters Matter or Not?

2024/04/01 Leave a comment

This week, The Atlantic published an account of how the war between Israel and Hamas has convulsed a campus (in this case, that of the author, Stanford sophomore Theo Baker). The most explosive details in the story showed activists endorsing violence or anti-Semitism, which has fed directly into the cycle of anger and fear felt by both Jewish and Muslim students.

This has predictably set off the same progressive eye-rolling that occurs any time the mainstream media reports on crazy things happening on the left. “Incredibly brave for the son of the NYT White House correspondent to put out a piece narcing on his fellow students and teachers,” snarked Daniel Boguslaw, a reporter at the Intercept, a staunchly anti-Israel publication. (Baker is the son of two successful journalists, though he made his reputation breaking a scandal that toppled Stanford’s president.) Numerous complaints described Baker as a “snitch” picking on unimportant targets.

The argument that nobody should pay attention to what left-wing radicals are saying on campus is totally at odds with the message that progressives have been frantically sending since almost immediately after October 7. A slew of stories has covered the anger felt by the young progressive left at the Biden administration. Those stories have been filled with pleas from organizers that Biden heed the protesters’ demands. “Don’t blame us. [Biden] needs votes from Arab Americans, from people of color, from progressive Jews, and from young people. He only won Michigan by 150,000 votes in 2020, so politically we have a moment where we can raise our voices,” said Andy Levin, a leader of the push to get Democrats to vote “uncommitted” in the Michigan primary. Waleed Shaid warned that Biden is “not representing the 80 percent of Democrats who want a cease-fire, or the Muslims and Arabs and young people whose votes put him in office and are now out protesting his policies in the streets.”

There are two popular notions on the progressive left that seem intellectually irreconcilable. The first is that the media should stop scrutinizing radical left-wing ideas by progressive college students and political activists. The second is that the Democratic Party must heed the demands of progressive college students and political activists.

The first idea has a longer pedigree. When I wrote about the rise of illiberal left-wing thought in progressive spaces nine years ago, a common response from progressives who didn’t wish to defend the ideas I criticized was that it was not worth attention or concern because it was just youthful high jinksfrom “college teens.” This dismissive response has aged poorly. It was not even true at the time: Many of the incidents in my story concerns adult professionals, not college students. In any case, it was obvious that the driving force was not age but ideology.

But the exasperated pose of dismissing criticism of young radical activists has not gone away. It is irresistible as a way to smooth over tensions within the progressive coalition, or any coalition. When your allies say or do something you can’t defend, but you don’t want to cause a rupture, the path of least resistance is to insist their actions are unimportant and don’t require scrutiny. This has been the method mainstream Republicans have used to ignore just about every one of Donald Trump’s offenses.

Of course, the fact that the allies won’t denounce the behavior of their allies is the biggest giveaway that the behavior isn’t marginal. If it was limited to a handful of powerless kooks, they’d be free to call it out.

On the left, progressive-coalition managers spent years denying the campus left was worthy of attention before declaring its anger an emergency that Joe Biden had to attend to. The left went from too powerless to merit scrutiny to too powerful to be ignored overnight, without even a day in between when it was fair game for criticism.

Obviously, young people deserve more grace than middle-aged adults, and shouldn’t be permanently defined by thoughtless positions they took at the outset of their intellectual formation. But you can grant them some forbearance and also have confidence that their wildest impulses will likely mellow at least somewhat over time, while still taking seriously the ideas they are absorbing and spreading.

Taking the activist left seriously on Gaza does not mean defining the whole movement by its most extreme manifestations. Many of the progressive activists angry with Biden are motivated purely by humanitarian sympathy with the Palestinian people. (Indeed, we ought to distrust anybody who isn’ttroubled by the death and suffering that Israel and Hamas have inflicted on innocent Palestinians.)

But those extreme manifestations are an important and hardly marginal element of the movement. The eliminationist rhetoric and heckler’s-veto tactics described in Baker’s story are standard features in the movement.

This week, Salma Hamamy, president of the main pro-Palestinian student group at the University of Michigan, shared (and then deleted) a social-media message stating, “Until my last breath, I will utter death to every single individual who supports the Zionist state. Death and more. Death and worse.” (The University sent an email denouncing the message.)

While she may be an undergrad, Hamamy is hardly anonymous. She was one of four undergraduates to receive the University of Michigan’s Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Spirit Award honoring students “who best exemplify the leadership and extraordinary vision of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.” The Michigan Daily endorsed her campaign for student-council president. State, national, and international newspapers have quoted her warning Biden to change course and citing her as an example of the kind of progressive Democrats have to placate.

Last month, the New York Times jointly profiled her and a pro-Israel activist in a story presenting both as searching for common humanity. “As dusk neared, they walked alone to a nearby campus building and sat together on a bench. Maybe this would be a chance to recognize one another’s humanity,” the Times reported. “He needed to know why anti-Israel protesters had not forcefully condemned the deaths of Israeli civilians.”

I think that mystery has been cleared up.

No serious person is proposing that Biden go all the way to denouncing Israel as an illegitimate settler-colonist entity. There is room to debate degrees of movement within his stance. The point is that the amount of attention that’s been devoted to presenting left-wing pro-Palestinian activists as a powerful and even potentially decisive faction in national politics implies the need for a proportionate level of scrutiny of their ideas. To insist these activists only matter when you are touting their influence, and then to deny their power when they receive scrutiny, is a tactic posing as an ideal.

Source: Does the Left Think Young Left-Wing Protesters Matter or Not?

Filed under Multiculturalism

ICYMI: Ibbitson: Canada’s foreign policy and its domestic politics on Israel’s war against Hamas are shifting

2024/04/01 Leave a comment

Indeed. Riding demographics highlight the relative importance of religious minorities, particularly the contrast between Canadian Jews and Canadian Muslims:

….The Liberals have tried to keep both Jewish and Muslim constituencies onside. But as last week’s vote suggests, they increasingly accord a high priority to the rights of Palestinians and to the Muslim community in Canada.

As with other religious communities, Muslims are hardly monolithic. Someone who comes to Canada from Senegal may have different values and priorities than a Canadian who comes from Syria or Pakistan or Indonesia.

And the plight of Palestinians in Gaza may not be the only issue influencing Muslims, who struggle with inflation, interest rates and housing affordability as much as other voters.

Many new Canadians come from societies that are socially conservative. Some Muslim voters may be uncomfortable with the Liberal Party’s strong support for the rights of LGBTQ Canadians.

Finally, Muslim voters for whom supporting the rights of Palestinians is the ballot question may be drawn more to the NDP than the Liberals.

Regardless, the days of Liberal/Conservative bipartisan consensus in support of Israel are over. This is the new lay of the land.

Source: Canada’s foreign policy and its domestic politics on Israel’s war against Hamas are shifting

Filed under Multiculturalism, Politics, Religion Tagged with ,

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