John Ivison: University instructor fights back after being suspended for daring to denounce Hamas

2024/02/03 Leave a comment

Contrast:

….I wrote about Finlayson late last year. He has been teaching at Guelph-Humber for 13 years, has no disciplinary record and no history as a political activist.

In a social media post that he admits may have been a little too blistering, he said that an academic in Pakistan calling for Palestine to be free “from the river to the sea” was a “pro-Nazi zealot.” Finlayson said he stands with Israel, against antisemitism and against Hamas, which he said takes millions meant for health and education and uses the money to make war. “You stand with Palestine means you stand with Hitler.”

Hitler references aside, it was all fairly standard stuff.

…[complainant] Surely this could not be Dr. Wael Ramadan, professor of project management at Sheridan College’s Pilon School of Business?

I’m told it is. I wrote about Ramadan a week or so after Finlayson. He had called Israel “an apartheid state committing genocide” but he was not suspended by Sheridan — in my opinion, quite rightly, since it is not the college’s place to protect the delicate ears of generation Z from opinions with which it may disagree.

…

Ramadan did not respond to requests for comment then or now, but I am told that the man whose right to free speech I defended is at the centre of the effort to shut down Finlayson’s right to the same, and get him fired in the process.

Academia is in a shocking state when the desire to root out anything that a complainant disagrees with, or considers “unsafe” is gratified by academic bureaucrats.

People far beyond Guelph-Humber are starting to take an interest in this case, aware of the chilling effect on academic speech it will have if it is not challenged.

The university has made a mistake. It should admit as much and reinstate Finlayson.

Source: John Ivison: University instructor fights back after being suspended for daring to denounce Hamas

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Black-only swim times, Black-only lounges: The rise of race segregation on Canadian universities

2024/02/02 Leave a comment

Sigh, hard to see how this will improve social integration and inclusion:

…While the idea of explicitly race-segregated spaces at Canadian universities would have been unthinkable only a few years ago, recent months have seen a wave of Black-only lounges, study spaces and events at Canadian post-secondary institutions.

The University of British Columbia recently cut the ribbon on a Black Student Space featuring showers, lockers and even a nap room.  To gain access, students must apply and affirm that they are one of the following: “Black African descent, African-American, African-Canadian, Afro-Caribbean, Afro-Latinx, and Afro-Indigenous.”

Toronto Metropolitan University, formerly Ryerson, opened a Black Student Lounge in 2022. The space is intended as a shelter from “the harms of institutional racism.” In multiple public statements, TMU has referred to itself as a hotbed of colonialist institutional oppression, and the lounge is intended as a place where students can “heal” and “recharge” from said oppression, and “promote Black flourishing.”

The University of Toronto maintains a distinctive office of Black Student Engagement that curates a series of Black-only frosh and orientation events. While there are university-sanctioned “engagement” programs for Latin American and Southeast Asian students, these are mostly limited to mentorship appointments and workshops.

And it’s not just U of T pursuing Black-only frosh events. As noted in a feature by VICE, as recently as 2015 Canada didn’t feature a single Black-only frosh. But after Ottawa universities debuted BLK Frosh that year, the practice soon became commonplace….

Source: Black-only swim times, Black-only lounges: The rise of race segregation on Canadian universities

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Buruma: The growing threat of messianic politics

2024/02/01 Leave a comment

Leave it to others with more expertise to assess the validity of the reasons but agree with the threat as we see in so many places:

…The reason why so many democracies are now threatened by messianic politics is not because organized religion has gained in strength. In fact, I think the opposite is true. In most Western democracies, at least, church authority has almost entirely collapsed. This is true even in the U.S.: while most people still consider themselves to be believers in one faith or another, many American Christians, especially those who are drawn to Trump as a saviour, follow freelance preachers or spiritual entrepreneurs.

In many parts of Europe, where right-wing populism is on the rise, the erosion of church authority starting in the 1960s cast adrift people who used to go to church regularly and looked to their priests and pastors to tell them how to vote. Today, they are anxious and bewildered by demographic, political, social, sexual, and economic changes, and are seeking a saviour to lead them to a simpler, more certain, and more secure world. There are plenty of power-hungry demagogues more than willing to cater to this desire.

Source: The growing threat of messianic politics

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Shanes: Mythology behind anti-Semitism drives disconnect over support for Palestinians

2024/02/01 Leave a comment

Useful discussion of the various definitions of antisemitism and the distinctions between antisemitism and anti-Zionism:

…In recent years, the relationship between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism has taken on renewed importance. Zionism has many factions but roughly refers to the modern political movement that argues Jews constitute a nation and have a right to self-determination in that land.

Some activists claim that anti-Zionism — ideological opposition to Zionism — is inherently anti-Semitic because they equate it with denying Jews the right to self-determination and therefore equality.

Others feel that there needs to be a clearer separation between the two, that not all criticism of Israel is anti-Zionist, and not all anti-Zionism is anti-Semitic.

Zionism in practice has meant the achievement of a flourishing safe haven for Jews, but also led to dislocation or inequality for millions of Palestinians, including refugees, West Bank Palestinians who still live under military rule, and even Palestinian citizens of Israel, who face legal and social discrimination. Anti-Zionism opposes this, and critics argue that it should not be labeled anti-Semitic unless it taps into those anti-Semitic myths or otherwise calls for violence or inequality for Jews.

This debate is clearly evident in the competing definitions of anti-Semitism that have recently emerged. Three have gained particular prominence. The first was the so-called “working definition” of the International Holocaust Remembrance Association, published in 2016.

In response, an academic task force published the Nexus definition in 2021, followed by the Jerusalem Declaration that same year, the latter signed by hundreds of international scholars of anti-Semitism.

Remarkably, all three definitions tend to agree on the nature of anti-Semitism in most areas except the relationship of anti-Israel rhetoric to anti-Semitism. The IHRA’s definition, which is by design vague and open to interpretation, allows for a wider swath of anti-Israel activism to be labeled anti-Semitic than the others.

The Jerusalem Declaration, in contrast, understands rhetoric to have “crossed the line” only when it engages in anti-Semitic mythology, blames diaspora Jews for the actions of the Israeli state, or calls for the oppression of Jews in Israel. Thus, for example, IHRA defenders use that definition to label a call for binational democracy — meaning citizenship for West Bank Palestinians — to be anti-Semitic. Likewise, they label boycottseven of West Bank settlements that most of the world calls illegal to be anti-Semitic. The Jerusalem Declaration would not do so.

In other words, the key to identifying whether anti-Israel discourse has masked anti-Semitism is to see evidence of the anti-Semitic mythology. For example, if Israel is described as part of an international conspiracy, or if it holds the key to solving global problems, all three definitions agree this is anti-Semitic.

Equally, if Jews or Jewish institutions are held responsible for Israeli actions or are expected to take a stand one way or another regarding them, again all three definitions agree this “crosses the line” because it is based on the myth of a global Jewish conspiracy.

Critically, for many Jews in the diaspora, Zionism is not primarily a political argument about the state of Israel. For many Jews, it constitutes a generic sense of Jewish identity and pride, even a religious identity. In contrast, many protests against Israel and Zionism are focused not on ideology but on the actual state and its real or alleged actions.

This disconnect can lead to confusion if protests conflate Jews with Israel just because they are Zionist, which is anti-Semitic. On the other hand, Jews sometimes take protests against Israel in defense of Palestinian rights to be attacks on their Zionist identity and thus anti-Semitic, when they are not. There are certainly gray areas, but in general calls for Palestinian equality, I believe, are legitimate even when they upset Zionist identities.

In my view, anti-Semitism must be identified and fought, but so too must efforts to squash legitimate protest of Israel by conflating it with anti-Semitism. By understanding the mythology underlying anti-Semitism, hopefully both can be accomplished.

Joshua Shanes is a professor of Jewish studies at the College of Charleston.

Source: Mythology behind anti-Semitism drives disconnect over support for Palestinians

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‘A Constant Drumbeat’ of Racial Essentialism‘

2024/01/31 Leave a comment

Similar to the case of Toronto principal Richard Bilkszto and DEI training of the Kojo Institute:

That surviving claim concerns whether De Piero was subject to a hostile work environment. Penn State’s approaches to race and DEI, as described in his complaint, “plausibly amount to ‘pervasive’ harassment,” Beetlestone ruled. She qualified her ruling, noting that “discussing in an educational environment the influence of racism on our society does not necessarily violate federal law.” In fact, a workplace “dogmatically committed to race-blindness at all costs” would “blink at history and reality,” she wrote, adding that training on concepts such as white privilege, white fragility, and critical race theory “can contribute positively to nuanced, important conversations.”

She is clearly not an “anti-woke” ideologue. Still, the ruling declared, “the way these conversations are carried out in the workplace matters: When employers talk about race—any race––with a constant drumbeat of essentialist, deterministic, and negative language, they risk liability under federal law.”

What did De Piero describe that struck the judge as plausibly constituting that “constant drumbeat”?

After the murder of George Floyd in 2020, all Penn State faculty and staff were told to attend a “Conversation on Racial Climate” on Zoom. During the session, Alina Wong, an assistant vice provost for educational equity, “led the faculty in a breathing exercise,” De Piero’s complaint states, “in which she instructed the ‘White and non-Black people of color to hold it just a little longer—to feel the pain.’”

On at least four other occasions in 2020 and 2021, the judge wrote, De Piero “was obligated to attend conferences or trainings that discussed racial issues in essentialist and deterministic terms—ascribing negative traits to white people or white teachers without exception and as flowing inevitably from their race.” One session involved a presentation about “White Language Supremacy.” Another included examples of ostensibly racist comments “where every hypothetical perpetrator was white,” the judge continued.

The ruling noted De Piero’s claim that he was subject to “race-based theories condemning white people for no other reason than they spoke or were simply present while being ‘white,’” and that his supervisor “spoke of race conscious grading” and accused white faculty of unwittingly reproducing “racist discourses and practices” in the classroom. Once, faculty members even had to watch a training video titled “White Teachers Are a Problem.” In 2021, De Piero told an administrator that he felt harassed and singled out because of his race and asked that anti-racism training sessions be stopped. He filed a report with the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission. He also filed a bias report with Penn State’s affirmative-action office. A staffer there allegedly told him, “There is a problem with the white race,” and urged him to keep attending anti-racism workshops.

In ruling that these and other allegations “plausibly amount to ‘pervasive’ harassment,” Judge Beetlestone did not necessarily conclude that everything happened just as De Piero claims. But if events did happen that way, she reasoned, then Penn State is “plausibly” guilty of creating a hostile climate. When I asked Penn State for comment on the factual accuracy of De Piero’s complaint, a spokesperson replied that the university does not comment on ongoing litigation.

Whether or not De Piero prevails at trial, Beetlestone’s ruling could have an effect on how schools approach DEI. The kind of DEI programming described in De Piero’s complaint is widespread on college campuses; I’ve encountered many examples of similar programming through my reporting. Now lawyers may scrutinize that programming partly with Beetlestone’s ruling in mind. And colleges hoping to avoid liability or costly lawsuits may study the fact pattern that Beetlestone saw as plausibly unlawful. If they’re doing anything similar, they may reconsider.

That’s why people who see DEI initiatives as racist or regressive are excited by this lawsuit—which was filed with financial support from the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism, a civil-liberties group—while supporters of DEI initiatives are lamenting it. As the writers of the open letter criticizing the case put it, “We understand the stakes of this lawsuit, which regardless of its outcome will have a chilling effect on [DEI] and antiracist initiatives throughout systems of higher education.”

College administrators should facilitate the free speech of professors (including vocal supporters and opponents of progressive DEI initiatives) regardless of race, not train or compel faculty to adopt essentialist or discriminatory views. Aside from all of the legal questions about what constitutes a hostile workplace or a discriminatory DEI initiative, institutions involved in these disputes ought to ask themselves: Is diversity, equity, or inclusion really advanced by an administrator saying the white race has a problem, or by white professors being asked to hold their breath in order to feel pain? Legal or not, that sounds like prejudiced, alienating nonsense.

Source: ‘A Constant Drumbeat’ of Racial Essentialism‘

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Why is Canada so vulnerable to foreign meddling?

2024/01/30 Leave a comment

Good BBC article, citing good analysts and experienced government officials:

“Generally speaking, we have been neglecting national security, intelligence, law enforcement, defence, and so on,” Thomas Juneau, a political analyst and professor at the University of Ottawa, told the BBC.

While it is tough to determine whether Canada is uniquely vulnerable compared to its allies, Mr Juneau argued that other countries have done a far better job in addressing the issue.

An outdated system that is slow to adapt

One glaring problem, Mr Juneau said, is the out-of-date act governing the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (csis). It is almost 40 years old, designed with the Cold War in mind, “when the fax machine was the new thing”, he said. 

Because of this, he said, the nation’s primary intelligence agency has been limited in its operations, focused on sharing information solely with the federal government.

This means possible targets are often left in the dark. 

That was spotlighted by Mr Chong’s story. He only discovered that he had been an alleged target of Beijing through the media, despite csis having monitored threats against him for at least two years.

Canada has since launched public consultations into how the law governing csis can be amended to better inform and protect individuals who could be a target.

The source of Canada’s security complacency, argued Richard Fadden, a former csis director and national security advisor to two prime ministers, is that Canada has lived in relative safety, largely protected from foreign threats by its geography: the US to the south, and surrounded by three oceans.

“I mean, nobody is going to invade Canada,” he said. 

Canada’s allies – like the US and Australia – have been quicker to adopt certain tools to help catch bad actors, such as establishing a registry of foreign agents and criminalising acts that can be classified as interference.

In December, Australia convicted a Vietnamese refugee who was found to be working for the Chinese Communist Party, thanks to a law it passed in 2018 that made industrial espionage for a foreign power a crime.

Such laws are not only important for charging and convicting culprits, but can also help educate the public and deter other nations from interfering, said Wesley Wark, a leading Canadian historian with expertise in national security.

Diaspora groups are especially vulnerable

Mr Wark said the country’s diverse population has also made it a convenient target for foreign states.

“We are a multicultural society and we have gone to great lengths over decades to preserve and protect that,” he said.

But diaspora groups, especially those vocally opposed to the government of their country of origin, have naturally become a target.

British Columbia lawyer Ram Joubin has had a first-hand look at the threats facing dissidents in Canada, particularly those from Iran. 

While investigating people with ties to the Iranian regime who call Canada home, Mr Joubin said he has heard from Iranian-Canadians who say they have been followed and harassed by regime agents in their own communities.

“We’ve had death threats, knock-on-the-door type of death threats,” he said. “And then we have a lot of people with their families in Iran being threatened because they engaged in some sort of activism.”

Csis has previously said it is aware of alleged intimidation attempts. The Iranian government has not commented publicly on these allegations. 

In Mr Joubin’s experience, reporting these incidents to officials like the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) has been a challenge, especially when additional work is needed to establish a credible criminal or civil case.

Both the RCMP and csis were criticised after the murder of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Sikh separatist that was killed in June in British Columbia, which Canada has alleged was done with the involvement of Indian government agents – something India denies. 

Prior to his death, Mr Nijjar had said that police were aware he was a target of an assassination plot. 

Questions were raised about whether something could have been done to stop his killing after the FBI said it was able to foil a similar assassination plot in November against another Sikh separatist leader in New York City. 

Mr Fadden said the events of 2023 represented a seismic shift in Canada’s psyche, forcing the country to finally confront the issue of foreign interference.

“Despite a deep reluctance on the part of the government to hold a foreign inquiry, they were compelled to do it,” Mr Fadden said. “I think if there hadn’t been that shift, we wouldn’t have an inquiry.”

The inquiry, led by Quebec appellate judge Marie-Josée Hogue, will be conducted in two phases, ending with a final report in December that will include recommendations on what Canada can do to deter future interference.

Some have expressed concern about the inquiry’s short mandate, and whether its recommendations will be wide-ranging enough and implemented as Canada inches closer to an election year that could see a change in government.

But in the meantime, Mr Fadden and others said they believe urgent action is needed.

“There are two big issues: there’s interference in our elections,” Mr Fadden said. “But there’s also interfering and scaring members of the diaspora in this country, which is a very serious matter.”

“We have a responsibility to protect people who are in Canada, and I don’t think we’re doing as good of a job on this as we could be.”

Source: Why is Canada so vulnerable to foreign meddling?

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Des immigrantes enfermées à double tour dans la violence conjugale

2024/01/30 Leave a comment

A noter, probablement le meme chose d’ailleurs au Canada:

Les immigrantes sont surreprésentées dans les maisons d’hébergement, au point qu’elles y forment une majorité dans la région de Montréal. Les acteurs de terrain constatent non seulement que le phénomène est en augmentation, mais aussi que les femmes ont des statuts de plus en plus fragiles.

Une dizaine d’immigrantes victimes de violence ont témoigné au Devoir dans les derniers mois. La plupart ont demandé d’être présentées sous des prénoms d’emprunt pour des raisons de sécurité dans cette enquête. C’est Caroline, venue avec un permis de travail lié à son conjoint étudiant. Ou Mélissa et Sofia, mariées dans leur pays d’origine à un homme déjà installé ici et dont le parrainage a été retiré une fois la violence dénoncée. C’est Ivonne Fuentes, parrainée par un Québécois en région.

Ce sont deux femmes à qui un conjoint avait promis un parrainage jamais déposé, et qui se sont retrouvées sans statut avec un nouveau-né. C’est une réfugiée mariée ici qui craint son ex-conjoint et l’exclusion de sa communauté d’attache. C’est Silvia, tombée enceinte alors qu’elle n’avait qu’un visa de touriste et qui a vécu deux ans et demi sans statut avec son autre petite fille. D’autres, aussi, déjà résidentes permanentes, mais convaincues que leur conjoint ou la police avaient le pouvoir de les expulser si elles portaient plainte, comme Lucienne.

Les trois associations de maisons d’hébergement pour victimes de violence conjugale du Québec sont sans équivoque : la proportion des femmes nées à l’extérieur du Canada hébergées dépasse nettement leur poids dans la population en général.

Dans les 46 établissements membres du Regroupement des maisons pour femmes victimes de violence conjugale, elles représentaient 69 % des femmes dans la région de Montréal et 51 % à Laval. Dans la région de la Capitale-Nationale, elles étaient 27 %, ce qui dépasse donc largement la proportion d’immigrants de 6,7 % dans la population générale.

La moyenne générale à l’échelle de la province était de 19 % l’an dernier au Regroupement, et de 26 % dans les maisons d’urgence de la Fédération des maisons d’hébergement pour femmes (FMHF).

Quant à l’Alliance des maisons d’hébergement de deuxième étape pour femmes et enfants victimes de violence conjugale (Alliance MH2), les immigrantes y ont représenté l’année dernière les trois quarts des femmes hébergées à Montréal et le tiers de celles hors métropole. La « deuxième étape » désigne l’accès à un appartement et à des services pour une durée plus longue après un logement d’urgence de quelques mois. En moyenne, dans leurs 18 maisons présentement en fonction sur tout le territoire, c’était près de la moitié des femmes hébergées qui étaient nées à l’extérieur du Canada.

Nous avons aussi parlé au cours des derniers mois à une trentaine d’autres personnes liées au milieu de la violence conjugale. Intervenantes en maison d’hébergement, travailleuses sociales, spécialistes de l’accueil des immigrants, policières, avocates et une infirmière : toutes ont dû s’adapter à cette nouvelle réalité, souvent avec des ressources insuffisantes, des programmes inadéquats et des lois qui ne la prennent pas en compte.

Plus précaires

Ce qui inquiète encore davantage les maisons d’hébergement est que les statuts précaires sont de plus en plus courants.

Demandeuse d’asile, étudiante étrangère, travailleuse, femme parrainée par son conjoint : environ une femme sur dix en hébergement n’a pas de statut permanent, selon les regroupements consultés et le dernier diagnostic de Statistique Canada. C’est plus de trois fois la proportion des femmes temporaires dans la population en général.

« La ligne est mince pour ces femmes-là de tomber sans statut », observe Katia Jean Louis, agente de liaison à la Maison pour femmes immigrantes de Québec.

Ces femmes détenant un visa temporaire font souvent passer le maintien de leur statut avant leur santé ou leur intégrité physique. Celle qui a demandé à se faire appeler Caroline* tenait par exemple avant tout à conserver son emploi, si difficilement trouvé : « Je restais tétanisée, je faisais de mon mieux pour protéger mon visage. Je ne voulais pas que cela se sache à mon travail », dit-elle après avoir décrit trois moments où son ex-mari lui a donné des coups.

« Je voulais pouvoir faire un permis de travail. […] C’était devenu invivable dans la maison, mais je suis restée quand même », raconte-t-elle, étant donné que son permis était lié à celui de son mari.

Temporaires ou permanentes, « le point commun de toutes les femmes immigrantes, c’est vraiment la peur. Car c’est ce qui est inculqué par la personne violente : “Tu vas être expulsée dans ton pays, tu ne peux rien faire, tu n’as pas de droit ici” », expose Mayranie Lacasse, coordonnatrice de l’Inter-Val 1175.

Les femmes qui nous ont raconté leur histoire n’ont pas toutes séjourné en maison d’hébergement après avoir quitté leur partenaire violent. Mais toutes l’ont dit et répété à leur manière : l’immigration les a rendues plus vulnérables à la violence conjugale. Même pour Lucienne, arrivée du Cameroun au Québec depuis 2011, dont l’ex-mari lui disait qu’il avait le pouvoir de l’expulser du pays, puisqu’il l’y « avait fait venir ».

Au-delà des préjugés

« Je peux vous dire que le processus d’immigration en soi, c’est stressant, indépendamment de la violence conjugale. Donc, une femme qui est dans ce processus-là se retrouve […] dans une situation de double vulnérabilité par rapport à la violence conjugale », observe notamment Mme Jean Louis.

Ce n’est pas à cause de leur personnalité ni de leur culture que ces femmes sont plus vulnérables, soulignent des chercheuses et des intervenantes. L’immigration et tout ce qui l’encadre ici au Canada créent des « contextes de vulnérabilité », explique la chercheuse Sastal Castro-Zavala, professeure de travail social à l’Université du Québec à Rimouski (UQAR).

Certains contextes « peuvent favoriser la domination, la prise de pouvoir et les oppressions, et donc rendre plus facilement vulnérable à cette violence-là », explique-t-elle. Elle donne l’exemple du parrainage, qui « crée des inégalités à l’intérieur d’un couple », notamment à cause d’une « dépendance » accrue et presque totale au conjoint qui contrôle les démarches d’immigration.

C’est ce qui est arrivé à Mélissa, une femme du Maghreb, qui raconte qu’elle ne savait pas comment prendre l’autobus même après plusieurs mois passés ici. « J’ai voyagé, j’ai étudié à l’université, j’avais mon côté indépendant. Mais en arrivant ici au Canada, un pays de droit avec un mari pareil, j’étais en prison », expose-t-elle.

« L’immigration, beaucoup font le mélange avec culture. On dit : “Ah ! les femmes immigrantes, [leur] culture est violente.” Il faut faire attention parce que beaucoup de femmes immigrantes se trouvent dans un contexte de vulnérabilité. Elles ne se séparent pas, [ce n’est pas] pour une question culturelle, mais pour une question structurelle » expose Mme Castro-Zavala.

Cet amalgame a la vie dure et il est parfois un « éléphant dans la pièce » : comment aborder le fait que les immigrantes sont surreprésentées dans les maisons d’hébergement sans alimenter les préjugés envers certaines cultures ?

Les femmes nées ici « ont peut-être d’autres réseaux que les maisons d’hébergement », dit Maud Pontel, coordonnatrice générale de l’Alliance MH2. Elles ont notamment plus souvent « des capacités financières pour, par exemple, déménager ou peut-être de la famille chez qui elles peuvent aller habiter ».

Ne plus se taire

Il ne faut pas non plus ignorer le poids et l’influence de la famille restée au pays : « Il arrive qu’une femme vienne nous voir et, pendant qu’elle nous parle, son téléphone ne fait que sonner, la famille l’appelle sans arrêt », raconte Rose Ndjel, directrice d’Afrique au féminin. Ce centre de femmes du quartier Parc-Extension reçoit trois ou quatre femmes par semaine, évalue-t-elle, qui sont victimes de violence, que ce soit pour leurs besoins alimentaires, d’intervention ou de référence.

« Ça arrive que, quand la femme fait valoir ses droits dans la maison, elle devient désobéissante aux yeux du mari », constate-t-elle. Il est arrivé que des hommes « viennent jeter les valises des femmes devant le centre », rapporte Mme Ndjel. Mais pour elle, ces femmes entament leur propre prise de parole, après des années du mouvement #MoiAussi. Dans une marche organisée à la fin octobre 2023, elle les y encourage : « Si vous voulez parler fort, allez-y ! »

Devant les besoins de plus en plus criants, l’organisme communautaire a fait des demandes pour créer La Maison Augustine, une maison d’hébergement spécialisée dans les contextes d’immigration.

Une ressource pionnière de ce type, Le Bouclier d’Athéna, constate que, malgré certaines améliorations, les besoins de ces femmes tardent à être pris en charge : « Nous avons vu beaucoup de femmes qui, malheureusement, ne peuvent pas être traitées dans le réseau des services sociaux existants ; 80 % de tous nos cas nous viennent du réseau de services existants. Ce sont les autres maisons d’hébergement, les CAVAC, la DPJ, les hôpitaux, etc. », dit Melpa Kamateros, la directrice générale de l’organisation.

Pour celle qui y travaille depuis plus de 30 ans, « il n’y a pas le même filet de sécurité », surtout pour celles qui ne parlent pas le français ni l’anglais. Elle reste tout de même optimiste, souvent encore étonnée de la force de ces femmes : « Dès qu’elles prennent les renseignements, elles sont prêtes à partir. Elles sont prêtes à prendre leur vie en main. »

Source: Des immigrantes enfermées à double tour dans la violence conjugale

Filed under Immigration, Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

Marche: When extremist activists drive the left to oblivion, what will remain?

2024/01/29 Leave a comment

Well worth reading:

…The foundation of Canadian multiculturalism rests on a basic piece of common sense: Leave your shoes at the door. Importing the world’s geopolitical nightmares into our country would end multiculturalism, and right quick. If the police and the courts allowed Ukrainian Canadians to vandalize the businesses of Russian Canadians who support Vladimir Putin, or if Sikhs were allowed to vandalize the businesses of Narendra Modi’s supporters, the result would be chaos, despite the entirely justifiable rage of those communities.

But common sense, as usual, doesn’t apply when it comes to the Jews.

Naomi Klein, Canada’s most famous living political writer, is a prime example of how far the left has declined into self-consuming purification, having become a prominent defender of hate-motivated mischief over the past three months. “The extraordinary raids, arrests and property seizures of the Indigo 11 represent an attack on political speech the likes of which I have not seen in Canada in my lifetime,” she wrote in the aftermath.

Ms. Klein’s defence of the Indigo 11 is grounded in the idea that Indigo is a fair target because Ms. Reisman has supported Israel and its military, co-founding an organization that provides scholarships and other awards for soldiers in the Israeli Defence Forces. By her logic, hundreds of thousands of Jews in this country could become legitimate targets, given that, through one vehicle or another, a vast number has given money to the state of Israel and, thus, the IDF, at some point over the course of their lives. She has also staunchly defended Ms. Jama, whom she has called “morally courageous” – a woman who, just to reiterate, claimed that the reports of the rapes committed by Hamas on Oct. 7 were “misinformation.”

Ms. Klein, of course, has just published a book about misinformation – and her book is still available behind the very window that was vandalized. Boycotts, divestment and sanctions are for others, one supposes.

The old phrase typically used to describe such loud and credulous cause-pushers was “useful idiots.” But describing tenured radicals such as Ms. Klein or academics such as those among the Indigo 11 as useful would be a misnomer: They are quite useless. Everywhere they survive, they are losing. Academic humanities departments, which regularly promote identity politics using government funding, are struggling: In Ontario, there was a 20-per-cent decline in undergraduate enrolments in the humanities between 2008 and 2017. The extremist champions of the establishment left are driving progressivism toward a lonely, impotent future….

Source: When extremist activists drive the left to oblivion, what will remain?

Filed under Antisemitism, Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Derek Penslar, Harvard Jewish studies professor controversy: This typifies what’s broken in antisemitism debates.

2024/01/29 Leave a comment

Good reflections:

It is with a heavy heart that I come to you asking you to care about something happening at Harvard.

I, too, have mocked the sheer quantity of reporting and writing and takes about what happens at a certain university outside of Boston. But this week’s Cambridge-based brouhaha neatly sums up the politicization of the conversation around antisemitism and the struggle against it.

Harvard recently announced two task forces: one on combating antisemitism and one on combating Islamophobia and anti-Arab bias. The university announced Derek Penslar, a faculty professor of Jewish history who directs the undergraduate program in that field, as co-chair of the task force on antisemitism. Shortly thereafter, some commentators denounced him for having signed an open letter that referred to Israel as an “apartheid regime” and for phrases from a book of his that was published this year. Billionaire Bill Ackman tweeted that Harvard was on a “path of darkness.” Lawrence Summers, a former president of Harvard and former U.S. treasury secretary, called on Penslar to resign. Some went so far as to call the professor an antisemite.

I do not know Derek Penslar, and whether or not he spends his time as co-chair of a task force on antisemitism at Harvard makes very little difference to me, as does what happens at Harvard generally. However, this particular sequence of events has implications beyond Harvard. The row matters not just for Jewish studies scholars, or those of us who write often about Jewish politics, but for anyone who seeks to understand antisemitism historically and in our present moment, so that they might combat it—which is to say, anyone who takes the reality of antisemitism seriously.

There have been a few lines of attack on Penslar, and there are thus a few issues at hand. First, there is the notion that he called Israel a “regime of apartheid.” In fact, Penslar, in the summer of last year, signed on to a letter by “academics, clergy, and other public figures from Israel/Palestine and abroad” who sought to “call attention to the direct link between Israel’s recent attack on the judiciary and its illegal occupation of millions of Palestinians in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.” That sentence included the line “There cannot be democracy for Jews in Israel as long as Palestinians live under a regime of apartheid, as Israeli legal experts have described it. Indeed, the ultimate purpose of the judicial overhaul is to tighten restrictions on Gaza, deprive Palestinians of equal rights both beyond the Green Line and within it, annex more land, and ethnically cleanse all territories under Israeli rule of their Palestinian population.”

One can agree or disagree with this assessment, or with the decision to sign an open letter, but as Harvard government professor Steven Levitsky put it to the Harvard Crimson, “You have to conflate criticism of Israel with antisemitism to suggest that Derek Penslar is not a good fit for this role.” He added, “When you deliberately conflate the two, you utterly silence criticism of Israel, and you utterly silence pro-Palestinian speech—and that we can’t tolerate, not at a university in a free society.”

Others have said that while they take no issue with his scholarship, he isn’t right for this particular role. “I have no doubt that Prof Penslar is a profound scholar of Zionism and a person of good will without a trace of personal anti-Semitism who cares deeply about Harvard,” tweeted Summers. “However, I believe that given his record, he is unsuited to leading a task force whose function is to combat what is seen by many as a serious anti-Semitism problem at Harvard.” Summers went on to say that Penslar has “publicly minimized Harvard’s anti-Semitism problem, rejected the definition used by the US government in recent years of anti-Semitism as too broad, invoked the need for the concept of settler colonialism in analyzing Israel.” Although that’s all well and good for an academic, “for the co-chair of an anti-Semitism task force that is being paralleled with an Islamophobia task force it seems highly problematic.”

Summers’ argument is a long way of saying that while all of this is fine for scholarship, it feels wrong. It feels as if Penslar isn’t taking antisemitism seriously. But shouldn’t the scholarship be used to guide the sentiment? And shouldn’t the scholarship inform the struggle? Leaving aside that it seems strange to suggest that a professor of Jewish studies would downplay antisemitism for the sake of it, shouldn’t this task force’s conclusion be guided by fact? Or is the point of the task force to confirm what Summers already thinks? If its goal is the latter, that’s a bigger problem than Penslar’s appointment. And that’s true of all of us, not only those of us on a campus: that we should try to separate out the facts from our feelings and fear.

Finally, and as egregiously, there is the fact that Penslar’s critics evidently combed through his scholarship for phrases they could present as antisemitic. “Lessons in how NOT to combat antisemitism, Harvard edition,” tweeted Jonathan Greenblatt, head of the Anti-Defamation League. “Start by naming a professor who libels the Jewish state and claims that ‘veins of hatred run through Jewish civilization’ to your antisemitism task force. Absolutely inexcusable. This is why Harvard is failing, full stop.” This is a reference to Penslar’s 2023 book Zionism: An Emotional State, which is roughly 300 pages long and which looks at the emotions that have shaped Zionism, as they have—per the book’s own blurb—all national movements. The New York Post, which pulled out the “veins of hatred” line, also noted that Penslar wrote, “Jewish culture was steeped in fantasies (and occasionally, acts) of vengeance against Christians.”

I am not sure whether the focus on this line was supposed to be damning, but if it was: Yes, Jewish culture has moments of revenge fantasy. For example, Purim, which we will celebrate in about two months, concludes with Jewish vengeance. Exploring themes like vengeance or hatred is not an endorsement of seeing Jews through that lens; it’s part of the work of studying Jewish history, as it would be for any group’s history.

Penslar’s lines were cherry-picked and taken out of context, as the American Academy for Jewish Research has pointed out, but there is a larger point, too, which is that any rigorous work on Jews—like any rigorous work on literally any people, anywhere in the world, at any point in history—will feature moments in which individuals or the collective acted in ways that some might consider less than flattering, if not downright abhorrent.

None of that makes antisemitism acceptable. If a person really cares about the study of and fight against antisemitism, they need to be able to hold in their minds both the nuanced realities of history and present-day politics and the rich and varied tapestry that is Jewish existence, as well as that antisemitism is unacceptable. To write off the former as somehow in conflict with the latter is grossly unfair to scholarship—and it pretends that we can fight antisemitism in a vacuum, divorced from the real world. But it’s the real world in which real antisemitism exists. It isn’t only anti-intellectual and cynical. It’s also counterproductive to the critics’ stated goal.

Source: Derek Penslar, Harvard Jewish studies professor controversy: This typifies what’s broken in antisemitism debates.

Filed under Antisemitism Tagged with , ,

Germany: Would-be migrant workers worried by growing racism

2024/01/29 Leave a comment

Of note:

When German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Labor Minister Hubertus Heil turned up at the Vietnamese-German University (VGU) in Ho Chi Minh City, they were caught by surprise: Screaming students greeted them like rock stars.

Some of those students will go on to work for German companies.

Further acclaim awaited the German political VIPs at the Goethe Institute in Hanoi, where about 6,000 young Vietnamese people per year learn the German language. Seven times that number register for language tests that qualify them for professional training or study in Germany.

At the end of 2023, Germany began implementing its new Skilled Immigration Act, using a point system to lower the obstacles facing skilled workers who want to move to the country.

Since then, high-ranking German politicians have stepped up efforts to woo skilled workers in other countries: Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock was recently in the Philippines, for instance, and Development Aid Minister Svenja Schulze is in Morocco. In Vietnam, Steinmeier and Heil signed a memorandum of understanding that improves the regulation of labor immigration to Germany.

Vietnam steps in to help

In communist Vietnam, there is significant interest in working in Germany — where the Vietnamese diaspora has grown to more than 200,000 people. Vietnam is a young country demographically speaking and is thus less threatened by the kind of “brain drain” that affects many other nations. Vietnam’s leadership was also very interested in finding a joint agreement on improving control of labor migration to Germany by its nationals.

The Goethe Institute is important in this regard. For example, it is there that Phuong Phan, 22, is receiving the language training she needs to later work in the hotel and gastronomy industry in Thuringia. The eastern German state is among the first to have signed bilateral contracts with Vietnam.

Phuong Phan said she hopes her training in Thuringia will give her a “practical apprenticeship” while aiding her personal development. Her parents support her in the endeavor, and she combs the internet daily for information on “lovely Germany.”

Recently, however, she came upon something that was not so lovely: reports detailing the xenophobia that is sometimes encountered in Germany, particularly in the east. She does not want to talk about it in her conversation with DW but says the topic has also been dealt with in her language courses.

“Yes, we are watching developments. And gradually, we are starting to have reservations as we take on responsibility for these young people, with regard to their parents as well,” says Nguyen Thi Thanh Tam, a placement officer for Thuringia.

She is currently training another group of young Vietnamese in Hanoi and confirms that the topic of “racism in Germany” has been clearly discussed in recent lessons.

“We want the students to be prepared for unpleasant situations in this regard in Germany,” she says.

400,000 skilled workers needed annually

According to Germany’s Federal Employment Agency (BA), the country has 1.73 million vacant jobs.

Unlike Germany’s campaign to find workers 60 years ago, today’s efforts are not focused on industrial laborers but on highly qualified professionals and people with service-sector experience.

Back then, just under 300,000 people came each year. Today, studies say Germany needs around 400,000 a year.

Recently, Labor Minister Heil traveled to Brazil, India and Kenya to promote Germany as a work destination, and now he’s in Vietnam. “We have improved the conditions with the Skilled Immigration Act; now it’s down to putting things into practice,” he told DW in Hanoi.

Poor coordination

Officially, the Interior Ministry oversees the immigration of skilled foreign workers. But in practice, the responsibilities in this area overlap. One example is the some 350,000 asylum-seekers in Germany, who, if they are rejected, are not integrated into the labor market and many of whom have to leave the country.

More than 17% of people who applied for German asylum in 2023 are now Turks — mostly young, well-educated, liberal-thinking people who wanted to escape from President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s regime. But only one in 10 Turkish asylum-seeks receives protection in Germany. And, at the moment, instead of permitting the rest an opportunity to look for work, Germany orders them to leave the country.

The Foreign Office, on the other hand, is known for its lengthy procedures to obtain a visa — something that also deters skilled workers. The Economy and Labor ministries and the Employment Agency also bear responsibilities, in addition to organizations such as the GIZ development agency and various foundations.

Many companies have their own recruitment and training programs because the bureaucracy prevalent in the public sector is too slow to meet their hiring needs.  Toan Nguyen, the managing director of the TY Academy, which acts as an agency for caregivers who want to go to Germany, complains that there are “too many people to go through and still a lot of obstacles to having qualifications recognized.”

Human trafficking another problem

This makes things difficult for interested skilled workers — and easy for dubious agencies and human traffickers. In Southeast Asia, women are the main prey of the latter, being smuggled into Germany and ending up in low-wage employment or even brothels.

“We must use legal immigration to suppress this practice,” Steinmeier said in Vietnam. The bilateral agreement that has just been signed is meant to provide trustworthy advice about fair working conditions and reputable employment agencies, as well as regular roundtables on work migration involving specialists from both countries.

Germany’s new citizenship law, however, makes the country more attractive to potential immigrants. “In comparison with Japan, where many Vietnamese also migrate but are allowed to work only temporarily, Germany now offers a longer-term perspective,” says Viet Huong Nguyen from the TY Academy.

Xenophobia a deterrent

In light of these positive developments for labor migration, current reports about racist groups in Germany are all the more disturbing.

Labor Minister Heil told DW that no one had spoken to him directly about the issue but that action needed to be taken before it was too late.

“We have to make it clear in Germany that we cannot maintain our prosperity without labor from abroad,” he said.

Vietnamese already living in Germany are also worried. One of them is Huong Trute, whom President Steinmeier invited to accompany him on his Vietnam trip. She has lived in Germany for 40 years and works in the gastronomy sector.

She says she has recently had to answer more and more questions from worried compatriots in Vietnam. After seeing how another group was being prepared for jobs in Thuringian hotels and restaurants at the Goethe Institute, she said: “Honestly? If I had the chance to take these young peopole somewhere else, I would do it.”

She says the developments in Thuringia are coming to a head, and that frightens her.

Source: Germany: Would-be migrant workers worried by growing racism

Filed under Immigration, Racism Tagged with ,

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