Some Professors Stand up and Speak Out

York University, Toronto, February 2009

(I don't think they're singing, "Oh Canada".)


What follows below are two examples of university professors standing up and speaking out on the outrages occurring on Canadian university campuses against Jewish students. The below letters were posted on "Blazing cat fur" and "Then there was light" blogs and brought to my attention by my friend and colleague Gilead Ini.

Shalom Lappin, a Professor at King’s College in London, had been scheduled to speak in the Colloquium of the Cognitive Science Program of the Philosophy Department at York University, Instead, he sent York President Shoukri a letter of withdrawal and canceled his appearance due to Shoukri’s lack of a satisfactory response to the incident on February 11 on York's campus when a group of Jewish students was chased into the campus Hillel building by a mob where they remained barricaded until Toronto police responded to escort them out.

"Dear Dr. Shoukri,
(President and Vice Chancellor, York University)

I am Shalom Lappin Professor of Computational Linguistics at King’s College, London, and I am currently a visiting professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Toronto, where I am on sabbatical for the semester.

I was recently invited to give a talk on my research on computational modeling of grammar induction in the Colloquium of the Cognitive Science Program of the Philosophy Department at York, on March 25. I accepted the invitation with great pleasure. I received my BA in Philosophy from York in May 1970, and I welcomed this opportunity to return to my first academic home. It is therefore with considerable regret that I must now withdraw from this engagement in light of the York administration’s handling of the attack on Jewish students that took place on the afternoon of February 11.

The reports of this attack that I have read in both the Canadian and the foreign press (confirmed by eyewitness accounts that I have received) converge on a disturbing sequence of events. A group of approximately 100 students supporting the York Student Federation broke up a press conference organized by other students campaigning to impeach the YSF. This group then pursued approximately 40 of the students from the press conference, most of them Jewish, to the offices of the campus Hillel, where the latter locked themselves in for fear of physical assault. The YSF supporters banged on the door and the windows of the offices, shouting threatening comments at the students trapped inside. The students in the Hillel headquarters appealed to campus security for assistance but received none. They then called the Toronto Police, who eventually arrived to escort them out of the offices, (emphasis mine) through lines of hostile YSF supporters chanting angry slogans and hurling insults at them.

To date I have seen no public statement by any University official on this incident, beyond the expression of an intention to investigate it. I called your office on Monday, February 23 to seek clarification of the administration’s view of the attack. A member of your staff called me back today and graciously listened to my concerns. However, she was unable to do more than reiterate the University’s official position that the matter is still under investigation. Given that the incident took place two weeks ago, I find it odd that the administration has been unable to come to any conclusions on what took place. It is particularly remarkable that it felt no need to release at least a general statement specifying that violence and abuse of any kind will not be tolerated on campus, and confirming that all students have the right to express their views without fear of intimidation.

The fact that the University has not taken up this assault with the students who launched it, nor acted to reassure the students who they targeted indicates a severe failure on the part of the administration to fulfill its reponsibility to sustain a campus free of physical violence and harrassment. Several of the Jewish students at York claim that the assault was not an aberration, but part of a general atmosphere of extreme hostility that they have been forced to contend with over an extended period of time. I am in no position to evaluate this assertion. But it seems to me that the administration is obliged to address the grievances of students who feel that they are being victimized, particularly in light of a significant incident which lends some credence to their charge.

I do not regard the ethnic identities or the political views of any of the participants in this event as of relevant concern. All sides to a controversial question have an equal right to be heard in a civil environment of tolerance and mutual respect. Nor do I see criticism of Israel as the problem here. I have frequently spoken out publicly against the policies of the Israeli government, most recently in a joint letter and comments critical of Israel’s operation in Gaza, published in the Observer in January.

If one group of students is permitted to engage in violent harrassment of another without the decisive intervention of the University’s administration, then the conditions for a free and unfettered exchange of ideas are completely undermined, and the primary purpose of university life is betrayed.

When I was an undergraduate at York in the late 1960s the University was home to lively political activity on a variety of issues. The Israeli-Palestininan conflict was one of these, and discussion was intense, occasionally heated. However, at no time did this discussion degenerate into systematic bullying, initimidation, or expressions of bigotry. Nor would the administration of that period have allowed it to do so. It is a source of great sadness to me that the current administration is either incapable or unwilling to insure the existence of a basic culture of decency, civility, and free speech on its campus. This culture is a necessary feature of any serious institution of higher learning.

Sincerely,

Shalom Lappin
Professor of Computational Linguistics
King’s College, London"
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Fousesquawk comment: Well, York University has indeed done something. It has suspended the Jewish group which was attacked. Read below a letter from the university to Hasbara and Hillel at York:


"On Tuesday February 25th, Vice-President Tiffin issued four notices of suspension and fines to the following clubs for various recent academic disruptions in Vari Hall this year. Each of these groups, like you, have been provided with numerous warnings about the impact that academic disruptions have on students and professors.

The following clubs have been provided with an opportunity to explain their actions and this submission will be taken into account before the Vice-President’s final decision on their status is made. These groups are:

Hasbara Fellowship at York
Hillel@York
Students Against Israeli Apartheid
The Tamil Students’ Association

Let me again remind each of you that, as detailed by both President Shoukri and Vice-President Tiffin, academic disruption is unacceptable, injures students academically and simply cannot be permitted to continue."

So the suspensions applied to the victims and well as the perpetrators.

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Below is a letter is a letter from Professor Edward Vrscay of Waterloo University (Canada) to Professor Sebastian Fernando, the chair of Mathematics at Ryerson University in Canada:

"Dear Sebastian:

Sebastian, I regret to inform you that I shall not be able to give the
colloquium talk to your Department which was scheduled for Thursday, March 19. In fact, “shall not be able” does not describe the situation properly. Let’s say that I am cancelling my talk, in response to “Israel Apartheid Week” which is being held at Ryerson, U of T and York this week. Particularly disturbing to me was the poster showing a missile shot from an Israeli helicopter and heading toward a Gazan boy
holding a teddy bear. And this was only a still image from an even more disgusting video posted by the “Toronto Social Forum”.

Please understand - this is NOT a statement of any kind against the
Department of Mathematics, which had nothing to do with this “Week”.And it’s not a “boycott” of Ryerson. It’s simply a personal decisionbased upon my disagreement with the “Week” and concern about its consequences, include hate-mongering and anti-Semitism. What would have been the reaction this week if someone posted a cartoon showing a missiles launched from Gaza headed toward an Israeli child with a teddy bear? Or an atlas of the Middle East, with a bubble coming from most countries with the message, “We do not believe in the existence of Israel!”?

Believe me, I was looking forward to meeting and conversing with people in your Department. You might think that the seemingly-distant political actions of a militant few should not be allowed to affect our academic activities, especially in a department as “removed” as Mathematics. But I think that enough is enough as
far as politically-correct acts such as Israel-bashing are concerned. It is convenient for academics in their comfy offices and jobs to avoid the unease created by such situations by simply turning their eyes away and dismissing everything with an escape clause to the effect, “It’s not such a big deal.” I’m afraid, however, that by not thinking it was a big deal, it has become a very big deal — the proverbial elephant in the room that everyone wants to avoid. And it doesn’t stop with Israel.

In any case, it’s not my intention to castigate your Department or Ryerson as a whole. My “statement” is simply that the activities of a few can, and should, affect the lives of others. I regret all inconvenience that my cancellation will cause. Please feel free - in fact, I encourage you - to circulate this e-mail to members of your department so that they know that there is absolutely nothing personal here.

Sincerely yours
Ed Vrscay"


Edward R. Vrscay
Department of Applied Mathematics
University of Waterloo
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 3G1

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Kudos to the above professors for taking a stand on what is happening on university campuses across North America. What is needed is for like-minded faculty to set aside their concerns about tenure, job security and funding for their projects and call out the cowardly administrators who allow their campuses to be taken over by student mobs.