The Way Must Be Tried.. Over and over and over again.

The Way Must be Tried.. Over and over and over again.

contributed by Tasia Alexopoulos

What is that old adage, oft used but rarely followed? "Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it."

It seems that our administrators at York University, who exalted the past during York's Anniversary, are refusing to learn from history at all. For several years, like most Universities, York has experienced a very serious issue with sexual assault of all forms. From groping to stranger rape, York has seen it all. This isn't a new phenomenon: sexual assault is common on all campuses, in all towns and cities, and in all people's lives. What should be new is the way we approach this issue.

Yesterday the University and our illustrious President Shoukri help a Forum on Community Safety for students, staff, faculty, and community members. Instead of being an actual open Forum for questions and serious discussion the event was a mere publicity stunt; an opportunity to reveal the University's "new" security measures and dedication to safety.

At the open Forum yesterday President Shoukri announced that the University would be graciously spending over $10 million on safety and security on campus. Shoukri not only announced that the money would be spent, but that he has "embraced" the effort to increase safety on campus. The promised funds have already been allocated, with no real input from the University community nor those who are experts in gendered violence. Not once has the President, the Dean, or any VP stepped up and said "Hey, Women's Studies students: What do you think we could do about violence on campus?" Not once have they seriously approached any anti-racist group on campus and asked what those students would consider meaningful safety measures. Unfortunately for all of us, York has a bad track record when it comes to dealing with safety in all forms despite taking a hardline stance. We've seen over and over again how they deal with sexual assault and more often than not it entails telling the ladies on campus to "be aware of their surroundings" and to "lock their doors." For real, several years ago Alex Bilyk of York University told women that the moral of the story (because sexual assault is a story with a moral other than "don't be a rapist") that they need to keep their doors locked. He was responding to a stranger assault in a University residence, perpetrated by someone who did not live in the dorm.

In almost every Security Bulletin we receive about an assault on campus women are advised to buddy up, to be aware of their surroundings and the people around them, and to report suspicious people to York Security Services. This is an outdated approach and hopefully the new Security strategy takes this into account. It does not matter how aware you are of your surroundings or of suspicious people, it does not matter if you buddy up, if somebody wants to assault you they will assault you. The most recent assaults on campus have been in daylight at busy times -- one of them occurred in the lineup for the 196 York Rocket bus, one of the longest bus lineups of all time. A person who will assault a woman in broad daylight, surrounded by people, is someone who knows that the culture on campus permits them to do so -- they know that they will not be stopped and they will not be caught, they feel invincible.

This has nothing to do with how many Security guards are around or how well armed they are. It has to do with the culture on campus that does not take safety seriously, or racism seriously. It's about being part of a campus community that doesn't educate young men about misogyny or assault but, instead, chastises women for not being aware of their surroundings. We are part of a campus that allows sexist advertising to pervade. On a broader political scale we are part of a University that has only had ONE female President and in which some Faculties have never had a female Dean. We are part of a University that discourages students to stand up for themselves when they are harassed by Professors or employers. We are part of a University whose Administrators treat students, staff, and faculty with outright scorn. There are parts of campus that still aren't wheelchair accessible. We are not part of an inclusive, respectful, anti-sexist, anti-racist campus.

The Open Forum on Community Safety shouldn't have been an opportunity to smile at the cameras and pledge your allegiance to the flag of safety, President Shoukri. It should have been an opportunity for students to voice their discomfort, their feelings, their ideas. Instead, when a group of students came to the forum to express their concern about racial profiling on campus they weren't given space, the moderator instructed the microphone runners to ignore certain questions, and VP Morrison smirked the entire time they spoke. A culture that doesn't accept sexual assault also encourages respectful dialogue and this is just not occurring at York. President Shoukri claimed that the "floating" microphones were used to address accessibility issues but when asked how the moderator planned to manage the questions queue he had no response.

So the University will spend $10 million on re-training Security Staff, arming them, and giving them the power to arrest people. They will install more emergency phones. They've created new staff positions and renamed committees.  Nowhere does it say that York is committing itself to ending sexism or racism on campus. Nowhere does it even mention gender. It's great to increase Inclusivity training, but what does that really mean? What we need is York to take a political and ideological stance against what really causes assaults and violence: power imbalances.


I wrote this two years ago, about York University, and in the years since then nothing has changed:

"Sexual assault is an epidemic in Canada and York needs to address the culture of sexism on campus more than it needs to release the metrac report. Sexual assault is not leverage. It is not fair to say "sorry you were raped, young lady, that could have been prevented with more lighting". We need to think, "hey, maybe we need to educate ALL students about sexual assault." Maybe we shouldn't cut funding to women's studies programs, maybe we should increase education around the politics and issues behind sexual assault instead of just acting like cameras and lights are going to save the day."

What is the point of re-training Security officers when you're not educating students?When you're not combating rape culture, sexism, and inequality on campus?

York's motto is "The Way Must Be Tried." This way HAS been tried. It is time to recognize, once and for all, that women have taken responsibility for their own safety and that telling us to be aware of our surroundings will not save us from being assaulted. More Security will not mean less assault, because more Security does not mean less sexism. More heavily armed Security personnel will only increase violence against University community members. It is time for the University to stop calling itself innovative and actually innovate new responses to violence on campus.Yes, prevention is the key but prevention cannot occur until we begin to seriously address the sexist and racist culture on campus. We can't let the administrators, and whatever corporations or political interests they may serve railroad true change just because they hold a community meeting and grace us with their presence. These "safety" initiatives are not enough, we need the University to commit itself, once and for all, to social justice. We need education and cultural shifts, President Shoukri, not more Security guards with tasers. 

This is why I love Twitter.

Twitter is truly the best. I posted this Open Letter to Councillor Minnan-Wong and Councillor Holyday today and I also posted it on Twitter--or, rather, tweeted it. The letter decries the sexist and bullying behaviour of Councillor Minnan Wong, Councillor Holyday, Councillor Mammoliti, and Mayor Rob Ford during the Deputation of Toronto Women's City Alliance representative Jennifer Arango.

Not too long after it was sent off by the little blue bird we got some responses, specifically responses about the author. Apparently @Sattva01 thinks the author is a nutcase.

There isn't really any mention of the content of the letter, namely the completely sexist behaviour of some Toronto City Councillors, just a lot of talk about the author not being able to teach at York University-- which was once true.


Tasia Alexopoulos, the author of the letter, was indeed banned from teaching at York University. We've written about it and reproduced a talk Tasia gave at York University, with two tenured Professors, about her experience of being fired. You can read that HERE.

The case was also written about here, in Steel Bananas Art Collective Magazine, by the talented Devon Wong who is now off doing his Masters in English.

Tasia also spoke about her experience being fired at a York University Human Rights Centre Conference with colleague Hans Rollman where they workshopped on "Diversity vs. Normativity: Systematic Barriers to Classroom Dialogue and Inclusivity."

Tasia has an(under construction) profile on Academicfreedom.ca and glowing Teacher's Evaluations from the students she was allowed to instruct before being summarily fired, wrongly, by York University.

And finally, on April 1st, the ban on Tasia's teaching was lifted when her grievance against the University was settled after almost two years. You can read about that here on Activist Teacher.

So, to answer your question @Sattva01, Tasia Alexopoulos is truly a nutcase. Thank you for pointing that out to us.

this plot's so thick it's practically stew.

i wrote a bit ago about george galloway speaking at york university and the kerfuffle it caused:
"maybe yorku should sue the excalibur."

that event was protested by some, attended by many, and was a focus point for groups on both sides of the israel/palestine debate.

rabbi aaron hoch wrote in an email to his community that in allowing galloway's lecture to proceed president shoukri was showing "his amazing tolerance for anti semitism and lack of vigilance regarding the feeling of safety for jewish students on campus."

as i wrote, president shoukri took exception to being called an anti-semite and sent hoch an email through his counsel, harriet lewis. she warned hoch to stop spreading "defamatory remarks about the...president and stop encouraging non-students to protest the george galloway speech on campus." (you can read the full letter here).

lewis demanded that hoch apologize to shoukri and in return, shoukri's office received a letter from the "friends of simon wiesenthal centre" demanding HIS apology to hoch and the jewish community.

the letter states that shoukri warned hoch "and the jewish community", that it was essentially saying "galloway in-jews out", and that a speaker like galloway does not "constitute legitimate activity at york university."

the letter also declares that george galloway is anti-semitic and that the university is also guilty of anti semitism based on the "working definition of antisemitism and nathan sharanksy's 3D test of antisemitism: demonization, double standard and delegitimization(of israel)."

by making antisemitism the focus of their accusations, the letter from the 'friends of simon wiesenthal are conflating the jewish faith and culture with support for the state of israel. their letter ends strongly, assuring president shoukri that their "25'000 members in canada and 400,000 members worldwide would react strongly to any legal action which may be undertaken."

ooooh. scary.

here's an interesting fact about the 'friends of simon wiesenthal', or rather, an interesting fact about A friend of simon wiesenthal.

meet honey sherman:
honey sherman is on the board of governors for york university(community affairs committee) and she is also part of the york university foundation.

she is also the wife of barry sherman (apotex, of nancy olivieri fame).

so honey sherman is listed on the letter to shoukri from the 'friends of simon wiesenthal'. actually, she's on the board of directors of the foundation.

isn't it kind of weird for someone so intimately involved with the operations of a university to be attacking its president though an external organization? isn't it kind of a conflict of interest? or perhaps it just makes her position on the B.O.G and the foundation that much more transparent.

here comes the best twist in the story though: the independent jewish voices sent this letter of support to president shoukri-- combating the idea that the entire jewish community supports israel and views shoukri's actions as anti semitic. in fact, the IJV views the letter sent by the 'friends of simon wiesenthal' as a "vicious attack" and describes it as part of the campaign to "criminalize legitimate criticism of the state of israel."

the IJV is offering its support to shoukri--i wonder how he'll respond. it's obvious from the involvement of honey sherman that this is sticky territory for the president to be treading in and the allies he chooses could be verrryyy significant in the years to come at york university.

letters:

harriet lewis to rabbi aaron hoch
friends of simon wiesenthal to president shoukri
independent jewish voices to president shoukri

maybe YorkU should also sue the excalibur

for those of you who don't know, george galloway spoke at york university yesterday.

considering that he was banned from entering canada last year it's quite an accomplishment for york to secure such a big name speaker.

not everyone sees it that way though.

according to the always fair and balanced excalibur:

"Lots of legitimate points of debate need to be brought up surrounding George Galloway’s visit to York’s campus. The opinions he has voiced on the Israel-Palestine conflict have rightfully divided many York students into harshly opposed camps. Meanwhile, the YFS’s involvement in the event brings up tough questions about how far the union’s elected leaders should be allowed to pursue their own political agenda over the concerns common to all students."

well, the event WAS sold out... so it's kind of a supply and demand thing.. but i guess that's behind the point.

according to the author of this piece, it's not fair for the YFS to provide speakers that only represent one side of a debate:

"it’s hard to imagine what insight those who support Galloway got out of the speech. While Galloway is a big name, calling him an expert on the Middle East and Asia is a contentious claim, especially considering how little interest he has in alternative views of the issues there.

Ultimately, those students who agree with Galloway’s general position got to listen to an extreme voice affirm views they already held, unchecked by any moderator or opposing stance to provide new information or a different perspective. Those who don’t agree with Galloway got nothing."

well, excalibur writer, i would say the exact thing about rag you have the nerve to call a newspaper. the excalibur consistently towes the administrative line and only represents a specific chunk of the student population at york university. it features shoddy journalism at best and has often taken an explicitly anti-student stance(do i need to recall your vari hall debacle, where you lied about carrying out polls with hundreds of students?)

but, it has every right to exists and produce garbage that idiot student journalists can put on their C.VS when they get out of business school and cash in their membership to various zionist organizations for a six figure job.

i digress. so normally what the administration says at york, excalibur parrots back. in this case, however, yorku and president shoukri himself are standing up for the galloway talk.

in a surprising twist of events, president shoukri is threatening to sue a rabbi who had the gall to call him an anti-semite(the story in the national post, here)

rabbi aaron hoch is being told to stand the fuck down by yorku's legal representative (harriet lewis, who has impeccable morals), to stop spreading "defamatory remarks about the...president and stop encouraging non-students to protest the george galloway speech on campus."

apparently rabbi hoch wrote in an email that president shoukri "has again showed his amazing tolerance for anti-semitism and lack of vigilance regarding the feeling of safety for jewish students on campus."

i think that shoukri and the administration should take the excalibur to task as well since the "newspaper" is obviously supporting the idea that shoukri and the university are backing up the YFS conspiracy to end free speech on campus.

obviously, according to this story, the university doesn't take being called an anti-semite lightly anymore--unless your name is dr. david noble.

york prof questions hillel's advocacy... what's new?

what's new is that the excalibur, notorious for being the newspaper of the university administration, did its JOB on this one!!

for real, this article("york prof questions hillel's advocacy") is as good and revealing as i've ever seen in excalibur. that's not to say the excal has never covered david noble or the israel lobby and york, but usually they take the hard right stance and just mock everything that isn't 'office of the president approved.'

unlike the time they faked a student poll and would only express one side of the vari hall debate, in "york prof questions hillel's advocacy" author yuni kim actually went so far as to contact people INVOLVED in the story.

according to the article, york prof david noble is "not pleased with the university’s Hillel@York Jewish student group, and he’s letting York president Mamdouh Shoukri know about it."

citing an october 8th letter that noble sent to president shoukri, the article describes how noble has asked the president to end the "club's advocacy on behalf of the state of israel."

alex bilyk, the media relations guy, told the excal that the president would respond in due time.

let's just take a second here. alex bilyk??? when the fuck did that guy parachute back into the university?? remember for a while he was gone? after he put his big foot in his big mouth and told women on campus to watch their backs yo!!then he was off the radar, off the website, not quoted in the excalibur?

like a pregnant teen in the 1950s, alex bilyk was mysteriously whisked away for a period of time and now he's just back with no baby.

(alex bilyk is totally slime, so slimy that we have an entire label dedicated to him!! you can read about all of the different times he's fucked up here.)

anyways, basically the administration ignored noble's letter(as usual) and the excalibur even did a follow up this week on that-- that story is here-- keep it up excalibur!!

Guest Blog! York University and the Logic of the Cookie Jar

guest blogger hans!!

read this.

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Remember that kid who got caught with their hand in the cookie jar when you were growing up?

The one who decided it would be a good idea to protest their innocence?

The parental figures shook their heads and glared at him sadly. “What were you thinking?” they demand. “What made you such a greedy, gluttonous child? You thought you could have all the cookies for yourself?”

“Oh no!” the child protests, innocently. “It wasn’t for me! I was gonna trade them to Jimmy up the road for smokes! Five cookies for a single, and then Billy’s older brother sells us cans of beer for smokes. Five smokes equals a can of beer. And my buddy Tim just really wanted a couple cans of beer for his tenth birthday party this weekend. I wasn’t being greedy, honest! I would never have done it if the corner store hadn’t stopped selling singles to underaged kids!”

And then the kid can’t quite understand how that doesn’t improve the situation.

Well, this week York University is that child.

Caught with its hand in the cookie jar, it decided the best response would be to ‘clarify’ precisely how stealing from the [public] cookie jar was – in its view – the best way to ensure the long-term sustainability of the cookie jar, and that stealing cookies would, in the long run, lead to more cookies than ever for the cookie jar and everybody who uses it.

It’s a logic particularly unique to university public relations departments. There is, in a way, a sort of childish innocence to it, which seems to presume that anything a university does can’t really be bad, and so long as they explain what they’re doing, in fuller detail, that’ll make everything all right. Perhaps it’s because the university administrations that spend so much money on bloated PR departments assume that whenever a scandal erupts, PR departments can magically make them go away. Universities are notoriously incapable of realizing that when a scandal erupts, it’s usually because somebody did something wrong, and that in some cases it makes more sense – and sets a better example – to simply admit your guilt, and apologize, and accept some level of punishment, than to protest your innocence through press releases and Twitter tweets.

When the Ontario NDP released the results this week of a series of Freedom of Information requests they filed around the use of public funds by Ontario universities and colleges to hire high-paid lobbyists to...”lobby”... on their behalf, York discovered that it had stolen more cookies than anybody else: it had spent close to half a million dollars paying off private lobbyists, far and away more than any other post-secondary institution. In fact, if you take what some of the other cookie-stealers – Lakehead University, Sir Wilfrid Laurier University, Mohawk College and the Ontario College of Art and Design - spent TOGETHER, and then DOUBLE it, York still spent more!

Even the Ontario government – for once – joined in on the condemnation of York’s irresponsible spending – the provincial Minister of Training, Colleges and Universities John Molloy said “They [universities] have no reason to hire lobbyists...members of my ministry speak with these institutions on an ongoing basis, probably on a daily basis. The fact of the matter is, there is no need for a lobbyist to have contact with my ministry or the government...spending public funds on lobbyists is not acceptable.”

York University decided to >issue a press release yesterday, following the cookies-for-smokes logic that explaining precisely, in sordid agonizing detail, how they misused public funds would somehow make it less scandalous that they misused public funds. Indeed, they denounced the government for releasing the information “without context, timeline or accuracy”. Well, ok. If you’re going to be publicly castigated for committing an irresponsible, unethical act, the castigators might as well provide an accurate timeline of how you did it. But the details are interesting. Let’s explore them.

One contract of $31,500 was spent lobbying the Pan Am Games to expand York’s role in the games. The result? York gets to host tennis. O...kay. It’s somewhat unclear how spending $31,500 to get permission to host a tennis game helps the mission of the university, but I guess the alternative was that U of T might get it, so what else could they do?

$217,000+ was spent hiring another firm to see what the community felt about the idea “of establishing a medical school at York at sometime in the future”. Huh? So York has a vague idea that maybe, sometime in the vague future, it might open a med school (even though the government said last year that it was not gonna happen), and so, without any sort of a plan, it dishes out $217,000 to a private firm to see what the community thinks? If this is what it spends on a broad idea to do something “sometime in the future”, I’d hate to see what sort of money it would spend if it actually had a firm proposal and timeline!

And the idea of gathering community input isn’t a bad one at all. Universities do it all the time. Usually by holding public meetings. $100 on Timbits and coffee is a far cry cheaper than $217,000 on a professional lobbyist. Probably a lot more accurate, too. Some of the more tech-savvy universities might even save on Timbits by setting up a webpage for feedback. But why set up a webpage when you could pay lobbyists two hundred grand to do the same thing?

Oh wait, there’s fine print. Aha! After a lengthy paragraph describing its strategic “sometime in the future” plan that it needed to get community reaction on, it adds that the firm “also provided assistance with regard to labour relations during that period”.

Bingo. Right. York’s grad students went on strike during that period. So while York has five full-time labour relations staffpeople, and 29 full-time media relations staffpeople, and a fully staffed legal counsel office, it still needs to spend a couple hundred thousand dollars of students’ money on ADDITIONAL external counsel to ...battle students? If only we’d known that York was afraid that over three dozen of its full-time highly paid professional staff were incapable of taking on an untrained, unpaid group of students. Without two hundred grand worth of additional lobbyists, that is.

In fact, the most perplexing thing about why York spent half a million dollars on lobbyists – most of it to lobby the government – is that York already *has* a full-time government relations lobbyist position on staff! I actually feel pretty bad for her right now. What does it mean when your employer pays somebody else half a million dollars to do the job that they pay you a quarter of that amount to do?

Of course, not all the money went to lobbying government. Some of it went to hiring people to read the CVs of York faculty members, more or less. $189,000 went to a firm assigned to develop a research strategy for climate change. More specifically, it went to “assess the interests and expertise of York faculty in climate change”. Huh? The literally dozens of full-time paid staff in the university’s academic and research departments couldn’t pick up a phone to call the environmental studies department and ask who was interested in researching climate change? Or read their CV’s to see what their expertise was? Or maybe, you know, even have a meeting with them? You know if York held old-fashioned public meetings for these sorts of things, rather than spending half a million dollars on lobbyists, it could probably get a pretty sweet frequent buyer discount on Timbits and coffee. Think outside the box, York. You see half a million dollars of lobbyists; we see three canisters of coffee and a box of Timbits.

Mind you, in a unique crash-and-burn defense York emphasizes: “It is significant to note that there is no specific government lobbying attached to any of the work that this firm has done for York in this regard.”

What’s that supposed to mean? That there wasn’t “specific” lobbying, but there was kinda sorta “vague” lobbying? Or that there was no lobbying at all, and the lobbyists you paid two hundred grand for actually *did* just sit around reading CVs?

No, York, no. If you’re stealing cookies to trade for smokes, the excuse “but we didn’t actually manage to get any smokes” DOESN’T WORK. AT ALL.

Well, at least they hired an adjunct professor from York to do this. Hey wait now. Why did they need to pay a York Environmental Studies prof hundreds of thousands of dollars to tell them what the “interests and expertise” of her fellow Environmental Studies profs were?

Ooh! And she’s on Wikipedia too. Waaaaaaait now...what sort of a prof has a Wikipedia entry? Oh. The sort who was also really a Liberal MP for 11 years. Now I get it.

Before closing in despair, let’s paint things in a little perspective, shall we? York’s lobbying efforts actually cost a quarter of what media giant YAHOO spent on lobbying the entire US government last year. That same amount of money could provide funding for 55 grad students at York. Or pay tuition fees for 267 grad students. Or pay for almost SEVEN BILLION OREO COOKIES.

(yes, I actually did the math on that one)

Of course, in an institution of impunity where York issues press releases to more accurately detail its wrongdoings rather than apologize for its wrongdoings, it’s probably unlikely that anybody in the senior administration will actually learn anything from this. But the next time you run into President Shoukri or Media Relations Director Alex Bilyk in the halls, you might stop them and say “Mahmoud, buddy, the next time you need a smoke...just ASK!”

so exciting, i might die from over excitement!

president shoukri is right, it's an "exciting time" to be at york.


let's count all of the great things york has done the past year and a bit: had an awesome strike, blamed women for being sexually assault, turned a blind eye to a criminal act/destruction of private property, tried to renovate vari hall to stop student protesting, hired a former major mining corporate freak to become vp university relations, showed their zionist colours and given up completely to the control of the israel lobby, hired an unqualified union buster to be the dean of the largest faculty of any kind in canada, fired teaching assistants and contract faculty for no reason and with impunity, had their general counsel and university secretary investigated by the law society of upper canada, tried to force google to violate email privacy, oh and spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on fancy lawyers to fuck striking people over and to try to get rid of tenured faculty.


indeed, an exciting time to be at york.

foiled! kind of... a bit.

so, while york university hasn't gone ahead with their horrifyingly ugly and depressing renovations of vari hall they HAVE gone ahead with some kind of information desk/kiosk.

reports of "jackhammering" yesterday in the middle of the hall are correct and the university has moved closer towards their goal of destroying student space.

i spoke with the president of the YFS, krishna, today and he confirmed what york university wouldn't.

krishna said that the YFS has written letters not just to the university but to various stakeholders and had meetings with university administrators about maintaining accessible student space in vari hall that not only meets the needs of students who are in class, but doesn't ignore the fact that vari hall was built as a democratic space where protesting could be spontaneous and visible.

krishna says it's important to the YFS that any renovation be based on a balanced evaluation of how vari hall can facilitate students "exercising their charter right" to demonstrate but also have classroom time free of disruption. unfortunately, the university is focusing "disproportionately on one right over another."

while claiming to care about what students think of renovating vari hall, the university abruptly cordoning off the space and ripping it up makes an entirely different statement.

by doing this the first week of classes the university is saying to students, new and old, that vari hall is theirs. that it belongs to the university and that they don't give a shit what students think should be done with it. doesn't york university have enough kiosks? isn't it ugly enough? isn't it already have a sufficient amount of hostility towards its own students?

also, is the university even allowed to be installing a kiosk, considering that vari hall is under review for historic site status??

but even though there is technically some construction happening in vari hall, students should still be celebrating the fact that there aren't plants, desks, and couches in there.

we still win, york.

vari hall NOT renovated?!

remember before the summer how york university was planning on "renovating " vari hall???

remember how york was all like "we're renovating the space, noone can stop us!!"

well, someone stopped them.

the only time available to "renovate" (or, clutter the space with tables and chairs) was summer time. a well known fact, the summer time slot is the only time that there are few enough students at york to justify making vari hall off limits.

was it the vari hall heritage preservation committee?? was it the person who nominated vari hall for heritage site protection?? did the varis, catching wind of the nomination and controversy, withdraw their support for the renovations??

somebody, some group, somehow BEAT york university on the vari hall renovations. shouldn't we have some kind of party?? shouldn't there be some kind of story in the excalibur? shouldn't people be walking around vari hall pumping their fists?

york ALWAYS wins. in this case, they didn't. it's time to celebrate!!!

all aboard the crazy train...again.

i think this recent decision out of the human rights tribunal of ontario is basically a red flag. former chair, michael gottheil, ruled against complainant david noble and branded him as an anti-semite because dr. noble had the guts to point his finger at the israel lobby at york university(who also branded him as an anti-semite).

more information about that decision is here, but what i'm really interested in right now is how the human rights tribunal can move ahead and claim to be an impartial body when it's very clear that they (some of them) absolutely are not.

from the human rights tribunal website:

"The Human Rights Code represents fundamental principles upon which our society is based. The Tribunal plays an important role in ensuring that those rights have real meaning. To do this, we have developed processes designed to be accessible and understandable.

The community must have confidence that Tribunal staff and members will treat each party with respect and address each Application in a fair and timely manner. Applicants, respondents and intervenors have the opportunity to be heard in a process that is accessible, fair, and based on the law and jurisprudence."

well, after gottheil's decision i have to say that i have no confidence that the tribunal staff or members will treat each party with respect and address their application with fairness because zionists are not fair. that's just how they roll. when he writes that criticizing israel is anti-semitic because israel is a jewish state, that ain't fair. what about the countless jews who criticize israel? they are self loathing jews??? automatically anti-semitic?? that makes no sense and is actually offensive and nonsensical.

so, does this mean that michael gottheil is a zionist--because if we flip the logic of his own decision that's the conclusion we would come to, and that doesn't really seem fair does it? that he's on the tribunal as a pawn of the israel lobby? that this decision(which actually doesn't matter so much considering david noble's historic court decision agains the israel lobby recently) wasn't based on "fairness... facts, the law, and the merits of the case"??

sounds like the human rights tribunal of ontario is a ship without a real captain, or one who is just intent on steering it into dangerously rocky territory on secret orders then abandoning ship.

dear human rights tribunal: this is a travesty. your ability to work, to "protect" human rights, relies on the community's belief that you are doing your job fairly and in good faith. it's clear this isn't the case and you are losing community confidence fast.

sad, really. the human rights tribunal was, for a moment, a pretty decent institution. there is no appeals process at the tribunal, so the only appeal here would be public opinion.

you can call the human rights tribunal at 416 326 1312 or you can email them at hrto.tdpo@ontario.ca .

let them know that as the community whose confidence determines the legitimacy of their tribunal, you aren't pleased.

human rights tribunal of ontario=big zionist joke?

HUMAN RIGHTS TRIBUNAL OF ONTARIO JOINS CAMPAIGN TO CRIMINALIZE CRITICISM OF ISRAEL AS ANTI-SEMITIC

In a shocking decision issued on April 22 Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario Chair Michael Gottheil condemned the complainant in a reprisal case, Jewish Professor David Noble, as an anti-semite for attempting to expose the influence of the Israel lobby at York University. Writing about a flyer Noble distributed to his classes suggesting that the presence of prominent pro-Israel advocates, fund-raisers, and lobbyists on the Board of the York University Foundation might have influenced the university to clamp down on pro-Palestinian activists, Gottheil stated:

"I also find that the pamphlet could be taken as suggesting the existence of a 'Jewish conspiracy', with broad influence. While the complainant went to lengths to explain that the organizations and individuals he identified as being inter-connected and as having influence were so identified because of their support for the state of Israel, he acknowledged that these organizations would self-identify as Jewish organizations and Israel would self-identify as a Jewish state. Thus, whatever the complainant might have intended, it was not unreasonable in my view for these organizations, the individuals, and the University to have considered the pamphlet as playing into the notion of a "Jewish conspiracy," a notion the complainant acknowledged existed, and expressed through anti-Semitic writings such as the 'Protocols of the Elders of Zion.'"

This is surely an echo of the current excesses of the Israel lobby, which has been seeking to criminalize as racism and hate speech all criticism of Israel. (By the same twisted logic, all criticism of Noble, a self-identifying Jew himself, should be construed as anti-semitic, including this attack by the Tribunal.)

The Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario must be held accountable for this dubious decision, which legitimates the preposterous proposition that any and all criticism of Israel or the Israel Lobby is anti-semitic, even when made by Jews, and condemned for directly contributing to a political agenda that threatens Canadian civil liberties.

more education, less blaming.

There was a sexual assault last night at york university and before I write else about it I just want to say that I'm finding it a little gross the way it's being slanted as something that york university can prevent.

I've gone to four different universities throughout my academic career and at every single one of them i knew women or heard of women being assaulted on campus or in their homes. the university of Saskatchewan, Queen's university, university of Toronto, and now York university--none of these places can ever have enough "security" to stop sexual assault.

All of these universities have had several high profile assaults as well--stranger assaults(which are usually pretty rare). so, while i think the university has to become more serious about safety on campus, i don't really think it's fair to act like this only happens at York and that ANY safety precaution can stop a sexual assault. more women than we'd like to admit are sexually assaulted on campuses every single day--by their partners, their professors, classmates, and strangers.

Darshika Selvasivam, vp of campaigns and advocacy for the york federation of students is quoted as saying "sexual violence is sadly becoming an all too common event around york university's campus" and while I agree that assaults at york are becoming more visible, I think it's dangerous to say that incidences are on the rise because it ignores the multitude of women assaulted all of the time on our campus--ask any of the sexual assault crisis lines in the area, this isn't a new thing.

Focusing on the york administration as the cause of sexual assaults is not entirely productive and obfuscates the broader issues around sexual assault.

Sexual assault is an epidemic in Canada and York needs to address the culture of sexism on campus more than it needs to release the metrac report. Sexual assault is not leverage. It is not fair to say "sorry you were raped, young lady, that could have been prevented with more lighting". We need to think, "hey, maybe we need to educate ALL students about sexual assault." Maybe we shouldn't cut funding to women's studies programs, maybe we should increase education around the politics and issues behind sexual assault instead of just acting like cameras and lights are going to save the day.

I understand certain measures need to be taken, but let's not forget how widespread sexual assault is.

Consider that the "york rapist", a man who just randomly wandered into women's rooms and sexually assaulted them with no thought whatsoever, just received 8 years for his crime. 8 motherfucking years, for perpetuating a horrific crime and then acting like it was just a bit of fun and in Canada this is considered a good sentence.

In this situation, the residence in which the women lived were totally neglectful of the security precautions ALREADY in place. But also, as well as looking at yYork university we need to consider how the criminal justice system and widespread ideas and misconceptions about sexual assault lead not only to the gross under prosecuting of sexual assaults but also the joke convictions and punishments that sexual assaulters receive.

We live in a society where you can walk into a residence and go door to door raping young women and only receive 8 years time for it. So yes, York university should release metrac, it should consider safety precautions, it should be more sensitive to sexual assault survivors, but as the York university community it is our responsibility to look at the broader societal structure that allows women and men to be victims of such crimes(and you can read about how york has contributed to that HERE).

One of the victims of the York rapist is suing York university for not protecting her, and I have to say that anyone at all who thinks york needs to improve security should get behind this lawsuit. Women who have also been sexually assaulted on campus should join it and it should be come a class action law suit against York university. law suits are really the only power we have against the university and it's the one thing the university is scared of.

But also, let's not forget that sexual assault doesn't just happen because it's dark outside. We need to have open dialogues about why it happens and talk about how it happens regardless of how many security men are driving and figure out how to educate people about WHY sexual assault happens.

"All morons hate it when you call them a moron."

this is a really great article written by a member of Independent Jewish Voices.

anyone interested in israel and the israel politics needs to read it, and needs to know about david noble.


"David Noble is Jewish, a university professor, and a member of Independent Jewish Voices. He has provided me with the following information.

In 2006 Noble filed what may have been the first and only defamation lawsuit against the Israel Lobby in response to accusations made against him that he was anti-semitic because of his criticism of Israel and the Israel lobby. Members of the IJV are all too aware of this commonplace smear tactic. The overriding purpose of Noble's lawsuit was to make the smear tactic costly to those who use it and thereby curtail its use. While the lawsuit is still proceeding through the Courts, there are already signs of success (see 2 below).

(1) In November, 2004 Noble exposed the influence of the Israel Lobby on the York University Foundation, the fund-raising entity created by York University two years earlier. A day after the expose was made public, he became the target of a smear campaign branding him a bigot, racist and anti-semite. The campaign was spearheaded by the "Israel Affairs" (now "Israel Awareness") operatives of Hillel@York and Hillel of Greater Toronto and consisted of defamatory press releases issued collaboratively by the York University Foundation, York University, the Ontario branch of the Canadian Jewish Congress, the United Jewish Appeal Federation of Ontario, and the two Hillel organizations.

The next day, a story based on the press releases appeared in the Globe and Mail. Noble publicly demanded an apology, which was reported in the Toronto Star. No apology was ever made. He immediately thereafter filed a grievance against York University which culminated in a favourable Arbitrator's award for breach of academic freedom.

In November, 2006 Noble filed a civil suit for defamation and injurious falsehood against the other parties, all of whom, in addition to the key individuals involved (including the Hillel Israel Affairs operatives Dori Borshiov, Talia Klein, Tilly Shames, and Hillel of Greater Toronto Director Zac Kaye), became named defendants. That suit is now proceeding.

During three years of litigation, all defendants adamantly refused to answer any questions regarding Israel or Israel advocacy, insisting that the questions were irrelevant. The strategy of the defendants was consistent with that of their smear campaign: divert attention from exposure of Israel and the Israel lobby by focusing upon Jews and anti-semitism. In 2009, Noble filed a motion with the Ontario Superior Court to force them to answer the questions.

All but the York University Foundation dodged the motion by agreeing to answer the questions. In February, 2010 the Court issued a landmark decision on the motion, ruling that the questions regarding Israel and Israel advocacy were indeed relevant and ordering the Foundation defendants (former York University president and Foundation Board member Lorna Marsden, Foundation president Paul Marcus, and the Foundation as a corporate entity) to answer them within thirty days. The Foundation failed to comply with the Order and went into contempt of court for three weeks
to avoid answering the Israel-related questions. Noble has now also filed formal requests for documents in the possession of all defendants related in any way to the State of Israel, organizations and agencies associated with the State of Israel and advocacy, fund-raising, and lobbying on behalf of the State of Israel, and will go back to the Court to insure production.

(2) In April, 2010 Judy Haiven, a Jewish professor at Saint Mary's University (and member of IJV) was smeared as a racist and anti-semite by the head of the "Israel Awareness" organization of Dalhousie University, the same kind of operatives who smeared Noble. Like Noble, Haiven demanded an apology. But just days after the appearance of the Globe and Mail article on the landmark Court order in Noble's lawsuit, Haiven received the apology she had demanded. Noble believes there is a direct connection between this unprecedented apology and his lawsuit, demonstrating its intended effect.

Why does he think this? The Israel Affairs/Awareness operatives in Canada are in very close and constant contact. Paige McPherson, the student who smeared Haiven, is a Member at Large Eastern Canada of the Canadian Federation of Jewish Students (CFJS). CFJS is affiliated to The Canadian Council for Jewish and Israel Advocacy (CIJA), National Jewish Campus Life (NJCL), the Canada-Israel Committee (CIC), Hillel International, and the World Union of Jewish Students. It is extremely unlikely that she and her handlers were unaware of the lawsuit. Could it be that the message was sent that such smear tactics could be costly? Noble is convinced that is the story here and that it is one that IJV should broadcast far and wide.

(3) What Have They Got To Hide? The York University Foundation (YUF) has steadfastly refused to answer any Israel-related questions and has defied a court order commanding them to do so. Why? What is so sensitive about this information that they would risk contempt of court to conceal it? The YUF is the incorporated entity York created to raise and massage its money.

• YUF is headed and directed by prominent financial figures in the Canadian Zionist establishment:

• YUF President Paul Marcus is the former director of development for the United Jewish Appeal Federation and, before that, the director of International Affairs for B'nai B'rith.

• Chairman of the YUF Board of Directors Tim R. Price is the CEO of Hees Bancorp International and Brookfield Funds, Brookfield Asset Management, and the former Board Chair of the EDPER Group and Brascan. These international finance powerhouses are part of the Bronfman family empire. (Edper, which was Canada's largest conglomerate, is short for Edward and Peter Bronfman). The Bronfmans have, of course, been strong supporters of Israel.

• YUF Director Marshall Cohen, former CEO of Molson's, used to be the financial director for the Reichmann family real estate empire (president of Olympia and York) also strong supporters of Israel. He has also been a director of AIG as well as Ameritrade.

• YUF Director Julia Koschitzky, a founding member of CIJA and former head of the United Israel Appeal, has also been on the international Board of the Jewish Agency and Keren Hayesod, the Israeli funding agency.

• YUF Director Howard Sokolowski (husband of Linda Frum, former board member of the Canada-Israel-Committee) is CEO of Tribute Homes and fund-raiser extraordinaire who raised record amounts for the UJA and the Israel Emergency Fund.

• YUF Director Honey Sherman was Sokolowski's UJA fund-raising partner and is the wife of Canada's richest individual, Apotex CEO Barry Sherman.

• YUF Director H. Barry Gales runs the family's global international investment and merchant banking operations along with his sister UJA president Leslie Gales.

• YUF Director Alonna Goldfarb helps run the Goldfarb polling and marketing agency that handles the marketing of Israel bonds in Canada.
  

These are only the most prominent of pro-Israel supporters on the YUF Board (see the YUF website for the complete list of Board members).

Given the prominent financial profile and international reach of players such as these one must wonder what they are up to that requires such secrecy. (Noble spent three years trying to bring the YUF under the Ontario Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act; the YUF fought him tooth and nail and won on Adjudication, on the specious grounds of the legal fiction that the YUF was not a part of the FIPPA-covered institution, York University.)

Could it be that the YUF, which attracts donations from the creme de la creme of the Israel Lobby, functions somehow to funnel funds to the Israel Lobby, or to Israel itself? There is no evidence available to demonstrate any such connection and even to suggest it is pure speculation. But then what explains the extreme reluctance of the YUF to answer Israel-related questions? In time, with the production of documents in the ongoing discovery process in Noble's lawsuit, some answers might yet rise to the surface. Meanwhile, the matter merits close attention and further inquiry by the IJV.

The IJV should also note the connection between Noble's lawsuit against the York University Foundation and recent revelations regarding York University's attempt to block and censor last June's conference on Israeli and Palestinian statehood. A major role in this effort was played by Marshall Cohen, who was at the time a member of the Board of Directors of the York University Foundation as well as Chairman of the Board of Governors. Cohen was the founder of the Foundation. His direct effort to influence York's president would appear to confirm the truth of the allegations suggested by Noble's 2004 expose.

another way, tried?

remember last year(a year ago today) when a couple of idiots decided to destroy a campus newspaper for no good reason? and they were video taped doing it? but still nothing was done about it?

aaron rosenberg and mark levin were caught red handed destroying over one thousand copies of the latest edition of the YU free press. rosenberg and levin were also both members of the campus based israel advocacy group, hasbara fellowship.

when they were caught they said they had the right to destroy the paper because the free press publishes "views, opinions, and in this particular instance cartoon images that are "anti-semitic" in nature."

both students were arrested in june(after much work) and were at a hearing in september, 2009. at the hearing, the charges were dropped on the condition that the two pay restitution for the destroyed papers--which they did.

so the YU free press has been vindicated and continues to pump out top notch journalism. hurray!

best april fools joke EVER

oh my god, york university has the BEST sense of humour ever! look at this april fool prank they played on twitter this morning:


york asking for "student input"! the laughter will never cease. i wonder which joker in the public relations department came up with this gem?

vari hall... the final frontier!

so, the other day the vari hall heritage preservation committee held their unveiling of the nomination of vari hall for heritage site protection!

from what i hear there were balloons and treats, and students in general were interested to hear about the nomination--mainly because a lot of students didn't KNOW that vari hall was slated for renovations in the first place.

remember the poll the excalibur did, which overwhelmingly 'proved' that students wanted vari hall changed(we wrote about that here)?? guess the sample size of that poll?
go ahead. guess. 50,000 students are at york, so how many people do you think they polled?


50.

doesn't really seem like a good representation of what 50'000 other students would want, does it?

i had to do a little digging to get that number, but i had to do a whole lot more digging to get this little tidbit: the university probably isn't allowed to renovate vari hall without the blessing of the varis. that sometimes happens when philanthropists make massive contributions to universities and have their names put on buildings.

so the varis and the vari foundation are a key factor in this whole "save vari hall" fight. i'd be willing to bet that if the varis knew students were opposed to this reno, they wouldn't back it.

i got this anonymous comment the other day about vari hall:

"It would look horrible if it had tables and chairs in it and it wouldn't have nearly the same outstanding effect to new students. I remember that first time I came to York and walked into Vari Hall and looked up; it had that "wow" factor....[renovations] would be a slap in the face to the prestigeous architect who designed it. No, renovation would not be a good idea."

it's true. vari hall is the one spot at york university that actually looks decent. in fact, it's a beautiful space that only york university would try to ruin. it's a student space, and at a university with such a massive student population, a wide open space is necessary.

have they thought, even for a second, about what renovating vari hall would do for congestion? imagine chairs and plants in your way when you walked through vari hall at 2:30?? it would essentially be like trying to get off the titanic, but worse.

so, if you go to york/work at york you should let george and helen vari know that this renovation is NOT in the best interest of students and that students haven't been asked(well, except those 50).

this is the phone number and email for the george and helen vari foundation(this is not a personal email address OR phone number, and both are available on the internet).

416-920-9123

varifoundation@rbs.rogers.com

save vari hall!!!

best idea ever?

recently, york university decided(unilaterally/without student input) to "renovate" vari hall--you can read about that here--

because vari hall was designed to be an open and democratic space, alot of people thought that renovating the space(ie: making it democracy "unfriendly") was a stupid and bad idea, myself included.

well, vari hall could potentially be saved by an intrepid group of alumni and students who had this GENIOUS idea: they nominated vari hall for heritage site status.

brilliant. due to the fact that the property is under threat the nomination gets put on a priority list for investigation and if the heritage site nomination was approved and vari hall was made into a heritage site, the university wouldn't be able to renovate it.

foiled again, york!!!

that's gotta burn...

The rumour mill at Yorku is pumping out some verrryyy interesting information right now.

The word on the street is that general counsel & university secretary Harriet Lewis is being investigated by the Law Society of Upper Canada for professional misconduct.

Doesn't this raise pretty serious concerns about her ability to run/work for York University while she's under investigation???

We think it does and we would imagine that a lot of faculty, staff, and students at York might agree with us.

respectful academic workplaces are best achieved through bullying and harassment, right?

there's an interesting event taking place at yorku in a few weeks:

Respectful Academic Workplace public lecture
(Open to the entire university community)
Thursday March 18, 2010
12:30pm – 2:00pm
Stong College, Stong Masters Dining Room (Rm. 101)

presented by the centre for human rights, professor kenneth westhues will lecture on respectful academic workplaces.

kenneth westhues studies conflict in academic workplaces, "with the goal of producing knowledge that is empirically sound and of practical value for resolving conflict fairly and constructively...his research on the distinct phenomenon of "mobbing" produces knowledge that is essential to the building of a respectful workplace at the university."

it sounds pretty good, but the best part about this event was who we received the invite FROM.

this event was sent out on a listserv by linda briskin, of york university. we hope that professor briskin herself is planning on attending the lecture, considering she is currently at the center of a harassment grievance launched by one of her former TAs which means she is responsible for creating the opposite of a respectful academic workplace.

ah academia.. so full of hypocrisy.

you can stream an interview with that TA here:

http://trainradio.blogspot.com/2010/02/conversation-with-york-teaching.html

"a rat! we should've known."

the law of the university constitution by frank scott.

"attitudes and preferences that might be appropriate in the world of business could be fatal to a university...the special nature of a university cannot be understood except by those who devote their lives to teaching and scholarship, in the same way that the nature of medical practice cannot be comprehended by non-doctors, or the nature of corporate business enterprise by those who have never served in a corporation. better have scholars running banks than bankers governing scholars."

why was there an announcement on www.globeinvestor.com when jennifer sloan became vp university relations at york university?

why, since the beginning of 2010 have the "appointments notice" on globalinvestor.com showcased eight appointments to institutions of higher learning?

where they list the most recent appointments to corporations like kellogg's, novartis, genome canada, and aviva they also list university appointments because our post-secondary educations are becoming nothing more than pharmaceutical and mining corporations: they make a shit load of money pumping out shitty products that other corporations can buy for cheap.

we here at pamphleteers think jennifer sloan should be replaced as vp university relations for the reasons we discussed HERE.

we're sick of our university being run by business goons and frauds with fake qualifications.
and of course our student newspaper the excalibur essentially just got down on their knees and gave jennifer the old york welcome, totally eschewing their responsibility as journalists and writing this embarrassing puff piece about her.

i just finished reading jeanette walls' book the glass castle, and in it she describes her encounter with an unpleasant creature:

"probably because of all the garbage a big nasty looking river rat took up residence...i first saw him in the sugar bowl...this rat was not just eating the sugar. he was bathing in it, wallowing in it, positively luxuriating in it, his flickering tail hanging over the side of the bowl, flinging sugar across the table....brian threw the cast iron skillet at the rat. it hit him and clanged on the floor, but instead of fleeing, the rat hissed at us, as if we were the intruders. we ran out of the kitchen, slammed the door, and stuffed rags in the gap beneath it."

jennifer sloan, alex bilyk, mamdouh shoukri, martin singer, harriet lewis, and every other administrator repsonsible for driving this university into the ground is the rat luxuriating in that sugar bowl. positively luxuriating!! and they expect us to just run away like it's not even our own kitchen.

it is though, we pay for that kitchen! it belongs to us, and just like the rats from the lady and the tramp, if we don't get rid of them they will eat our baby.

this is not our university while students and faculty don't have the power to decide or help decide who is in charge. enough is enough. let's get rid of these corporate idiots.