University of Toronto's insufficient response to hate thesis inquiry

One of the central questions about the controversial thesis, "The Victimhood of the Powerful: White Jews, Zionism and the Racism of Hegemonic Holocaust Education,” written by a Jewish anti-Israel activist named Jenny Peto, is whether proper procedure had been followed at OISE (the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education), which is part of the University of Toronto.

The thesis has not only been accused of being hateful and anti-Semtic, but scholars like UBC Professor Emeritus of Sociology Werner Cohn and York University Jewish History Professor Irving Abella, have referred to it in terns such as "devoid of scholarship" and "totally ahistorical .. full of untruths and distortions and held together by fatuous and very flabby analysis. It borders on anti-Semitism.”

The issue of academic freedom is not at the heart of this matter. Ms Peto, or anyone else has the right to propose contentious ideas as the basis for an academic thesis. But when Ms Peto proposes ideas which, on the face are absurd, such as that the Jewish community as a whole is racist and that Holocaust education programs are designed to perpetuate that racism, then one would expect that some level of rigorous scrutiny should be applied.

So the question remaining is, were proper procedures followed at OISE regarding Ms. Peto's Master's thesis?

Earlier this week, I exchanged emails with the office of OISE's new dean, Julia O'Sullivan, to ask whether she would be prepared to respond to some questions. They agreed to look at them and the questions were:

• Was the thesis approved by the Department and a Thesis Committee and/or Director of Graduate Studies?

• Was there a second or other readers beside thesis advisor Sheryl Nestel? If so were they members of the Graduate Faculty?

• Is Ms Nestel a member of the Graduate Faculty?

• Do you have concerns about the politicization in general and the politicization from a single perspective in certain OISE Departments and if so, what do you see as ways of addressing that?


The response, received today, was not from Dean O'Sullivan at OISE, but from Cheryl Misak, Vice President and Provost at U of T.

The response was:

"Due to our privacy obligations to students, I cannot discuss an individual student’s academic work or his or her performance. What I can, say, however, is that freedom of expression issues are ever-present in our society, especially on a university campus. The University of Toronto's Statement on Freedom of Speech makes it clear that freedom of inquiry lies at the very heart of our institution: “all members of the University must have as a prerequisite freedom of speech and expression, which means the right to examine, question, investigate, speculate, and comment on any issue without reference to prescribed doctrine, as well as the right to criticize the University and society at large."

"Of the thousands of MA theses written at the University of Toronto, in partial fulfillment of degree requirements, it is inevitable that some will have elements that offend various individuals and groups. In such cases, the University is committed to allowing and encouraging a full range of debate. For the best way for controversy to unfold is for members of our community to engage with the perspectives and arguments they dispute. It is intelligent argument, not censorship, that lies at the heart of our democratic society and its institutions."

“OISE is a very diverse place, with no one point of view dominating others.”

The first two paragraphs have been Provost Misak's standard media response to this controversy, and while she is correct in everything she says, she evades responding to the actual questions, in particular, the germane issue of whether proper procedure was followed.

The last part of her response is one that is certainly open to question. There does indeed seem to be the appearance, at least in the department that spawned Ms Peto's thesis, that indeed one view does dominate others.
 
Professor Cohn wrote an analysis which suggests that Ms Peto's essay was indicative of a systematic problem at OISE's Department of Sociology and Equity Studies in Education (SESE).

There are concerns that SESE program is so overtly politicized, with anti-Israel, anti-capitalist biases, that scholarship has become secondary to ideology.

Saying "SESE often resembles a political cult more than an institution of higher learning," Cohn looked at the abstracts of the thirty-six SESE theses. He reports that he "found eighteen of these to be so full of leftist position-taking that it would appear, prima facie, that there is no attempt at scholarly detachment in these works."

The University of Toronto is publicly going to circle the wagons, but I have had private conversations with professors who teach there who have described some programs and some professors at OISE as "an embarrassment."

The question now is, will U of T act behind the scenes to address the problems that are embarrassing that institution?


Michael Coren took a look at this issue last night:





UPDATE: OISE reportedly hosted secret anti-Israel meetings directed at high school students. More here.

Peto's hate thesis: Let's not lose sight of the real issue

An error-riddled, poorly researched, polemical essay that maligns the Canadian Jewish community  and accuses Holocaust education programs of being racist has received a lot of focus in the last three weeks.

It first came to national attention in a post in this blog, which was picked up by The National Post and the thesis itself received even more attention when it was the subject of a print article in yesterday's Toronto Star.

The subject of the controversy is a thesis written by an anti-Israel activist named Jenny Peto. Titled, “The Victimhood of the Powerful: White Jews, Zionism and the Racism of Hegemonic Holocaust Education.”  it makes bizarre, unsubstantiated allegations of Holocaust education programs being designed to perpetuate racism ["They are taught on the MOL that their whiteness can only be maintained through racism, both in supporting Israel and also perpetuating or, at minimum, benefiting from racism and imperialism in their home countries."]  and of the Jewish community in general being racists who benefit from "white privilege." ["a mainstream Jewish community that is dominated by racist and Zionist ideologies" ].

The thesis itself has been described by prominent academics as being "devoid of scholarship" and "full of untruths and distortions and held together by fatuous and very flabby analysis. It borders on anti-Semitism."

Today The Toronto Star reported that the thesis was condemned in the Ontario legislature by Citizenship and Immigration minister Eric Hoskins who, echoing statements by Conservative MPP Steve Clark, said he was "disgusted" by the thesis, and by MPP Peter Shurman, who described it as a hateful, poorly researched “piece of garbage.”

While these are apt descriptions of Peto's work, University of Toronto Provost Cheryl Misak makes a valid point, while ignoring the most relevant aspect of this matter, when she commented to The Star that she is “a little alarmed at the kinds of things being said about a piece of student work... It would be a good idea for us all to remember that it’s a student paper.”

In that, Ms Misak is correct. Ms Peto is a person of no real consequence whose writing suggests a less-than formidable intellect. But the issue at hand is how the Sociology and Equity Studies in Education program of the Ontario Institute of Studies in Education (OISE) at U of T approved of and accepted a thesis of such questionable academic validity and substandard scholarship.

The outstanding issue is not about an individual, but of how teaching is conducted in certain departments at OISE. While OISE is a world-leader in early childhood education studies, programs like their Sociology and Equity Studies appear to have become so biased and politicized that scholarship may have become secondary to ideology. And in that, ideology of a single perspective.

Julia O'Sullivan is the new dean at OISE and so is not responsible for the situation there up until now. How she deals with what is occurring will be critical in determining the future of the validity of education at OISE.

University of Toronto offers weak response to concerns about institutional anti-Israel bias at OISE

The University of Toronto has responded, but not really responded, to concerns about a Master's Thesis submitted in the Sociology and Equity Studies in Education program at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) by one Jenny Peto, that alleges "Jewish Racism" is part of "Hegemonic Holocaust Education" and suggests a Jewish/Zionist conspiracy to exploit Holocaust guilt.

According to the Canadian Jewish News:

Responding to a request for an interview, the University of Toronto issued a written statement by vice-president and provost Cheryl Misak: “Due to our privacy obligations to students, I cannot discuss an individual student’s academic work or his or her performance. What I can, say, however, is that freedom of expression issues are ever-present in our society, especially on a university campus. The University of Toronto’s Statement on Freedom of Speech makes it clear that freedom of inquiry lies at the very heart of our institution: ‘all members of the University must have as a prerequisite freedom of speech and expression, which means the right to examine, question, investigate, speculate and comment on any issue without reference to prescribed doctrine, as well as the right to criticize the University and society at large.’ 

“Of the thousands of MA theses written at the University of Toronto in partial fulfilment of degree requirements, it is inevitable that some will have elements that offend various individuals and groups."

It is commendable that the University of Toronto values free speech. But there are issues that remain unaddressed, like the perception that the culture at OISE has become so virulently anti-Israel and anti-Zionist that theses which have the appearance of anti-Semitism have become acceptable there.

And there is the question of whether the anti-Israel attitude at OISE has become so politically rancid that anti-Zionism has become more important there than basic scholarship.


Werner Cohn, Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of British Columbia, and one of the first people to draw attention to the thesis, The Victimhood of the Powerful: White Jews, Zionism and the Racism of Hegemonic Holocaust Education" wrote of the author's scholarship:

"..she is an autodidact who knows how to quote from others, whenever that seems to serve the cause, and thus to give her thesis the sheen of formal scholarship.The only problem is that the footnotes and references to the literature in no way support her contentions, and that she does not muster facts or data of any kind to give her thesis the weight of an academic argument."

"..she makes assertions, but it can’t be called an advancement of knowledge as she doesn’t test it in any way."

Ms Peto's thesis characterized the March of the Living, a prestigious Holocaust education program, as an "abuse of Holocaust memory for Zionist and racist purposes" (pg 108).


An indictment of Ms Peto comes from March of the Living national director Eli Rubenstein. “She hasn’t been on a trip where you see a Holocaust survivor holding the hand of someone who survived the Rwandan genocide or the Sudanese genocide, that it’s comforting and helps them to heal.

“How can you write a master’s thesis and not speak to a single survivor, educator or student in the program, and how can the university accept that?” he asked.

“We have survivors who rebuilt their lives and want to share their stories of survival and make sure that it doesn’t happen to anybody, and here you have someone criticizing us for that… it’s very sad.”

In fact, the only first hand research on the March of the Living Ms Peto is able to cite in her 2010 Thesis comes from her viewing of the March of the Living website in 2006!

This addresses Professor Cohn's principle concern by critics of the thesis and by extension, the culture at OISE in the assertion that "the thesis was devoid of scholarship."

U of T Provost Misak said,  "the university is committed to allowing and encouraging a full range of debate. The best way for controversy to unfold is for members of our community to engage with the perspectives and arguments they dispute. It is intelligent argument, not censorship, that lies at the heart of our democratic society and its institutions.”

These are commendable sentiments. But the question remains, where is the debate at OISE?

At a meeting of the OISE Graduate Student Association to discuss whether they should involve themselves with  the bigoted "Israeli Apartheid Week," the minutes don't indicate any debate. They indicate a universal acceptance of the notion that the Zionist entity must be oppressive. The only expressed concern is about how to imply that they are not anti-Semitic.

And who is the person they had to address that concern?

None other than guest speaker Jenny Peto! Well, with expert advice like that, how could they go wrong?

Ms Peto's thesis advisor is Sheryl Nestel. Ms Nestel has made the conference presentation: "Mapping Jewish Dissent: Jewish Anti-occupation Activism in Toronto." The Department Chair, Rinaldo Walcott, is a signatory to at least two anti-Israel petitions.

Where is the debate at OISE?

For U of T Provost Misak to say that the “university is committed to allowing and encouraging a full range of debate” is most welcome. Perhaps she can let us know when that policy is put into practice at OISE.