Conflicting views at The Globe and Mail on York University's gender segregation

The former political prisoner of Ayatollah Khomeini's dictatorship and Prisoner of Tehran author Marina Nemat writes that York University's accommodation of a student's request for gender segregation is something she would have expected in Iran, not Canada.

Meanwhile, the Globule's editorial board endorses York U's decision, further exemplifying the decline of "Canada's National Newspaper"

York University doubles down on its stupidity

You might think that if you choose to live in a country, it's reasonable to expect to have to adapt to its values, laws and culture.

Nope! At least not at Toronto's academic joke, York University.

There, in order to accommodate a request from a student who doesn't want to be around women "for religious reasons" the University capitulated and wants to allow him to do an assignment without any women around. Now I suppose I could see the point if the women came in to the exam looking like this:

But as it's York U, I'd be ready to bet they're more likely to look like this:

By the logic York is using, a student could refuse to attend class with other students because they are Gay or Jews or any number of criteria which violate the basic tenets of Canadian equity and fairness.

I'm also surprised that no one seems to have raised the obvious question of how the Sociology student in question could ever function effectively in his field if he is unwilling to interact with women.

At least it's encouraging that even NDP leader Thomas Mulcair is pushing back against this latest bit of civilizational suicide, saying, "I don't think a university should be accommodating such a demand."

York University's education department gets Judy Rebick to tell teachers to support the Occupy movement crazies

Ugh... the literally loony left


h/t Socialist Studies

JOE WARMINGTON: Controversial pedophilia author shouldn't be allowed in Canada: Christian leader

First Charles McVety, the president of Canada Christian College, and now Sun News is focusing on the pedophilia-friendly U of T/OISE/York University symposium called Bodies at Play: Sexuality, Childhood and Classroom Life.

The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education seminar featuring a keynote speaker, James Kincaid, whose writings propose the normalization of sexual attraction for children was first exposed on this blog last month. You can read the background HERE and HERE.

Dr. McVety has proposed that Canada should bar Professor Kincaid from entering Canada.

Joe Warmington at the Toronto Sun has written an article about the controversy:

Controversial author James R. Kincaid, who wrote the 1992 book, Child-Loving, The Erotic Child and Victorian Culture, should be turned back at airport, says Charles McVety, a child safety advocate and president of Canada Christian College.

“Kincaid’s earlier work in Victorian literature and culture and in literary theory has yielded to publication in cultural studies, most recently in the history and current cultural practices of eroticizing children and instituting elaborate scapegoating rituals to disguise what we are doing,” states a website promoting the event.

His planned Oct. 19 address is entitled “What Is This Thing Called a Child and Why Do We Want to Teach It?” 

But it won’t happen if McVety, who is also president of the Institute for Canadian Values, has his way.

He has fired off a letter of protest to Immigration Minister Chris Alexander and Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney urging them not to allow entry of the California-based professor.

While I am pleased that the Christian leader is drawing attention to the disgraceful agenda that OISE is fostering in the school system, I disagree with the idea that someone who has never broken any laws should be barred from entering Canada for reasons detailed further in an open letter I wrote to Dr. McVety.

The Hypocrisy of Using TIFF as a Political Platform

So filmmaker John Greyson's friends use the platform of TIFF to clamour for his release from an Egyptian jail. Academics, actors, writers and other filmmakers of international repute. That's what friends do for friends, right?

But hold on for a minute. Let's review some of that equation.

Let's first talk about the sheer hypocrisy of using TIFF as a platform, and then we'll focus on working in the field and getting arrested in the first place.

This is the same John Greyson who, in 2009, used the same TIFF platform to make a very vocal protest against the Festival's "City to City" spotlight on Tel Aviv.

And in protest he withdrew his short film, Covered.

Greyson criticized "the opportunism of TIFF, which seems increasingly eager to court dubious partnerships, such as the Israeli consulate's 'Brand Israel Campaign,'" and asked about "the extent of Israeli sponsorship."

More HERE 

Plenty of propaganda and indoctrination, but apparently one thing John Greyson didn't teach his students was how to make a decent movie

York University's anti-Israel fanatic John Greyson is currently in jail in Egypt for charges* including helping the Muslim Brotherhood's terrorist activities.

A few of his students and colleagues at York produced a short video appeal for his release. In viewing it, in which they describe the things they learned from Greyson, it becomes apparent one thing he did not teach them was how to make a decent motion picture.

But why should anyone expect that he would? There's nothing in his filmography to suggest he has that knowledge or ability.

As the old saying goes, those who can, do; those who can't teach; and those who can't do or teach are activists who proselytize in their classes at York University.

The video appeal includes snippets from anti-Israel propaganda that Greyson has produced and directed which his students praise.

Evidently he has misused his role as a York Film Professor to spread the hateful poison of his extremist political activism.

Egypt will probably let Greyson go soon. Unless he actually was involved in activities supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, they should have no interest in holding on to him.

Why anyone would want to keep John Greyson around for a second longer than they have to is indeed a mystery.




*NB: Greyson has not been formally charged, but the implication from the Egyptian authorities is that he was arrested for being involved with Muslim Brotherhood activities. He was arrested on a Muslim Brotherhood `Day of Rage` filled with riots and killings.

Screaming monkeys of York University act like hateful bigots

Resembling monkeys flinging around their own feces, shrieking, York University students jumped up and down during a meeting in which they repeated the notorious anti-Semitic canard that Zionism equals racism. By denying national self-determination to Jews while trying to validate it for every other group, they have firmly established their Jew-hating credentials.  Even the vociferously anti-Israel United Nations General Assembly voted to repeal the motion making that statement, but like most Communist-dominated institutions, the York Federation of Students, the radically politicized student union at York U, is living in a demented reflection of a disgraced past.

The purpose of the meeting was to vote for a resolution to boycott, divest and sanction Israel, the only genuine democracy in the middle east. The 200 students, many hijab-shrouded and over-representative of the Muslim Student Association and Communists, purposely held the vote during the Jewish holiday of Passover, knowing that most Jewish students would not be on campus to oppose it. To stack the deck further, Jewish student groups were not notified of the vote by the York student union that culls funds from them while working against their interests.

Joined by a few pathetic Munchhausen Jews (Jews who only profess their religion for the purposes of defaming Israel, or fake Jews who pretend to be members of the religion to get attention for themselves among anti-Israel fanatics) the resolution passed. The episode was yet another disgrace for one of the most discreditable universities in North America.

BlogWrath has a full report available through THIS LINK

York University makes its contribution to the decline of western civilization

Background on this can be seen in an excellent report by Blogwrath

UPDATE: Looks like I'm offending all the right people...

@queernature What, no more? Is that all the vapid Equity Studies jargon you know?
— Richard Klagsbrun (@EyeCrazy) February 13, 2013

Hamas..er...York University creates hostile environment for Jews

A reader sent a photo of a sign up at the York University Student Centre

and the two students manning the desk inside

The university, with a campus in the north part of Toronto,  has denied it has such an atmosphere in a petition filled with academics, many of whom have questionable reputations, but it seems integrity and honesty are not on the curriculum at Hamas York University.

Free event! Salim Mansur and Aurel Braun at York University panel tonight

Remember, if you can make it, the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center panel about the obsession with Israel is at York University's Vanier College tonight at 7.

Having Aurel Braun, Salim Mansur and Bahij Mansour there will make it a fascinating talk.

This ain't Naomi Klien's idea of Israeli Apartheid Week!

Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center presents a panel at York University on Monday March 5th featuring Rights and Democracy Chairman Professor Aurel Braun and Professor Salim Mansur, the author of Delectable Lie: A liberal repudiation of multiculturalism speaking about the obsessive focus on Israel in academia, the media and in politics.

It's a rare chance to hear these Canadian intellectual innovators together and it's free!

7 pm to 9 pm, Room 135 - Vanier College, at York's Keele Campus.

Post-script on the York U false anti-Semitism accusation

Cameron Johnston is NOT an anti-Semite. 

That is generally understood by people familiar with the now-viral story of the York University professor who used "all Jews should be sterilized" as an example of an unacceptable opinion and was erroneously accused of it being his own. 

But the matter does raise some interesting questions and to examine them, it helps to trace the story from its beginning. It first broke publicly on the blog Sassy Wire and it was picked up by the popular political blog Blazing Cat Fur, from which it turned into an electronic tsunami. 

Not only is Professor Johnston not an anti-Semite, but there is absolutely nothing in his history that suggests he is either anti-Jewish or anti-Israel, which made the initial accusation of the  opinion expressed about Jewish sterilization being his own sound somewhat fishy. Professor Johnston was very quick to set the record straight and replied almost immediately to an email inquiry with the following:

This was not my own opinion but rather an example of a reprehensible opinion that someone might have.

I discussed that the course focuses on the texts and not "opinions". In fact, I stated that for this course opinions are not relevant and I questioned the common idea that everyone is entitled to their opinion.

I pointed out that everyone is not entitled to their opinion by giving the example of someone having an anti-semitic opinion which is clearly not acceptable. This was an example of the fact that opinions can be dangerous and that none of us really do believe that all opinions are acceptable.  

For the record, I am also Jewish.

 

Regards,
Cameron Johnston

The media, including the mainstream international media, leaped on this story. The fall-out has pitted Jewish organizations and members of the Jewish community against each other and the whole matter poses some interesting practical and philosophical questions.

The most obvious problem is that a university student named Sarah Grunfeld made a very serious and potentially devastating accusation without ascertaining the facts. But what compounded that is that a major Jewish organization, B'nai Brith, seemed to endorse that accusation without doing due diligence. There have been a number of very serious incidents of anti-Semitism at York University, and publicizing an allegation without substantiating it has very damaging repercussions. Aside from the foremost concern of the potential to harm the reputation of an innocent person, this incident will very likely make students who are already intimidated about making complaints about anti-Semitic behaviour by professors less likely to come forward in the future.

There are other questions that arise from the incident. Why is it that when an example of horrible opinions are provided, they have to involve Jews, particularly at a place like York U with its reputation for hostility towards them? A number of people have noted that it might be because York has an environment where criticism of Jews is so de rigeur that it is no longer controversial, and that there would have been detrimental consequnces for a professor if he or she had used Muslims as such an example, even in the context of what should not be acceptable.

B'nai Brith insists there were other students who were also not clear that Professor Johnston's example was not intended to be his own opinion. While Professor Johnston's honesty is not in question, his wisdom in the choice of his example and his ability to effectively communicate are. Professor Johnston points out that he is Jewish and that is what led him to use Jews as the example in this situation, probably leading him to think it would immunize him from accusations of Jew hate. Despite Johnston's honest intent, there are enough cases of anti-Semitic Jews to make such a belief naive in today's academic environment.

What is also very telling is that the media were so very anxious to publicize this story, but when there was a shocking recent incident of actual anti-Semitism promoted by a professor at the University of Toronto, the mainstream media, which were well aware of it, decided to neglect it completely. On one hand, it could be that the Johnston story was more newsworthy since it is a novelty, while academic Jew hate is becoming a typical facet of university life. But it could also point to an agenda that wants to minimize anti-Semitism, an insidious hatred that has become re-fashionable along with neo-Marxist anti-Israel fanaticism.

In what can only be seen as ironic retribution by the fates, Sarah Grunfeld, who brought forward the accusation against Professor Johnston, is believed to be alleging that she has been misquoted and her words taken out of context by the Toronto Star reporter who interviewed her and wrote about the incident. She now is reportedly suffering from severe stress and depression as a result of the ridicule she is facing and the possibility of permanent damage to her reputation. But Professor Johnston could have been the victim of the same fate if Ms Grunfeld had been taken at her word, and neither need have undergone this unwanted attention if she had been more careful to check her facts.

Sex! Scandals! Worldviews Conference shows academics don't understand news media

The ostensive purpose of the Worldviews Conference held in Toronto this past weekend was to discuss the convergence of media and "higher learning." Attending the conference, one thing that became readily apparent is that the academics who had gathered there from across North America and the world to pronounce on how the media should work have virtually no understanding of how the media does work.

Nothing illustrates that better than the fact that a conference on how to shape media coverage of Academia couldn't even manage to shape media coverage of itself. The only significant media attention the Worldviews Conference received was about Bill Ayers, Barack Obama's Weather Underground terrorist friend, being barred entry to Canada to attend it.

It was almost startling to watch the assembled eggheads who purport to have some knowledge of the subject appear perplexed about why the press isn't more anxious to effectively act as a public relations arm of academia. Particularly, some of the worst examples of academia like conference sponsors OISE and York University, both notorious for being institutes where activist ideology trumps education.

Want media atention?  Try this!

The media, while an integral component of a free society, is also a business, and increasingly a highly competitive, entertainment-focused business. As such it has to give people a measure of what they want to see. And it's no secret people want to see scandals, sex, celebrity news and developments that have an immediate and direct effect on their lives.

The media gives university affairs coverage when it satisfies one or more of those categories. As an ironic example of that, Toronto's Globe and Mail newspaper, another conference sponsor, devoted most of its sparse coverage of the conference to ruminating on a recent scandal at The University of Alberta where the Medical School Dean was accused of plagiarizing a convocation speech.

The tone of undeserved self-congratulation that pervaded the conference was exemplified in one seminar where a professor from the Ontario College of Art and Design discussed how she and a team had developed, with grant money, an application for people with brain injuries resulting in amnesia and memory loss. These people often cannot remember people they have met, nor can they recall their emotional response to those people, and have to relearn it on each encounter. Her team developed an application that allows amnesia victims to create a diagram with squiggles and colors of the sort the Jackson Pollack would have painted while hung-over. These diagrams are supposed to convey the emotional response they have to different people that they can refer to during encounters where their memory fails them.

At the end of the seminar, I asked the professor if the amnesiacs for whom she created the application also lost the ability to read English. She shook her head and said no. So I asked the first thing that popped in my head when she mentioned her invention. Wouldn't it make more sense to write down a note like "Bob Smith - hate him, tells boring stories, but throws good parties" rather than have to rely on some vague and hard to interpret abstract design to convey less precise information?

She then commenced an articulate, intelligent and lengthy response, from whose first sentence it was obvious I was being fed a line of BS. Not that it matters; the grant cheque cleared and was spent a long time ago.

The conference wrap-up was more evidence that the relationship between the media and universities will be a relationship on terms that neither can dictate nor seem to appreciate. Titled The role of media and higher education in promoting democratic culture, it was evident that academics think the media should be a tool for promoting the Academy's particular notions of democratic culture. Given the heavy Marxist influence in universities, that might not be such a good thing.

I suggested to the panelists that universities take public funds, yet remain almost unique in the way they hold themselves unaccountable for it. One of the critical aspects of a democracy is the right of the public to know how their resources and taxes are being used. No other publicly funded institutions (with the possible exception of the CBC) could take tax money, and when confronted with a scandal, refuse comment and not provide transparency. Yet universities do that regularly, and all the while lecturing everyone else about how democracy should work.

The panelists response fell back on the lazy, staple argument of "academic freedom," without seeming to appreciate that transparency and academic freedom are not necessarily incompatible. But they do have reason not to be entirely forthcoming. Academics understand that if the public had better knowledge of what was being taught in some programs, universities' decision-making processes and how public funds were used, public outrage would lead to irresistible pressure for major reforms in the university system.

The Worldview Conference's goal of finding a way for universities to better exploit the media to spread their message is unlikely to be achieved any time soon. Until academics and university administrations appreciate that hypocrisy, secretiveness and self-indulgence are poor platforms to stand on to pontificate about democratic reform, the relationship between the media and the academy will continue to be as adversarial as it is cooperative.

York University makes international news as a hotbed of Jew hate

They don't call it Hamas U for nothing.

h/t Sassy Wire

York U's "balance" on Israel/Palestine means teaching students about "Israeli Apartheid"

A recent conference in Toronto called "When Middle East Politics Invade Campus" featured five student leaders from York University. They represented Christian, Jewish, and non-aligned student groups from York as well as Iranian Muslim students opposed to the totalitarian rule of the Mullahs. A consensus was voiced of an ugly atmosphere at York, where intimidation and even violence is a regular threat against those who speak out against the radical politics of the Marxist left and supporters of terror like Hamas, Hezbollah or the Iranian regime. The students told of their frustrating experience in dealing with York's administration which offered meaningless promises of fairness and balance, yet did absolutely nothing to curtail the hate that reeks in the air of the suburban north Toronto campus.

Another example, in a seemingly endless list, of the insincerity of York's commitment to fairness came from last May's:   "9th Annual Graduate Conference in Education 2010: Education & Communities." These conferences, under the auspices of York's Faculty of Education, are designed to help graduate students learn how to approach teaching. Seminars are presented by former York graduates and in many cases, the participants are themselves teachers and will be influenced by, and spread what they experience at them.

One of the seminars at York's education conference included a panel about how to discuss the Israel/Palestine issue in classrooms. The stated goal of  "Difficult Knowledge: The Politics of Israel Palestine in the Classroom" as it relates to that subject was, in their words, how to "bring political debate into the classroom as it relates to artist work, creative decision making, and creative teaching methodology."

So, who did York have as the entire panel about debate and creative decision-making as it relates to Israel/Palestine?

Three fanatical anti-Israel zealots: Elle Flanders, Jason Kunin, and B.H. Yael.

Flanders is the best known of the trio, being the notorious grupenfuhrer of the anti-Israel hate group "Queers Against Israeli Apartheid," which singlehandedly has managed to throw Pride Toronto into disarray and virtually guarantee the end of civic funding for that event.

Jason Kunin often acts as spokesman for a small fringe group of anti-Israel Jews headed by 9-11 conspiracy theorist Diana Ralph called "Independent Jewish Voices."  He's a teacher at Toronto's Vaughan Road Academy where he's known best for being removed from classroom duties for 17 days in 2007 amid allegations of his pushing "Israel is an apartheid country" propaganda to students in his high school classroom.

Kunin, the author of a little tome called "Jews are not an equity seeking group"  wrote a new screed recently for The Canadian Charger, which was founded by Mohammed Elmasry. Elmasry was the former president of the discredited Canadian Islamic Congress who once announced on the Michael Coren Show that he thought all Israelis over the age of eighteen were legitimate targets for terror attacks.

Kunin's piece for Elmo's Charger, titled "Can the Egyptians come to Canada to liberate us?"  is a lengthy and very weird diatribe against Stephen Harper, Israel and a few other things. To give some indication of his insight, this high school teacher's article signals, among other deficits, that  a) he doesn't understand the Canadian Supreme Court ruling on Omar Khadr ("The Harper government also ignores Supreme Court rulings when they don’t suit their political interests, as it did with a 2009 ruling instructing the Harper government to seek the repatriation of Canadian citizen Omar Khadr from Guantanamo Bay") and b) he doesn't understand the difference between a Parliamentary Resolution and a Bill. ("A resolution allowing U.S. war resisters to stay in Canada has been passed twice in parliament – one in 2008, and again in 2009 – yet the Canada Border Services Agency continues to deport war resisters.")

Don't you wish you had a teacher like that to explain the complexities of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict to your child in school?

Rounding out the triplets of rage was B.H. Yael, one of the original drafters of the despicable attempt by anti-Israel activists to malign the Toronto International Film Festival for its Tel Aviv spotlight in 2009.

These are the people York's Eduction Faculty believes should be guiding teachers on how to address the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.

It would be one thing if they advertised the panel as an "Israeli Apartheid Week" hatefest event. That way the bias would be clear. But by trying to mask anti-Israel hate under the pretense of  "how to educate students about Israel and Palestine without descending into an either/or debate,"  York has consented to the hijacking of classroom education about this complex Mideast conflict by bigoted partisans.

For this year, York's 2011 Graduate Students in Education Conference hasn't published details of the agenda online. Given that this year it's timed to coincide with the anti-Israel bigot-fest IAW (Idiots' Apartheid Week) in March, one can expect the worst.  York's behavior in this matter is a disgrace to academic honesty and integrity.

UPDATE: Just another recent example of how York seems to have one set of loaded requirements for events supporting a fair approach to Mideast politics and another for the ones who want to see Israel's end.

LAST UPDATED: March 1

Jewish anti-Semite Norman Finkelstein to ooze into Hamas U on Wednedsay

Yuck!

I hope the slimeball doesn't forget to remind people that he's the child of Holocaust survivors like he always does, because desperate for credibility, he'll have to grasp at his usual straw.

Maybe he can recite a poem in memory of his hero, Chairman Mao.

Always lookin' for a murderous dictator to love, huh, Normie?

Gay, middle-aged York University professor makes creepy video message for Justin Bieber

York University anti-Israel fanatic targets Justin Bieber with tacky video:

York University film instructor, publicly-funded arts grant leech and "Queers Against Israeli Apartheid" fixture John Greyson wants teen idol Justin Bieber to cancel his Israel concert.

Like most people in the world, Bieber probably never has and never will hear of Greyson. But tacky, flamboyant gestures are what being a York U Israel-hater is all about, it seems.

So for a little self-promotion, Greyson's created a pathetic piece of drek which features a pudgy woman who looks vaguely like Jenny Peto as Bieber. But it's probably not the first time Beiber has been the recipient of a strange video message from a Gay, middle-aged man. Imagine if Weird Al Yankovic were a talentless communist, and it'll give you an idea of what Greyson's videos are like. (Actually, that description makes Greyson's work sound a lot more interesting than it is.)

The boycott attempt has been phenomenally unsuccessful and with the recent death of anti-Israel zealot David Noble, even York is one fanatic less.

What's indicative of Greyson's less than spectacular reasoning skills is that his video accuses Zionists of "bullying" the anti-Zionists by attempting to get funds withdrawn from Toronto's Pride if they included the obnoxious "Queers Against Israeli Apartheid."

Because applying political and economic pressure is "bullying"..unless you're an anti-Israel bigot???

The 'soft war' against Israel

What follows is excerpted from a speech delivered by former Spanish prime minister Jose Maria Aznar in Toronto on Nov. 29 at an event sponsored by the UJA Federation.

I have always thought that a politician's actions speak louder than words. That's the reason why, a few months ago, I started to contact some friends in order to launch the "Friends of Israel Initiative." 

For many, it's become easy to denounce the harshness of Israel's military actions. Yet these same voices disregard Hezbollah's nonstop rearming in Southern Lebanon, as well as the group's expressed intention to destroy the state of Israel. Hamas, in Gaza, has the same objective. 

It's become easy for some to denounce the fence that partially separates the West Bank from Israel. Yet these same voices refuse to acknowledge that this fence has allowed Israelis to go out for pizza, to the movies, or to send their children on a school bus, without the constant fear of being blown up in a suicide attack.

Read more at The National Post

4th rate Toronto "Filmmaker," York University Professor John Greyson, compares Israel to Nazi sympathizers

John Greyson, a 50 year-old York University Film professor who notoriously tried to impose his view of the world with his failed attempt to organize a boycott of the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival's Spotlight on Tel Aviv program, is pursing his bigoted obsession to new, disgusting depths.

Greyson has recently created a video, using the 2010 World Cup as a backdrop, where he advocates for an artists' boycott of the middle east's sole democracy. In it, he contrasts musicians, all of whom are well past their career peak and who have declined to perform in Israel, engaged in a mock match against the major stars who have played concerts in the Jewish state.

He also includes his parodies of songs by the singers who have appeared in Israel. Greyson's own version of the song Umbrella by Rihanna, who performed in Israel in May, includes the defamatory line, at 5:40 of the video, referring to artists who perform in Israel, "Why would you join holocaust deniers, why would you join Nazi sympathizers"
Greyson's simple-minded, bigoted perception of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict betrays a level of comprehension about as proficient as his "filmmaking" abilities.

The tedious YouTube polemic he created laboriously takes nine minutes and twenty-five seconds to get across a point most amateur film students could have made more effectively in sixty seconds. Greyson might be so in love with his own work that he thinks audiences are willing to endure its monotony. This new tome from Greyson is more evidence that talented filmmakers make real moves and don't end up as 50 year old teachers of Film and Video Studies at York University.