UJA wants York to start a snitch line for "abuse of podium incidents"

ever heard of sarcasm?

BTW: here is a nice concrete example you can have fun with:

"“Sanabel, what do you want to do to help the Al-Aqsa Mosque?” Farfur asks on the children’s program of Hamas’s Al-Aqsa television station. “We want to fight.” “And what else?” “Wipe out the Jews.” Now Farfur, the cartoon character on Hamas’s children’s television program, is satisfied. Farfur is a carbon copy of Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse, but the Hamas version does something that Mickey would never do: He entertains children while propagating the murder of Jews.

International protests forced Hamas to take its Disney clone out of circulation. Al-Aqsa complied, but promptly turned Farfur’s departure into an anti-Semitic statement: Farfur was clubbed to death by an Israeli official. Then the girl hosting the program turned to the camera and said: “You’ve seen how the Jews killed Farfur as a martyr. What do you want to say to the Jews?” A three-year-old girl named Shaima called into the show to say: “We don’t like Jews, because they are dogs! We will fight them!” “Oh, Shaima, you’re right,” the girl in the studio replied, “the Jews are criminals and our enemies.”

Farfur’s appearances are typical of Hamas’s anti-Semitic propaganda, which the organization also exports to Germany via satellite, hoping to breed new generations of fanatical anti-Semites and suicide bombers."

http://www.matthiaskuentzel.de/contents/anti-semitic-hate-speech-in-the-...

There are some very hateful people on both sides and we should not be apologists for either anti-semitism or islamophobia - no matter what the source.

It looks like UJA played a real game that York created. Wow stupidity from York

From York U's website

Quote:

The Task Force on Student Life, Learning and Community will be chaired by Patrick Monahan, the dean of Osgoode Hall Law School, who was recently appointed to the post of vice-president academic and provost which he will assume on July 1, 2009. Other members of the Task Force include:

• Paul Delaney, Professor, Faculty of Science and Engineering
• Seth Feldman, Professor, Faculty of Fine Arts
• Saeed Rahnema, Professor, Atkinson Faculty of Liberal and Professional Studies
• Sylvia Schippke, Assistant Vice-President (Student Community Development)
• Rob Tiffin, Vice-President Students
• Sandra Whitworth, Professor, Faculty of Arts

The seven student members of the Task Force will be selected through an open application process, in which interested students will be invited to submit a short essay outlining what they could contribute and what they hope to see produced by the task force.

http://www.yorku.ca/mediar/archive/Release.php?Release=1636

 

 

Oh, ferfuxsakes - would you two shut yer frikkin' gobholes for ten minutes and let us get back on topic???

The topic is banning IDF T-shirts, according to the UJA. No reason we can't example why some of these might be banned.

I initially took part in this thread to share my total disagreement with what the UJA is doing and now thanks to Cueball I'm starting to think that maybe the UJA has a point.

No. You scratched on the 8 ball off the break. We are still playing however because I am gracious in victory and agreed to run out the table.

So now another question to me is, why did the UJA go public with their little submission essay BS? Which is just as bad as the NP even writing a story about, what apparently is an ongoing investigation with the Task Force on Student Life, which apparently has not yet concluded  with any findings and or decisions, based upon ALL submissions.

To skew public opinion prior, defame York U, deprive York U of funding because of initiatives arising on campus against Muslims and subsequent efforts to prevent it? (there was a thread awhile back about anti-Muslim, or Palestinian, activities, at York U, wasn't there?) Or all of the above?

If the UJA is a charitable organization that gets political, that's up to them, I think.  None of my business.

Except, of course, that they no longer qualify as a charitable organization.  Somebody should be alerting RevCan.

Stockholm - and a few others here - pretty much set the benchmark for "abuse of podium". (Who you gonna call? **o**-Busters!)

Are you aware of universities that do NOT have a dress code, even a minimal one? Or a ruling against disruptive behaviour - as wearing anything like the IDF T-shirt illustrated above unquestioningly is.

It really bugs me how "anti Israeli sentiment" is morphed into "anti-semitism".  The two are very different.

FWIW, I think a professor or assistant should have the authority to kick someone out of class for being offensive. The agrieved party can always protest. Common sense will hopefully prevail.  Maybe i'm naively optimistic.

Protests against Israel; challenging the politics, the words, and the deeds of that nation, should always be open for debate.  I hope the same is true for Canada and its politics, though one can never be sure anymore.

Quote:

If Snert wasn't just a sarcastic bastard who's always been on your side of these issues, your rant might have some meaning.

But given that he's a libertarian "free speech absolutist" who's always accused everyone here of the same hypocrisy that he conveniently demonstrated for you, I'm afraid it does not have any meaning whatsoever.

 I'm a free speech absolutist? I didn't know that.

 I certainly, in general, support a citizens' right to speak freely, bounded by the law, but also bounded by their job or role. So I support a private citizen's right to say that they think "immigrants are stealing our jobs" but I would not support a teacher who wants to say the same thing in a classroom. I would support a private citizen's right to say that they believe "abortion is wrong", or "equal marriage is wrong" or any of a multitude of perfectly legal opinions (with which I, personally, disagree, BTW) without extending that to teachers at the podium.

 And really, I have a very hard time picturing this thread offering the same support to a professor who wanted to use their position to tell students that abortion is wrong or equal marriage is wrong, or immigrants are stealing our jobs.

 

Quote:

FWIW, I think a professor or assistant should have the authority to kick someone out of class for being offensive.

 That's happened at least once, IIRC, when a U.S. teacher booted a student for wearing a t-shirt that offended him by suggesting that "Bush is a terrorist" or something like that. Do you still support that teacher's right to kick a student out of class if they feel offended?? Because personally, I'd rather that either the law, or a clear and unambiguous school policy make those kinds of decisions.

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Snert do you not see that in the case of those things you list, that they are human rights and a professor has no business disparaging human rights,  and undermining them

 

I, personally, would rather that they didn't, however it's perfectly legal to have an opinion for or against any right. We often regard freedom of speech as a human right too, and yet here we all are with different opinions about it.

 

In this context, the fact that a professor's opinion is of a human right (one of which, I might add, only became a right in the last decade and was somehow not a right for the 130 years or so before that) is a moot point. If instructors are to be free to give their opinion of various world events then how can we say that they cannot give their opinion of, say, whether or not the United States should legalize equal marriage? That's not a current event or topic?? Of course it is, and whether you or I like it, it's legal to hold the opinion that the United States should not legalize equal marriage.

 

So then the question becomes "are we really certain that we want Math professors beaking off about their personal opinions at the podium?"

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Who said they were math professors, snert? No reports I read detailed areas of profession.

 

Then who says they won't be? I mean, isn't that the concern? Professors who have no plausible course-related reason to lecture students about current events going ahead and lecturing them anyway?

 

Quote:

"Somehow", eh?!!!!! says much in itself.

 

Yes, I hoped it would say "so clearly, this human right was in fact something we were all allowed to discuss as recently as a decade ago".

 

If Stevie manages to enshrine property rights as a human right, I expect to still be able to discuss and debate that human right. Would it be your belief that no professor should ever question that human right too? And what of babble? Would babblers be allowed to say "I disagree with this new human right"? I should hope they would.

 

So all I'm trying to say is that whether something is or isn't a human right, it's still perfectly legal to have an opinion about it, and therefore I would expect that if professors are allowed to use their podium time to lecture students on their personal opinions, those would necessarily be included too.

Because they do not want to appear to be interfering all the time? ;)

And if one thinks they are not behind the scenes on this adventure, most likely one would be mistaken.

 

~

snert, no professors and their course venues were given, just an empty allegation, amongst many, which presumedly was hoped that people would jump to conclusions. I didn't and don't. I stated way above the whole damn thing was spurious and inflammatory.

 

Tommy_Paine wrote:

If the UJA is a charitable organization that gets political, that's up to them, I think.  None of my business.

Except, of course, that they no longer qualify as a charitable organization.  Somebody should be alerting RevCan.

All my attempts to alert the government of political advocacy by organizations with charitable status have failed.  Especially under Harper's "I love the Jews" government.  This country has truly gone off the deep end when it comes to Zionist paranoia.

ETA: for those with Facebook access, check out Howard English's profile.  He is a friend of Peter Kent and is in the group "Peter Kent for Thornhill" group. 

Snert wrote:

So then the question becomes "are we really certain that we want Math professors beaking off about their personal opinions at the podium?"

Bollocks.

Let's cut to the chase here. This isn't about about the occassional math teacher who blurts out some opinion that someone doesn't approve of. This is about hauling up sociology and poli sci professors up in front of public tribunals where their opinions can be vilified, because some student, without the benefit of any kind of degree, gets to decide that the professor is showing "too much bias", or is anti-semetic or some such. It's about black listing and gag laws, and student ideologues running around universities having an officially sanctioned podium to denounce the opinions of their professors, outside of the class room, and act designed to threaten their employment and make all kinds of accussations and smears, some of which will do damage to reputation, whether proved or not.

Shades of University of Heidelberg 1938.

If professors and TA's are already governed by all laws pertaining to speech in this country, and most universities already have guidelines and processes for censuring professors who step over the line. For example, in the alledged T-shirt incident, the student could easily complain to the university already, if it is the case that it really was an "innocent" IDF shirt, without racist or sexist material on it. And Snert, I remember the dress code incident at the US secondary education institution involving the I hate Bush T-Shirt. In that case the parents and the girl complained directly to the school using the existing complaints mechanism, under existing laws. Not to mention the press was all over it which is why you and I know of it.

One really has to wonder why this incident of the IDF t-shirt was not pursued, if it was such an "innocent" item.

What the UJA wants to do is to give spurious allegations that would not stand up in any kind of court an officially sanctioned process that it can use to embarass professors and TA's who do not agree with them.

If the UJA wants, it can merely ask the CJC to try and have existing hate speech laws, or laws regarding human right and prejudice applied in the case of errant professors and other university staff. In the case of the alledged "t-shirt" incident, one really has to wonder why no such action was taken, if it really had legal traction.

 

Michelle wrote:

 When you get to university, you're not a kid anymore.  It isn't high school.  You're going to be exposed to a lot of people with a lot of opinions and you're not always going to agree with them.  You're going to have Marxist professors in Sociology, and free-market ideologues in Economics, and everything in between.  There are certain things that are out of bounds (e.g. discrimination on charter grounds), but certainly opinions on current events and world politics isn't part of that.

You're right, this stuff should be a no brainer in University, and apparently they want the Profs and students to shut  up and pretend they have no brain. 

Fact is, Politics in High School was a huge thing, and the debates among youth were great. However, the powers that be have driven politics out of highschools, and you wonder why voter turnout among youth, is down, and why people think politics is all the same.

Even in High School, these kinds of discussion should take place, but I leave that debate for others to hash out.

The fact that they want to neuter Universities like has been done to highschools is a growing trend.

Learn Stats, Calculus, Business, and drink, otherwise STFU and keep politics  and human rights out of the Universities.

I cannot seem to find any proof of this Howard English being a Tory. Can you provide some?

For what is it worth charities are legally allowed to lobby under cra. their is a percentage breakdown i think it is 25% of all activities.

Ten per cent.

Snert wrote:

Quote:

If the UJA wants, it can merely ask the CJC to try and have existing hate speech laws, or laws regarding human right and prejudice applied in the case of errant professors and other university staff.

 

That sounds fine to me. I'm not arguing in support of kangaroo courts and unaccountable tribunals. But at the same time, there seems to be a sense in this thread that professors should be permitted to use their status to preach their opinions to students, even if those opinions are not related to their course. Me, I don't really see the need, and I'm reluctant to see professors exploiting their power and status to advance their own personal beliefs, but as long as approval for that is consistent then OK.

I don't think you will find a single modern day social scientist who will argue that "opinion" is not a fundamental aspect of any social science -- no one seriousl argues the case for a truly objective social science, anymore. Bias and standpoint are accepted facts of the social constructed concepts of history and politics, this is probably the hardest of hard facts, not disputed by any practioner of the "soft" sciences. Thus the authority of a social science professor is not devised from their ability to produce a view that can be objectively weighed as the truth, free of "personal opinion", but on their ability to support their arguement and opinions with sufficient background evidence to give it theoretical credibility.

What can be measured for veracity to a certain extent is the evidence, which is why the most serious charge one can make against a professor is knowingly lying about the evidence in order to fabricate a basis for their "personal opinion".

From that point on it is up to others to determine the validity of that arguement or opinion. In other words, the whole idea that a scholar of the social science can teach a subject without expressing their opinions is antithetical to teaching any kind of social science at all. But this is not an attempt to close down social science once and for all, in fact, this is an attempt to assert the validity of one opinion over the other, as an orthodox truth.

Can you say: "an attempt to assert rigid Soviet style ideological conformity on a Canadian campus"?

Arabs students have been listening to Zionist scholars tell them "Palestine is not a country", and therefore "Palestinians don't exist" for decades without them trying to harrass and intimidate those teachers from teaching by setting up snitch lines, and trying to get them fired. Those bankrupt arguements stand or fall on their own merit and the evidence upon which they stand. If some Zionist students can't come up with proper arguements and a factual basis to defend those arguements against professors that they disagree, that sucks for them. Perhaps they should reconsider their opinions, rather than trying to run people who say things they don't like off campus.

johnpauljones wrote:

for what is it worth charities are legally allowed to lobby under cra. their is a percentage breakdown i think it is 25% of all activities.

 

Also I do not think this qualifies as lobbying since it is not before a government body. It is a University.

 

Someone should really check the rules so we can compare apples to apples rather than inuendo to rumour

I too think its 10% and if my 2nd year law classes on taxation were correct this would be classified as a form of lobbying. However depending on the UJA budget, it probably falls far short of the 10% permitted.

Excellent post cueball, and that is exactly why I stated above that York U should be talking to their lawyers about slander and defammation suits, as well as for any loss of revenue over this serious attack upon them.

The Zionist lobby trying to shut down public discourse against Israel's aparthide  actions against Palestinians, is serious, and it is starting to affect everyone in Canada, from political to educational interference.