Canada university under fire for rescinding job offer due to pressure from pro-Israel donor
The University of Toronto’s Faculty of Law has become embroiled in controversy following a decision by the dean of the prestigious law school to rescind an offer of directorship to prominent international academic Valentina Azarova because of her past work exposing Israel’s human rights abuses in Palestine.
Several national and international scholars wrote to the university to express their objection to its decision, according to the Star, a local paper. Azarova was expected to take up the prestigious position of director at the International Human Rights Program (IHRP). The Star, which has seen the correspondence between the university and faculty staff, said that pressure from a sitting judge, presumed to be pro-Israeli, who is also a major donor to the faculty, led to the offer being rescinded.
A number of staff at the university have resigned in protest. Audrey Macklin, who chaired the faculty advisory committee, and was part of the selection panel that unanimously found Azarova the best candidate for the job, quit from the board last week.
In a letter to the Star, the university denied Azarova was offered the position saying that “no offer of employment was made to any candidate, and therefore, no offer was revoked.” But a letter to Edward Iacobucci, dean of the law school from two previous directors of IHRP, contradicts the university’s assertion that no offer of employment was made.
“Azarova — the hiring committee’s top candidate — accepted the faculty’s offer in mid-August,” wrote Carmen Cheung and the most recent director, Samer Muscati. “The Faculty of Law put Dr. Azarova in touch with immigration counsel to advise her on her options for securing a permit to work in Canada, and Dr. Azarova began planning to move with her partner from Germany to Toronto, where her stepchildren reside.”
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A second faculty member, Trudo Lemmens, also resigned in protest. “As a faculty member of an academic institution which values academic freedom and human rights issues, I have no clear understanding of why the appointment didn’t take place” Lemmens is reported saying in the Star before announcing his decision to quit. “That’s why I joined colleagues in resigning because I’m not in a position to firmly defend the process and the decision. This is particularly important because I so strongly believe in the value of the program and the integrity of the program.”
Academics who had worked with Azarova’s defended her stance regarding Israel, while expressing concerns over the efforts to silence critics of the occupying state. “Her criticism of Israel is extremely legitimate within Israel,” Itamar Mann, associate professor, the University of Haifa Faculty of Law, who worked closely with Azarova said. “It’s a criticism that I share. It’s a criticism of long-standing human rights violations of international law, primarily through the project of settlements which is unquestionably illegal and that’s the kind of majority position around the world. It’s not an exotic position to take at all.”
“Even from the perspective of people who imagine themselves as helping defend or support Israel, I think this would be a grave mistake.”
“Being able to debate is an essential part of democracy.”
Azarova has taught law and international law and has worked to establish human rights enforcement mechanisms in Europe and beyond and has consulted for United Nations fact-finding missions, among other accomplishments.
READ: The definition of anti-Semitism has been weaponised for Israel’s benefit
By Jorge Majfud: They call the modest search for inconvenient truths "propaganda of the left" or "Marxist indoctrination." The propaganda of the right is so overwhelming that it is not seen, as the air is not seen. Nothing or little is said about the multimillion-dollar investments in advertising and fake news that lobbies and companies invest, for example, to spread theories and rumors without scientific basis, to deny climate change or to destroy public health programs.
In a speech at the National Archives Museum, President Donald Trump proposed the creation of the 1776 Commission to create a more “pro-American” education program while warning of “a radical movement” that has grown out of “decades of indoctrination. leftist in schools and universities ”that makes students“ feel ashamed of their own history ”.
Something like a Russian president or a German chancellor demanding that the young people of their country should not be ashamed of the crimes of their history. Of course, here is another linguistic trap that decides the framework of the debate. They are not "the crimes of your own history" but "the crimes of your country's history." In fact, we are not responsible for the massacres of Indians, blacks, Mexicans and the inhabitants of all those tropical countries where the "superior race" (sic) landed with their marines to impose bloody dictatorships in the name of freedom. The linguistic and symbolic strategy of those who believe themselves to be the owners of countries consists of identifying their ideas with an entire nation. A part of this strategic confusion lies in including the citizens of today in that “we” (we) when talking about an intervention that occurred a hundred years ago in the Philippines or a few years ago in Afghanistan without even having participated in the decision of the executions and bombings. We are not responsible for something we never approve of; we are responsible for our response to the worst truths of the past and present. But that's the catch: if citizens feel responsible for something they didn't do, the majority will defend it to the death and history will repeat itself. Not coincidentally, the fiery debate in the United States continues to stagnate in the Civil War of 1861.
The calls to control academic freedom are old. A decade ago, conservative senators from the southern states, supporters of the Creation Theory in Seven Days, as a way to “balance” the growing dominance of the Theory of Evolution, wanted to force universities to teach “facts, not theories ”. In just three words they demonstrated the degree of intellectual brutality that men in power tend to reach. Then there were other proposals to "balance" the number of liberal teachers (from the left) with the conservative teachers (from the right).
Naturally, this is a commonplace of those who fill their mouths with democracy and freedom, but hate democracy and freedom when claimed by others. President Trump's model is President Andrew Jackson ("the least prepared man I have ever met, with no respect for any law or the constitution," according to Thomas Jefferson). Jackson, known as "Mata Indians", was famous for stealing the territories of the indigenous nations to expand slavery westward and give the new lands to his white farmers, who were, according to him, "the true friends of freedom" .
For the same reasons and for the same culture, those who now complain about the "indoctrination of the left" in schools and universities never saw anything wrong with the systematic indoctrination of the right that succeeded in imposing falsehoods and historical myths, such as the Manifest destiny, which persist after years, decades and centuries.
They are right about something. The number of progressive professors in universities, almost everywhere in the world, is clearly higher than that of conservative professors. But the same thing happens in the cultural sphere outside the universities. This is not difficult to explain. Since the Renaissance, intellectuals began to oppose and criticize power. When you see the people of culture on one side of the ideological or political spectrum, look to the other to find out where the social power is, those who run the capital, the big media and the armies; those who have the power to hire and fire thousands of workers at will.
Luego, a la modesta búsqueda de las verdades inconvenientes le llaman “propaganda de la izquierda” o “adoctrinación marxista”. La propaganda de la derecha es tan abrumadora que no se ve, como no se ve el aire. Nada o poco se dice de las multimillonarias inversiones en publicidad y en noticias falsas que los lobbies y las compañías invierten, por ejemplo, para propagar teorías y rumores sin base científica, para negar el cambio climático o para destrozar programas de salud públicos.
La demonización de los críticos es parte de la estrategia propagandística de los propietarios del poder y del dinero, algo que quedó demostrado muchas veces, por ejemplo, por la Comisión Church del Senado de Estados Unidos en los años 70: la CIA invirtió cifras millonarias en organizar “protestas populares” y en plantar artículos en los diarios de Estados Unidos y de América Latina para influir en la opinión pública. Gracias a esta ingeniería, millones de personas libres continúan repitiendo, con fanatismo, ideas diseñadas por la Agencia décadas atrás. Esta multimillonaria inversión en los medios y en la cultura con propósitos políticos e ideológicos continuos, aunque generando menos documentos secretos y con mucho más millones de dólares que antes.
Pocos días hace, estudiando la Guerra hispano-estadounidense, comencé por preguntarle a mis estudiantes qué sabían de esta guerra y (asumo total honestidad de su parte) me respondieron, como única respuesta, que todo había comenzado con el hundimiento del USS Maine en La Habana en 1898 por parte de los españoles. Este mito (en flagrante contradicción con los informes de los mismos sobrevivientes, descartado por diferentes investigaciones y pese al reconocimiento de que todo fue una fabricación del New York Journal y del New York Post para vender más diarios) continúa vivo. El mito patriótico es más real que la realidad y la verdad es antipatriótica.
Esos mismos señores y señoras, que aman tanto el poder y el dinero y suelen estar en contra de la intervención del gobierno (del Estado) en la vida pública, son los primeros en meter al gobierno para regular todas aquellas verdades que no les conviene, interviniendo en la educación y en cualquier investigación libre e independiente. A esta independencia, el presidente llamó "abuso infantil". En las universidades trabajamos con jóvenes adultos y a eso le llaman adoctrinación. En las sectas y en las iglesias de todo tipo trabajan con niños inocentes y nadie se les ocurre intervenir ante ese tipo de adoctrinación y menos llamarlo “abuso infantil”.
La sola idea de que un presidente se crea con la potestad de establecer qué deben enseñar las escuelas y qué deben investigar los profesores en las universidades es primitiva y facista. ¿Es la mentira o son las verdades controladas más patrióticas que la verdad cruda? ¿No será que hay algo de libertad en la verdad, por horrible que sea, y es esto lo que tanto preocupa al poder?
Imagen de portada: Ilustración sobre la Guerra hispano-estadounidense, de Victor Gillam, “A Thing Well Begun Is Half Done” (Lo que tiene un buen comienzo, ya está a medio hacer), 1899. (Cornell University Biblioteca)
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