Queen's University's as an ultra-politically correct institution
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Posted by David Murrell on 10:28:55 2008/11/19
In Reply to:
Canada gets its very first conversation police posted by Dust My Broom
I have a few anecdotes to tell about Queen's as an ultra-politically correct institution, as a former doctoral student in the university's Department of Economics. The department was alsways good to me. It had mostly liberal, but a few conservative, academics at that department. But as CCD readers know, the university as a whole has nurtured ultra-politcally correctness. For example, several years ago the university undertook affirmative action for gays -- this when gays were and still are well-represented in academics.
I left a sterile, moribund think tank (the Conference Baord of Canada) for Queen's in 1981, to do a doctorate there. The Conference Board, as most know, is a "big L" liberal institution. There I had suffered trhough many big-L Liberal conversations, mostly from management.
But moving to Queen's, I had my first close look at far-left radicals. One grad student in our department passed out propaganda supporting the Kim Il Sung regime of North Korea. He also passed out newspapers condemning the Lech Walesa-led revolution in Poland. Just after the U.S. Grenada operation, a U.S. military officer was invided to speak about the miltary operation. He was shouted down by university radicals, and left without giving his talk.
Queen's has a strong British tradition, and with that comes a Britsh-oriented anti-Semitism. There were two observant Jews in the department at that time -- Jack Mintz and Murray Frank. Professor Mintz was (and is) a first-rank scholar, who after the 1981-1985 period, of my stay there, has gained a premier national reputation as an economics commentator. But at Queen's, when converations revolved to him as a professor, there was always back-biting, about his lecture style and so forth. I shared classes with Murray Frank, a top-rate grad student at the time, and now a leading scholar at the University of British Columbia. As good a scholar as he was, there was always carefully-placed, negative comments directed against him, when the conversation revolved to him. Jews at the time, and now, participate in Queen's university life. But they do so at a British-styled institution, where an elite-driven, cleverly formulated, British-styled anti-Semitism prevails.
I am a tenured professor at the University of New Brunswick. Just after the 2001 mass killings of 9/11, our university put on a "teach in" about the mass murders. But the leftists organizing the event invited only anti-American speakers. They refused to invite a leading academic on mid-east terrorism, Miron Rezun, an Israeli-born Jew who was wounded in the Yom Kippour war. This UNB teach-in took place, if fact, took place on the Yom Kippour holiday, in 2001 -- preventing observant Jews from participating in the anti-American event.
One of the organizers and speakers at that UNB event was one Joy Mighty -- a feminist South African who months earlier had participated in the anti-Semitic Durban I conference. In an article for the UNB teachering newsletter ("Teaching Voices"), Professor Mighty stated that the United States had the 9/11 catastrophe "coming to them", given the U.S. foreign policy.
Soon after, Joy Mighty received a job offer to become the equity officer at Queen's University --this when she had helped to organize a clearly anti-Semitic teach-in at UNB.(At that teach in, I had a one-person demonstration outside, accusing the teach-in of anti-Semitic overtones.) It was under her bailwick that Queen's University published its notoriously racist "culture of whiteness" statement:
http://www.damianpenny.com/archived/006308.html
So now, as CCD readers know, Queen's University is a co-sponsor of an anti-Semitic conference, to be held at York University, where participants -- almost all of whom are hostile to the existence of Israel -- will be discussing whether or not Israel should exist as a Jewish state. Note that this conference is partly funded by the Principal's Office of Queen's university.
So, consider that Queen's has hired "conversation monitors" to spy on students. My point is this: I would doubt if these monitors would bother to disarm left-wing-based anti-Semitic remarks. If anything, these Queen's-paid monitors would nuture them.
Left-wing based anti-Semitism (or the "new anti-Semitism") is well fixed at Queen's. I received my university-teaching credentials at Queen's, and for that I am grateful to the economics department there. Yet I am embarrased by the ultra-political correcness that infests the university.
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