Warning: This text contains the n-word and the a-words, c-words and g-words.
Three years ago, The duty, The Montreal Journal And The Press have published more than a hundred opinion pieces on the subject of the “Lieutenant-Duval affair”. The University of Ottawa temporarily suspended a part-time professor, without meeting her, after a student deplored her use of a very sensitive word on social media (nigger), the subject of numerous conflicts, in the United States and here.
These journals generally only accept a few open letters on a subject, but academic freedom apparently justified such an outpouring, including nearly 75 texts from academics, according to a count by my colleague Vincent Romani, in a forthcoming essay. The overwhelming majority of these academics brandished academic freedom or freedom of expression to claim the right to use the n-word (see the analysis by Saaz Taher, in the Canadian Journal of Political Science). We also discovered, with surprise, that so many academics wanted to teach the Felquist Pierre Vallières, who advocated armed struggle to found a free and socialist Quebec, and for Palestine in his text signed with Charles Gagnon, “For a multinational common front of liberation.” The arbitration allowed a confidential agreement between the professor and the establishment.
For years, columnists here have been scandalized when a conference is canceled or an academic suspended in the United States. These cases are tiny, out of 1.5 million teachers, and the reasons are various, but we only retain those which allow us to demonize the “wokes”, a word franglish pejorative designating feminists and anti-racists. Opinion pieces have also been published presenting Equity, Diversity, Inclusion (EDI) programs as a threat to academic freedom. Finally, parliamentarians adopted the Law on Academic Freedom in Academia. In short, Quebec is mobilized.
Yet… Radio silence after a student at the University of Waterloo (Ontario) tried to silence, forever, a professor he stabbed in his “Philosophy of Gender” class, in June 2023. Defend freedom university of a stabbed professor? No point, it seems, if the attacker is not “woke”. In September, the court accused him of “terrorism”. General indifference here, except from Jean-François Lisée, who signed in The duty the only opinion text on this subject (thanks!).
And Palestine?
Without even mentioning the universities under bombs in Gaza, we see the same silence regarding the attacks against academics critical of Israel and supportive of Palestine. So-called defenders of academic freedom or freedom of expression who so often evoke a “language police” prefer this time to condemn the use of the words a (apartheid), c (colonialism) or g (genocide) to talk about Israel .
However, in 2023, Harvard blocked, before changing its mind, the hiring of Jewish academic Kenneth Roth, who spoke of “apartheid” with regard to Israel. Indifference in Quebec. Then came, in October, the offensive of Palestinian fighters (around 1,200 dead, mostly civilians and more than 200 hostages), followed by the counter-offensive of the Israeli army, which continues (around 25,000 dead, mostly civilians and more than 8,000 imprisonments, including almost 3,000 without charge).
Jewish professor Michael Eisen of Berkeley took to social media with a headline from The Onion, a satirical newspaper: “Agonizing Gazans criticized for not devoting their last words to condemning Hamas”. A biomedical science journal fired him as editor-in-chief. What reaction did #JesuisCharlie from Quebec defend the right to laugh at everything? None. No more than a few echoes about the petitions of tens of thousands of signatures demanding, in the United States, the dismissal of professors for having spoken of “genocide” about Israel (South Africa is currently alleging before the International Court of Justice that it is indeed a genocide, which Israel obviously denies).
Closer to home, in 2021, the University of Toronto withdrew a job offer from Professor Valentina Azarova, a specialist in fundamental rights in Palestine and consequently a critic of Israel, following pressure from the organization B’ nai Brith, which has the dual mandate of opposing hate speech and defending Israel. The controversy lasted for months, but the Quebec press did not publish any opinion text on the subject, other than a column by Emilie Nicolas of Duty (THANKS !).
In November 2023, medical resident Yipeng Ge took up the polysemous slogan “Palestine will be free, from the river” on social media [Jourdain, pour la Cisjordanie] at the sea [Méditerranée, pour Gaza] » (on interpretations, see Ellen Ioanes, Vox, November 24, 2023) and dared to speak of “colonialism” and “apartheid” regarding Israel. The University of Ottawa received several complaints and suspended him for approximately two months. Yes, the same one that had been criticized by so many Quebec academics demanding the freedom to use the n-word, castigating the same rector in the same breath. This time, only two opinion pieces on the subject, Samir Shaheen-Hussain of Duty and Fabrice Vil of The Press (THANKS !). That’s all.
But it is twice as much as to defend the sociologist Lesley Wood, arrested at her home at night for posters on an Indigo store denouncing its director, at the head of a foundation helping Israeli soldiers, for example with scholarships. of studies. York University immediately suspended the sociologist, who was also Jewish. No text has appeared in the press here on this subject. No more than with regard to the decision of the University of Montreal to cancel for security reasons, it is said, the exhibition Ma’radon Jerusalem in the 1930s, proposed by history professor Dyala Hamzah, herself Palestinian, and the Palestine House, otherwise a report from Radio-Canada by Sophie Langlois (thank you!).
Apparently, academic freedom or freedom of expression is no longer of interest to its defenders here. For what ? Because we don’t want to criticize Israel? Or defend Palestine? And especially not the freedom of pro-Palestine “wokes”? In matters of cultural war as well as armed wars and genocides, the beautiful principles are sacrificed, the asymmetrical forces, such as the number of victims, the blatant imbalance, the injustice too. Defend freedom? Yes, but for whom? Long live free Palestine!