by michael | Dec 11, 2023 | news
Two important questions lie hidden in the controversy about what the presidents of Harvard, MIT and The University of Pennsylvania said or did not say.
But first, let’s clarify the immediate controversy.
The Harvard president could not speak to the issues at hand because Harvard has no policy about bullying or harassment except those related to sexual misconduct and discrimination (advancement opportunities and access to jobs etc), policies also held by MIT and Penn.
Penn’s main statement about harassment, squeezed into its robust statement about sexual harassment, under ‘Respect for others in the Workplace’ is, “Penn is committed to the principle of non-discrimination and does not tolerate conduct that constitutes harassment on any basis, including sexual, racial, ethnic, religious, or gender harassment.”*** Given the site context of where this statement sits, it seems, again, that it is made only in the context of sexual misconduct and discrimination.
Penn also has the most robust statement that, “[It] is also committed to the principles of free inquiry and free expression and to creating an environment that encourages the active exploration and exchange of ideas. The University discrimination and harassment policies are not intended to impair this freedom, nor will they be permitted to do so. Prohibited discrimination and harassment, however, are neither legally protected expression nor the proper exercise of academic freedom.” So while Penn has a clear statement about free inquiry, it does not have a robust statement about harassment.
All three institutes of higher learning also have clear statements about how claims regarding sexual harassment and discrimination will be investigated.
With Penn’s inadequate harassment statement, that may or may not include other forms of harassment (and bullying), and the absence of the same at Harvard, MIT has the most extensive statements about harassment, beyond sexual harassment and discrimination. They state the following.
“All members of the MIT community are expected to conduct themselves with professionalism, personal integrity, and respect for the rights, differences and dignity of others. These standards of personal conduct “apply to all communications, whether oral, written, or in gestures.”**
“Harassment is defined as unwelcome conduct of a verbal, nonverbal or physical nature that is, sufficiently severe or pervasive to create a work or academic environment that a reasonable. person would consider intimidating, hostile or abusive and that adversely affects an individual’s educational, work, or living environment.”
“Examples of possibly harassing conduct: public and personal tirades; deliberate and repeated humiliation; deliberate interference with the life or work of another person; the use of certain racial epithets; deliberate desecration of religious articles or places; repeated insults about loss of personal and professional competence based on age.
“Harassment that is based on an individual’s race, colour, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, pregnancy, religion, disability, age, genetic information, veteran status, or national or ethnic origin is not only a violation of MIT policy but may also violate federal and state law…”
These are thoughtful and nuanced statements. Given these statements, it is hard for a reasonable observer to conclude that statements like ‘kill the Jews’ or, ‘from the river to the sea’ (a reference to killing all jews), or similar statements toward Muslims and Palestinians are not, ‘racial epithets’ and ‘oral, [with] gestures’ communications, and that recipients would not consider intimidating, hostile or abusive’.
Two questions.
- Given the non-existence of or vague statements about harassment and bullying by two universities and a third that has the adequate statements but refuses to apply them in the case of Jews, under what circumstances would they apply them (all three, if the other two catch up)?
- The presidents all stated their “[commitment] to the principles of free inquiry and free expression and to creating an environment that encourages the active exploration and exchange of ideas.” What have they done to create the absolutely critical places of safety for all persons to engage in, no doubt at times heated, exchange of perspectives they uphold?
The more important question, obscured by the odd defence of non-existent, inadequate or ignored statements about ‘harassment and bullying’ against an issue that is beyond harassment and bullying, why was there such reluctance to apply the good words of MIT, the inadequate words of Penn and the non-existent words of Harvard to Jews? I would ask the same question if the situation were reversed and Palestinians were being ignored under similar circumstances.
So what is it? A myopic, non-nuanced version of history? Simple ignorance and an emotional reaction because one side is spilling more blood than the other? Is there a hint of the ancient atavistic suspicion of Jews as the ‘Other’ against whom the rest humanity must protect ourselves?
Perhaps these three presidents need to read a few books from both sides of this horrifying reiteration of vendettas and violence. Perhaps they ought to take a few courses with teachers who do their best to be balanced and as accurate as possible at the same time. Perhaps they can invite significant thinkers from both sides to have an ongoing series of debates/conversations, and create that environment of, yes debate, but also finding the means to help as many people as possible on both sides to see the other as human. These acts would be of the highest calibre for what universities should be doing, not just pumping out degree holders.
**Italicized words are the authors’ emphasis.
***There is a second statement about harassment immediately above this one. but it is only in the context of “…the administration of its admissions, financial aid, educational or athletic programs, or other University-administered programs or in its employment practices.”
by michael | Nov 18, 2023 | news
Mr. Musk;
It is ironic that you are “deeply offended by ADLs [Anti-defamation League] messaging and any other groups who push de facto anti-white racism or anti-Asian racism or racism of any kind.”https://www.timescolonist.com/search?search=on&q=musk
What do you mean by this statement?
- Is everything after the words ‘deeply offended by ADLs messaging’ placed there to balance your primary intent to protest what you believe is ‘anti-white’ messaging?
- If so, then your primary intent is to state what you think is anti-white racism by ADL, an organization that counters racism. A piece of evidence that that is your actual intent is your tweet back to person A, ‘that you have said the actual truth’.
- Your response was to person A’s,“accused Jews of hating white people and professing indifference to antisemitism.”
- Let’s look at that statement. First, ‘Jews’ come in all human shapes, sizes, skin-colour, mental capabilities and ethnic backgrounds. So do Jews promote hatred of one such group; white people? Second, it is absurd to state and agree with, ‘that Jews are indifferent to antisemitism’. ‘Antisemitism’ is an invented word from a racisthttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Marr in the 19th century and, to the main point, aimed at Jews. So did you intend to state, like person A, that Jews hate themselves? Also then, do all Jews everywhere and at all the times hate white people and everyone else? The implication of your statement implies that Jews hate the rest of humanity, one of those antisemitic tropes used against Jews. These are implications of person A’s statement and your response. So, what are you saying? What is your intent here?
- It is naive for ‘X’s CEO to state that ‘everyone should just STOP being discriminatory’. And, ‘X’s decision to label certain posts as ‘sensitive media’ and that ‘X’ combats antisemitism and discrimination’. That ‘X’ allows antisemitism (and any other hate speech) on the platform either shows that you and ‘X’s CEO are ignorant of what ends up on the platform or turn a blind eye to them. Which is it? Ignorance or hypocrisy?
- Back to your offendedness. Your willingness to allow extraordinary kinds of hate expressed on ‘X’, all of it offensive in a visceral manner to many others, as opposed to your middle class, white, ‘I am offended’, is mere reaction, emotion without substance. How both person A, and yourself, made your statements were not only inarticulate, and clumsy, but were made without any evidence. It is also hypocritical for you to think others should care about your being offended when you don’t care if anyone is offended by what place on ‘X’.
- Spare us the excuse that ‘there is no room on the platform’ to produce nuance about any statement. If that is the case, then ‘X’ is a platform for opinion, not discourse which means all that it accomplishes, except monetization, is voices shouting at each other. Some opinions are banal and harmless, therefore irrelevant; the statements you and person A made are not harmless; banal yes, because they are so full of errors and omissions, it is embarrassing.
- Let’s have it Elon; where is your evidence to show any accuracy in your statement or person A’s statement which, when you referenced, reveals your approval?
- No evidence? Then read a few books, and not just ones that affirm your prejudices. A billionaire could afford a few books, maybe even a few university courses. But I suppose it’s easier to hide behind a wall of money and lawyers than to defend yourself and be accountable for your own words.
- And think a little more carefully about how you have allowed ‘X’ to mutate. And talk to a few experts on communication and hate and pay attention to what is happening outside your silo.
- Billionaires are not experts at everything.
by michael | Nov 1, 2023 | news
Why did Hamas attack Israel now?
On October 7, that is the question I asked. There must be, I thought, something going on that would start a new peace process or some kind of rapprochement toward a kind of life where the people of Gaza, Israel, Palestinians and more of its neighbours. And then, behold, there is such a reality. In fact, there are three.
But before we see that, what would people like Hamas do if they could no longer play war games with other people’s lives? Go back to school and learn about the wider world of humanity, rather than constant chewing on hate? Its individual members could do whatever they might wish within their gifts, aside from killing babies and using innocents to protect themselves.
Prof. Yair Hirschfeld penned the three processes to which me referred, (from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yair_Hirschfeld) He, “is an Israeli lecturer at the University of Haifa. Hirschfeld was a key architect of the Oslo Accords in 1993. He was born in Vienna and has been a strong supporter of the two-state solution, and has urged the Palestinian National Authority and the Israeli government to accept some form of this solution.” He is also connected to the Wilson Center in the U.S. (https://www.wilsoncenter.org).
The title of his short piece is, The Cause of the War Was a US-Lead Struggle for Peace.
“During the months, weeks and days before the Hamas terrorist attack, three complementary peace efforts were underway:
- The USA, Israel and Saudi Arabia were negotiating a regional peace understanding;
- The European Union started at the UN an intense dialogue with Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Jordan combined with a parallel separate dialogue with Israel and the Palestinian Authority aimed at creating the national infrastructure for Palestine as part of a wider regional stability building effort; and
- An unofficial Israeli-Palestinian dialogue aimed at reaching first territorial understandings for Palestinian state-building aimed to change realities on the ground, restart a process of mutual trust-building and pave the way for the renewal of a well thought out peace-building process.
On the global level, the multi-layered peace effort aimed at normalizing relations between Israel, Malaysia, and Indonesia would bring most of the Arab and Muslim world into the Abraham Accords. This effort threatened the interest of Hamas, particularly of its military wing, as well as the interests of Iran, its proxies, and Russia and became the motivation for Hamas to start this war.
So, Hamas cannot consider any solutions that would allow people the choice of hope or, to put it from a line in the Tanach: ‘…they shall sit every man [all people] under his own vine and fig tree; and none shall make them afraid: for the mouth of the LORD of hosts hath spoken it.’ By its brutal acts of murder, Hamas has manipulated Israel into responding as it is, make use of Palestinian people for Hamas’ own gain, other Arab states who, while refusing to damn Hamas as they damn Israel, were trying to establish something of a step or two toward coexistence and have manipulated various other countries and voices into supporting them by joining in the damnation chorus. How does it feel to be manipulated?
Good people from all sides of this multi-generational killing process, who can see the other as human, for the sake of their own countries, families and especially their children have to beat back the forces like Hamas who kill because it gives their lives meaning, but the opposite for everyone else.
by michael | Oct 15, 2023 | news
A blooded, ragged soldier, the remains of a dirty cloth tied around a forearm, crusted human juice covering half of it; wide, terrible eyes and handgun moving left to right, up and down, seeking targets. Limping through the wreckage of a contested city, the whines of bombs and whistling bullets sizzling a few blocks away stopped, a non-sound at which he no longer wonders.
The soldier hears something else, a noise out of place; akin to a thin shaft of light streaking past cracks in the dark. He makes his way toward it, shoving cement pieces and broken wood away from the new sound.
He moved a last…
A human sound, a tired whimpering, a bloodied toddler. It was lying in a smashed crib, the bottom holding the child up, its blankets tossed aside. An unbroken piece of flat wood had protected it, fallen on top of its crib. As the soldier pulled the last pieces of rubble away, its light mewling stopped, its bright eyes locked onto his. A pause. Little arms reached out. The soldier stumbled back, as if confronted by a horror too visceral to be grasped with a single look, gun still in hand, pointed at this sprout of an enemy.
And that is the question.
Technically enemies, that soldier and this child share everything human: copper in the blood, physical attributes, reason. But it is still an enemy, or the progeny of an enemy, whose parents might have been the ones who ordered their soldiers to strike everywhere at once.
Or they are out there right now, looking to kill for their team and not be killed by the other team, acting on their rights for revenge.
Or they could be scientists working on weapons that kill at a distance, so that foot soldiers marauding through streets could mop up (amazing how banal language can make killing seem).
Perhaops they are comfortable intellectuals sitting on modern stoas, expostulating sophistical philosophy or even theological justification for how their team has a right to cleanse their world of the human-like vermin that threaten them.
They might have been innocents-even protestors: weak, herd-like men and women whose justification for being alive is based on their ability to produce more males who will become the next generation of warriors to continue the ‘magnificent splendour’ of war as glory and the making of MEN (thank you dear Friedrich). These may be dead already, buried in the rubble around the toddler-thing.
So, what are the options?
Do what a detached Russian soldier (captured and interviewed) related; that he had blown a Ukrainian toddler’s head off because it was crying. Should this soldier follow that brave, human male and eliminate some whore’s whelp before it grows up and kills some of the soldier’s people in another generation, repeating the mantra of ‘me and mine’ or ‘you and yours’ ?. There is no middle ground.
Perhaps he could leave it there where feral dogs or humans would allow his, possibly, problematic conscience some relief, making him feel better about himself and his duty.
Or does he pick it up, cradle it, take it away, and risk one of his team members holding it by the feet and killing it in the time-honoured manner of bashing a head on rock; perhaps, in doing so, he would also risk himself for turning into a squeamish female, as to treat this little protoplasmic thing as human.
Because if a soldier stops, blanches from inhumanity, snaps awake and away from detachment, he or she can no longer be a soldier.
If the soldier can see this thing as human and not as an enemy that must be exterminated, hope for an end to the ‘my tribe or yours’ – win or lose, everything or nothing might just come to birth, and grow.
If so, what would generals do for a living? Something useful, like art or dressing hair? How would war profiteers make money? What would politicians do with their military toys?
How then would the rest of us live?
*Love Calls Us to the Things of This World, Richard Wilbur
by michael | Jul 15, 2023 | news
A good debate is both honest and efficient when the disputants declare their biases, with enough nuance that can start the debate. A further step would be to a) produce evidence in favour of one’s bias and b) take account of contrary evidence.
Consider, for example, the world-wide debate concerning fossil fuels (Industry)- a kind of solipsistic fundamentalism (a bias) and climate denial.
My bias is based on various studies produced by scientists over multiple years.
- I accept that the effect of climate change on our planet is compounding year by year and in multiple ways. For example, “The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has found that emissions from fossil fuels are the dominant cause of global warming. In 2018, 89% of global CO2 emissions came from fossil fuels and industry. https://www.clientearth.org/latest/latest-updates/stories/fossil-fuels-and-climate-change-the-facts/
- The Industry has fought against any attempt to address climate change. https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2021/09/oil-companies-discourage-climate-action-study-says/ and https://www.rainforest-alliance.org/everyday-actions/6-claims-made-by-climate-change-skeptics-and-how-to-respond/?c_src=MDS22VX&c_src2=22vvmmembcpc&creative=515229014072&keyword=global+warming+deniers&matchtype=b&network=g&device=c&gad=1&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIlubBgcGRgAMVCA-tBh1RqAqZEAAYAyAAEgKLA_D_BwE and https://www.clientearth.org/latest/latest-updates/stories/fossil-fuels-and-climate-change-the-facts/
- Industry advocates tend to ignore questions and issues raised by such studies. Instead, they focus on perceived effects of reducing practices that compound climate change: e.g. cost to the consumer and the economy, cheap shots against those who are trying to find ways to mitigate the effects, reliance on a few biased -which never stated- papers or organizations (e.g. the Fraser Institute or some newspapers) or non-sequiturs that serve to misguide an incautious reader or obfuscate the serious issues. https://www.times-colonist.com/opinion/comment-canadas-economic-hara-kiri-will-have-little-impact-on-climate-change-7280736
In the article printed by the Times colonist (July 15, 2023, link above) these demonstrations of biased argument are evident. For example, the only substantive points by the author are the potential impact of measures adopted by governments to reduce Industry’s contribution to climate change; a narrow perspective. These take the form of mere statements or the quotation of alleged facts (which may or may not be accurate) but are not further elaborated upon.
Industry propagandists tend to refuse to come forward with potential solutions to either the need to reduce emissions or the impact on the economy because they would have to give up their feelings of victimization and admit that there are a number of serious issues involved: not just their concern, a biased approach.
The author also resorts to snide, irrelevant comments.
a) The ‘deeply socialist NDP’. In the 1930s,1940s and 1950s the world ‘socialist’ was used to scare people, implying that the term was a synonym for ‘marxist’. Almost half of American law-makers still confuse these words: https://rules.house.gov/bill/118/h-con-res-9. The NDP, formerly known as the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, was mostly made up of socially active Christians and jews. ‘Socially active’ is defined by the creation of and activities by the CCF in reaction to the Depression: 30% of Canadians were unemployed and 1 in 5 were looking for help in a country where there was virtually no help from government. What has developed since is a social democratic system of governance and a social contract where risk is spread over a population, to reduce negative impacts upon each individual and family. The author does not seem to know that he has been living in a social democratic country since he was born. Nor does he seem to realize that social democratic countries have been more generally successful than others whose commitment to mitigating risk to their population has been minimal. The author’s use of the word ‘social’ is not only non-nuanced but is a red herring used to deflect consideration of the claims he makes.
b) Without a nuanced statement comparing the different social experience (political and tax) between the US and Canada the author makes a number of claims about business investment, (https://www.fraserinstitute.org/studies/comparing-business-investment-per-worker-in-canada-and-the-united-states-2002-2021) stating that the US is superior in this respect. But without adequate nuance, the reader is left without a clear basis upon which to accept tor reject the claim (by the Fraser Institute).
c) With respect to clear biases, the author makes an assertion to the effect that if all Canadian gas and oil-using vehicles were off the road for one year, Canada’s emissions thereby avoided would offset China’s emissions for 58 hours. OK. Where did this calculation come from? His own or by comparing two different data sets? Comparing the two countries in this context is at best ill-advised as, again, the author gives no context with respect to each country’s social, tax and and overall health. This reference is classed as a non-sequitur until more information can be provided.
d) The last point in regard to obfuscatory intent is the term ‘hari-kiri’. What was the point of this reference? At the end of the article he wrote that the original definition of this term was ‘disembowelment with honour’ and applies it to Canada’s Federal Government. Given the author’s bias towards Industry and his criticism of government one would think he would at least tweak the reference: ‘disembowelment with dishonour‘. This reference is another non-sequitur because it refers to an individual’s action, not a country.
by michael | Jul 15, 2023 | news
Along with other countries in the world, Canada has experienced a virulent fire season in 2023. It is absurd to call this demonstration of climate change a ‘season’. To do is so is to normalize these events. This enables us to anaesthetize ourselves to reality, which leads to the attitude of ‘ah well, can’t do anything about it, so let’s eat drink and be merry’.
But as demonstrated by the story below, our world is connected in such a way that a given event or set of events affect not just one nation but all of them (e.g. the greed and self-service of the Russian war upon Ukraine).
These fire-fighters coming to Alberta to help, reminds us that the growth of international cooperation and mutual concern can prove to be the future of human life, as opposed to the anachronistic hatreds and self-serving desires that threaten thousands of lives and the repetition of history. The nations that don’t understand this are on the wrong side of future history. Or they do understand, but only care about acting upon their private hatreds, revenge, or will to conquer.
It is more than tempting to despair of humanity but every time we acknowledge and celebrate the beauty of life and living and care about our world and the intent to value of every human life, we will take one more step towards that future.
Thank you to these firefighters and to South Africa.
Fantastic! South African fire fighters
