Before I get into my issues with the survey, let me be clear: hating some random college student because they share religious or ethnic similarities to the people in a country elsewhere in the...
Exemplary
Before I get into my issues with the survey, let me be clear: hating some random college student because they share religious or ethnic similarities to the people in a country elsewhere in the world that is engaging in atrocities is wrong. It is literally prejudiced, and is itself an injustice that no one should suffer.
That said, looking at the survey questions in Appendix E, I'm concerned that it conflates Jews, Judaism, Israel, and Zionism into a single measure. These are not the same things. The text of question 24 is:
Thinking about your courses over the past 12 months, have you encountered any of the following in your classes?
(Scale: Yes / No / Not sure)
Course content or classroom discussions that, in your view, portrayed Jews, Judaism, Israel, or Zionism in an antisemitic or biased way?
Course content or classroom discussions in which a professor or instructor brought up Jews, Judaism, Israel, or Zionism in a way that felt unrelated to the course topic or discussion?
Given the current genocide being performed by Israel in occupied Palestine and the way that those actions can accurately be described as fulfilling the Zionist agenda of Jewish demographic majority, there's plenty of space for people to be saying things that seem biased against Israel and Zionism without being bigoted against Jews or Judaism. For them to be merged into a single question makes for a great headline of almost all Jewish students encountering such a thing, but it conceals what in particular was being spoken against. This is a classic strategy of Israel to attempt to conflate any criticism of its actions with the hatred of Jews that led to the Holocaust. For them, the descendants of people who survived ethnic cleansing, to then turn around and engage in the same sort of behavior is abhorrent. And this sort of blending of different kinds of actions and beliefs into a single thing called antisemitism so they can brand all of it as unreasonable hatred is as disgusting now as it has been over the decades they've been playing this game.
And this is a problem for any attempt to actually resolve actual hatred for Jews or Judaism. It hides the scale of the actual problem, and makes it harder to eliminate the hatred when it conflates lots of different issues. I have no problem with Judaism or Jews. They may say I'm an antisemite for having a problem with the genocidal actions of Israel. I reject that, and reject their conflation of Jews, Judaism, Israel, and Zionism into a single philosophical unit. How do we stop the people who are actually hating and enacting violence against Jews or Judaism when Israel itself keeps trying to broaden the group to give themselves moral cover for atrocity?
I don't want this to take away from the undeniable and grotesque examples of antisemitism, but I'm pretty sure this definition is disputed. This reminds me of the Columbia reports that came out in...
Terminology
Antisemitism: This report uses the IHRA’s working definition of antisemitism including its illustrative examples, which was adopted by the Government of Canada in 2019:
Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred towards Jews, the rhetorical and physical manifestations of which are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.Footnote9
Zionism: Zionism refers to the belief that Jewish people have the right to self-determination in part of their ancestral homeland.Footnote10
Antizionism: Antizionism refers to a movement that calls for the erasure of Israel and denies the Jewish people the right to self-determination in part of their ancestral homeland.
Scholarship defines antizionism as relying on “libel and distortion to claim that the Jewish collective, Israel, rather than the individual Jew, is uniquely evil. It further asserts that Jews, who have thousands of years of history in this place, are fabricating a legitimate claim to their ancestral homeland. Antizionism claims that Israel, exceptionally, is the one state that must be eradicated.
I don't want this to take away from the undeniable and grotesque examples of antisemitism, but I'm pretty sure this definition is disputed.
This reminds me of the Columbia reports that came out in the wake of the protests/encampments. While there were clear examples of antisemitism, there was also a lot of conflating opposition to Israel's actions, or the colonial nature of Zionism, with antisemitism. I remember in some of those reports there were examples of pro-Israel Jewish students feeling uncomfortable expressing their support for Israel around the pro-Palestinian protesters, which were reported as acts of antisemitism. It's a mess.
My little experience with discrimination surveys and reports makes me feel like there's a lot missing from this kind of study. Not saying that the feelings expressed here are not valid or the...
My little experience with discrimination surveys and reports makes me feel like there's a lot missing from this kind of study.
Not saying that the feelings expressed here are not valid or the events did not happen. But there tends to be 30 perspectives to any ecosystem and the facts tend to be a mishmash of elements from all of them.
The primary concern is that the study doesn't seem to honestly reflect the perspective of the marginalized group it claims to represent. But the perspective of a spesific subgroup within a subgroup. It defines "Jewish voices" as:
1,038 responses received; 900 retained after screening and data-quality review.
Recruited through Jewish student organizations, community networks, and related channels.
Comprehensive, spanning the broad variation in demographic variables expected from the Canadian Jewish population.
That last part is interesting because there is a distinct lack of representation from students that do not participate in Jewish Networks or Organizations. Goes as far as to insinuate that such groups don't even exist like in this data visualization
It is not a fair subgroup since you are discounting up to 75% of relevant participants.
Among all Canadians who reported having a religious affiliation, just under one third (32%) participated in group religious activities at least once a month. However, some groups of affiliations had proportions well above this average—Jehovah’s Witnesses (86%), Latter Day Saints (80%), Anabaptists (75%), and Pentecostals or other Charismatics (72%). Others had proportions below the average—Buddhists (15%), Anglicans (19%), United Church (19%) and Jews (24%).
It would be fair to have disclosure regarding respondents affiliation with certain groups in relation to their answers. (Maybe I'm missing it, but can't seem to find the raw response data to get a full picture). Because it feels like the data collectors have a very specific idea of a "legitimate " Jewish identity.
It also dramatically changes the framing when it's presented as "90% of Jewish students... " vs. "90% of Hillel/Hasbara/Jewish Student Org members..."
Beyond that, we are simply missing every other perspective on the matter. Yes, the victims perspective is important, but those victims exist in a wider context. The big piece of missing context being "what is Anti-Semitic behavior?" Because those definitions have been sort of torn apart as of late.
If I had the capacity to do a wider survey now on 1000k people from the general population, my base line would be:
all Jews need to be exterminated.
Jews have no place in Canadian society.
Jews are dishonest and thieves.
I'm hopeful that these scores are all low across the board and we can agree that no one wants to be anti-semetic. And if that's not the case, we can also analyze in what subsets and situations those scores are high and start to find out what is going on there.
Questions like:
The state of Israel is justified in their behaviour and actions throughout the world.
i approve the actions of the IDF in Gaza and the West Bank?
makes for foreign affairs opinion study. And it can wrap back into the discussion with:
I believe the state of Israel is representative of Canadian Jews.
I believe Canadian Jews can hold views that oppose the State of Israel.
I think that's important because now we know where people draw the line between the behaviour and actions of an individual vs the behavior of a State. Personally, I would prefer that people traded me as seperate from the actions of a government I have limited say in.
Theres also a big difference between percieved discrimination and documented/verifiable discrimination. Because as much as we have a duty to protect victims and prevent harm, it can't be denied that there are material consequences and costs involved in these sort of discussions. Zionist student bodies have incentive to shape discourse and limit critique of Israeli action, sometimes to the detriment of the safety and security of Jewish people (see the ADF response to the richest man on earth doing Nazi salutes and encouraging Anti-Semitic discourse on their platform). And by rejecting any opposing Jewish expression, it isolates those people and makes them more susceptable to being targets and victims, but without any support network.
There are also policy and civic implications. Is it unfair for a person to demand that $x bil in Israeli aid and self defense be used for local food subsidies or healthcare. Is it acceptable that peaceful protesters are being labeled a terrorist threat for opposing a human rights violation and are lumped in with the literal Nazis.
I'm still learning how to quote and link stuff on Tildes. I really need to post more so it sticks. Sorry in advance. Holy shit "Hitler was a hero". That professor needs to be fired yesterday....
I'm still learning how to quote and link stuff on Tildes. I really need to post more so it sticks. Sorry in advance.
Holy shit "Hitler was a hero". That professor needs to be fired yesterday. That's horrific. I can't imagine why that sentence would ever cross your mind, let alone leave your lips.
But then they included this in the article?
'Another student said a women and gender studies professor gave her zero per cent on an assignment because it addressed sexual assaults by Hamas on Jews during the Oct. 7, 2023, attack.
The student at the heart of this incident said the professor told them to instead focus on "Israeli police's role in sexual assaults."'
That's not antisemitism? Why is this included? It's not antisemitic to not repeat the Israeli line in everything. Just like it's not unamerican to say that the US Army discontinuing anonymous sexual assault reporting is a dumb idea.
It really makes me question the writing of the person behind the report. I could harp on this particular finding for a minute but don't want to beat a dead horse.
It depends on why the student got a 0 and what the original assignment was. It could be antisemitism, if the assignment was to write about sexual assault in general and portraying Israelis as...
It depends on why the student got a 0 and what the original assignment was. It could be antisemitism, if the assignment was to write about sexual assault in general and portraying Israelis as victims is disallowed. Even if the assignment was to write about Israeli-committed sexual assault, the topic choice alone could be indicative of antisemitism. Again, all of it is "could" as we don't have the full picture and we only have the student's perspective.
Here's some examples:
Write about sexual assault, but if you write about the Israelis being victims, you're getting a 0. (antisemitic)
Write about sexual assault in a series of papers, but this week we're exploring just the Palestinian side as the victims and next week we're exploring the Israeli side (not antisemitic).
Write about sexual assault but only where Israelis are the perpetrators (antisemitic).
EDIT: here's the actual quote from the report by the way, since it reads slightly differently from how the article presented it.
“A Women and Gender Studies professor graded me 0% on an assignment because I spoke about sexual assault on October 7, 2023. He suggested I focus instead on the Israeli Police’s role in sexual assaults.”
Another possibility is that the whole paper had nothing to do with the Israel/Palestine issue at all and it's just someone who wrote a shitty paper and is mad about getting a bad grade. That seems...
Another possibility is that the whole paper had nothing to do with the Israel/Palestine issue at all and it's just someone who wrote a shitty paper and is mad about getting a bad grade. That seems to be what Samantha Fulnecky controversy ended up as.
The suggestion from the instructor to focus on "the Israeli Police's role in sexual assaults" doesn't support that theory, but agreed that the student could be embellishing.
The suggestion from the instructor to focus on "the Israeli Police's role in sexual assaults" doesn't support that theory, but agreed that the student could be embellishing.
She gave her a 0% grade. If you can’t identify the very obvious animus behind doing that I think you’re contorting yourself to excuse bad behavior here. If similar accounts were written in a...
That's not antisemitism? Why is this included? It's not antisemitic to not repeat the Israeli line in everything. Just like it's not unamerican to say that the US Army discontinuing anonymous sexual assault reporting is a dumb idea.
She gave her a 0% grade. If you can’t identify the very obvious animus behind doing that I think you’re contorting yourself to excuse bad behavior here.
If similar accounts were written in a report on Islamophobia I have serious doubts people would be making such a point of finding reasons it might be okay actually.
The surveys conducted from Nov. 17 to Dec. 19 last year found that 95.7 per cent of Jewish students had experienced or witnessed at least one antisemitism incident in the previous 12 months.
The report also said 18 per cent of those events were perceived by the victim to have been caused by faculty members, while another seven per cent involved teaching assistants.
One student, who has not been named in the report, said a "professor wrote that we should kill all Zionists, that she's worked with them and sees how evil they are."
Another student reported a professor saying "Hitler was a hero" while another said a professor told them "Jews belong in Poland and need to go back."
Another student said a women and gender studies professor gave her zero per cent on an assignment because it addressed sexual assaults by Hamas on Jews during the Oct. 7, 2023, attack.
The student at the heart of this incident said the professor told them to instead focus on "Israeli police's role in sexual assaults."
Overall 70 per cent of the Jewish students surveyed reported feeling that the university does not take the issue seriously, and 68 per cent said campus life is not safe or inclusive for Jewish students.
"Jewish students report changing what they say, where they go, what they wear and whether they remain engaged in academic and campus life at all," the report said.
I know certain professors can say some...things...but I really have a hard time imagining professors saying these specific things. Does anyone have any insight into what's going on?
I know certain professors can say some...things...but I really have a hard time imagining professors saying these specific things. Does anyone have any insight into what's going on?
Not a Canadian. With that in mind this is why I hate 90% of all Israel/Palestine discussion, as the innate desire of people to just throw an entire group of people in a bucket marked "evil"...
Not a Canadian.
With that in mind this is why I hate 90% of all Israel/Palestine discussion, as the innate desire of people to just throw an entire group of people in a bucket marked "evil" becomes wildly apparent.
I have ABSOLUTELY seen professors with takes like this. Maybe not a literal "Hitler was right" take but a "well how dare you mention Palestine might have ever done something as well" or "obviously no Jew could be moral".
I mean fuck the number of people on the left who will just straight up support Hamas, not Palestine, is jaw dropping, and they almost always self identify as progressive, which is wild to me given how quickly they'll explain that the religious conservative south wants the same thing and is evil for it, but you can't even get into that.
So I dunno, mileage may vary, it's a different country, etc, but while yes I've also seen/heard of professors getting nuked for saying anything positive about Palestine or negative about Israel, I have 100% personally experienced professors with these views having 0 consequences, mostly because everyone else agreed with them and it felt not even remotely worth the fight to try.
I've also seen rampant sexism(both ways) and racism (god especially against Asians, because how dare a minority not fit the model) from them and again with mixed results on anything being done about it depending on how approved the view was in the currently "higher education" paradigm.
Fuck I literally was in a poly sci class with a teacher explaining how sweeping generalizations were a fallacy and a sign of a weak argument, before, not maybe a day later, making 3 back to back. I mildly pointed it out and got a "hmmm maybe you have a point" from him and all sorts of hostility from the "progressives".
Like, i get it. This is almost certainly a bad study (it's almost always a safe bet) but you don't even have to look hard for this shit these days. You have Kanye West releasing a song called Heil Hitler and the standard reaction is "well he needs to get back on his meds, and his early work is still great". Dude clearly isn't well but also is it really that hard to believe that maybe just maybe people aren't bothering with the nuance of Jews vs Zionism vs Israel let alone the various factions and views within Israel and kinda skipping to the "oh yeah fuck em all, they're the bad guys right!".
Hell as another data point, go to any comment section or film class where Gal Gadot pops up. Loooooovely people pop out of the woodwork there to explain all the warcrimes they'd like to see done to her.
Note that these are all answers to a student survey, not records from police, court, or legal proceedings. There's no reason to think that the reported actions didn't happen, but there's also no...
Note that these are all answers to a student survey, not records from police, court, or legal proceedings. There's no reason to think that the reported actions didn't happen, but there's also no secondary documentation to point to back up the claims.
Honestly, no, I don't believe there is a notable difference. American and Canadian schools hold people who shared beliefs with Hitler in high regard - Henry Ford, Andrew Jackson, hell - Elon Musk...
Honestly, no, I don't believe there is a notable difference. American and Canadian schools hold people who shared beliefs with Hitler in high regard - Henry Ford, Andrew Jackson, hell - Elon Musk for a more modern example.
What Hitler did was a horrific crime against humanity, a stain on the soul of so many nations. And he was inspired by American racism. Concentration camps, Jim Crow laws ... both led to what we saw in Nazi Germany.
So no, I'm not surprised that people are stating shit in support of Hitler. Because we - in the USA at least - have been for a very, very long time.
A university professor outright saying "Hitler was a hero" is incredible even with all that in mind. It's not like Elon Musk had an easy time after throwing up his Nazi salute, so why would a...
A university professor outright saying "Hitler was a hero" is incredible even with all that in mind. It's not like Elon Musk had an easy time after throwing up his Nazi salute, so why would a Canadian university professor be so much more brazen? Why would students not report that en masse when we've had entire news stories here about students taking issue with professors for saying much more benign things, like reading out the n-word in a historical context from a historical document?
I have a hard time believing they wouldn't be fired for saying it with so many witnesses. Professors and leadership were fired for being supportive of Israel but not quite supportive enough very...
I have a hard time believing they wouldn't be fired for saying it with so many witnesses. Professors and leadership were fired for being supportive of Israel but not quite supportive enough very recently. So... yeah I have a hard time believing it.
As a Canadian, there are a lot of Canadians who consume a whole lot of right wing American media and think they have things like the second and fifth amendments. American culture is an enormous,...
As a Canadian, there are a lot of Canadians who consume a whole lot of right wing American media and think they have things like the second and fifth amendments. American culture is an enormous, and often negative, influence up here.
Before I get into my issues with the survey, let me be clear: hating some random college student because they share religious or ethnic similarities to the people in a country elsewhere in the world that is engaging in atrocities is wrong. It is literally prejudiced, and is itself an injustice that no one should suffer.
That said, looking at the survey questions in Appendix E, I'm concerned that it conflates Jews, Judaism, Israel, and Zionism into a single measure. These are not the same things. The text of question 24 is:
Given the current genocide being performed by Israel in occupied Palestine and the way that those actions can accurately be described as fulfilling the Zionist agenda of Jewish demographic majority, there's plenty of space for people to be saying things that seem biased against Israel and Zionism without being bigoted against Jews or Judaism. For them to be merged into a single question makes for a great headline of almost all Jewish students encountering such a thing, but it conceals what in particular was being spoken against. This is a classic strategy of Israel to attempt to conflate any criticism of its actions with the hatred of Jews that led to the Holocaust. For them, the descendants of people who survived ethnic cleansing, to then turn around and engage in the same sort of behavior is abhorrent. And this sort of blending of different kinds of actions and beliefs into a single thing called antisemitism so they can brand all of it as unreasonable hatred is as disgusting now as it has been over the decades they've been playing this game.
And this is a problem for any attempt to actually resolve actual hatred for Jews or Judaism. It hides the scale of the actual problem, and makes it harder to eliminate the hatred when it conflates lots of different issues. I have no problem with Judaism or Jews. They may say I'm an antisemite for having a problem with the genocidal actions of Israel. I reject that, and reject their conflation of Jews, Judaism, Israel, and Zionism into a single philosophical unit. How do we stop the people who are actually hating and enacting violence against Jews or Judaism when Israel itself keeps trying to broaden the group to give themselves moral cover for atrocity?
Since the article fails to take the basic step of linking to the actual report, you can find it here.
I don't want this to take away from the undeniable and grotesque examples of antisemitism, but I'm pretty sure this definition is disputed.
This reminds me of the Columbia reports that came out in the wake of the protests/encampments. While there were clear examples of antisemitism, there was also a lot of conflating opposition to Israel's actions, or the colonial nature of Zionism, with antisemitism. I remember in some of those reports there were examples of pro-Israel Jewish students feeling uncomfortable expressing their support for Israel around the pro-Palestinian protesters, which were reported as acts of antisemitism. It's a mess.
My little experience with discrimination surveys and reports makes me feel like there's a lot missing from this kind of study.
Not saying that the feelings expressed here are not valid or the events did not happen. But there tends to be 30 perspectives to any ecosystem and the facts tend to be a mishmash of elements from all of them.
The primary concern is that the study doesn't seem to honestly reflect the perspective of the marginalized group it claims to represent. But the perspective of a spesific subgroup within a subgroup. It defines "Jewish voices" as:
That last part is interesting because there is a distinct lack of representation from students that do not participate in Jewish Networks or Organizations. Goes as far as to insinuate that such groups don't even exist like in this data visualization
It is not a fair subgroup since you are discounting up to 75% of relevant participants.
Source
It would be fair to have disclosure regarding respondents affiliation with certain groups in relation to their answers. (Maybe I'm missing it, but can't seem to find the raw response data to get a full picture). Because it feels like the data collectors have a very specific idea of a "legitimate " Jewish identity.
It also dramatically changes the framing when it's presented as "90% of Jewish students... " vs. "90% of Hillel/Hasbara/Jewish Student Org members..."
Beyond that, we are simply missing every other perspective on the matter. Yes, the victims perspective is important, but those victims exist in a wider context. The big piece of missing context being "what is Anti-Semitic behavior?" Because those definitions have been sort of torn apart as of late.
If I had the capacity to do a wider survey now on 1000k people from the general population, my base line would be:
all Jews need to be exterminated.
Jews have no place in Canadian society.
Jews are dishonest and thieves.
I'm hopeful that these scores are all low across the board and we can agree that no one wants to be anti-semetic. And if that's not the case, we can also analyze in what subsets and situations those scores are high and start to find out what is going on there.
Questions like:
The state of Israel is justified in their behaviour and actions throughout the world.
i approve the actions of the IDF in Gaza and the West Bank?
makes for foreign affairs opinion study. And it can wrap back into the discussion with:
I believe the state of Israel is representative of Canadian Jews.
I believe Canadian Jews can hold views that oppose the State of Israel.
I think that's important because now we know where people draw the line between the behaviour and actions of an individual vs the behavior of a State. Personally, I would prefer that people traded me as seperate from the actions of a government I have limited say in.
Theres also a big difference between percieved discrimination and documented/verifiable discrimination. Because as much as we have a duty to protect victims and prevent harm, it can't be denied that there are material consequences and costs involved in these sort of discussions. Zionist student bodies have incentive to shape discourse and limit critique of Israeli action, sometimes to the detriment of the safety and security of Jewish people (see the ADF response to the richest man on earth doing Nazi salutes and encouraging Anti-Semitic discourse on their platform). And by rejecting any opposing Jewish expression, it isolates those people and makes them more susceptable to being targets and victims, but without any support network.
There are also policy and civic implications. Is it unfair for a person to demand that $x bil in Israeli aid and self defense be used for local food subsidies or healthcare. Is it acceptable that peaceful protesters are being labeled a terrorist threat for opposing a human rights violation and are lumped in with the literal Nazis.
I'm still learning how to quote and link stuff on Tildes. I really need to post more so it sticks. Sorry in advance.
Holy shit "Hitler was a hero". That professor needs to be fired yesterday. That's horrific. I can't imagine why that sentence would ever cross your mind, let alone leave your lips.
But then they included this in the article?
'Another student said a women and gender studies professor gave her zero per cent on an assignment because it addressed sexual assaults by Hamas on Jews during the Oct. 7, 2023, attack.
The student at the heart of this incident said the professor told them to instead focus on "Israeli police's role in sexual assaults."'
That's not antisemitism? Why is this included? It's not antisemitic to not repeat the Israeli line in everything. Just like it's not unamerican to say that the US Army discontinuing anonymous sexual assault reporting is a dumb idea.
https://taskandpurpose.com/news/army-harassment-reporting-changes/
It really makes me question the writing of the person behind the report. I could harp on this particular finding for a minute but don't want to beat a dead horse.
It depends on why the student got a 0 and what the original assignment was. It could be antisemitism, if the assignment was to write about sexual assault in general and portraying Israelis as victims is disallowed. Even if the assignment was to write about Israeli-committed sexual assault, the topic choice alone could be indicative of antisemitism. Again, all of it is "could" as we don't have the full picture and we only have the student's perspective.
Here's some examples:
EDIT: here's the actual quote from the report by the way, since it reads slightly differently from how the article presented it.
Another possibility is that the whole paper had nothing to do with the Israel/Palestine issue at all and it's just someone who wrote a shitty paper and is mad about getting a bad grade. That seems to be what Samantha Fulnecky controversy ended up as.
The suggestion from the instructor to focus on "the Israeli Police's role in sexual assaults" doesn't support that theory, but agreed that the student could be embellishing.
She gave her a 0% grade. If you can’t identify the very obvious animus behind doing that I think you’re contorting yourself to excuse bad behavior here.
If similar accounts were written in a report on Islamophobia I have serious doubts people would be making such a point of finding reasons it might be okay actually.
I know certain professors can say some...things...but I really have a hard time imagining professors saying these specific things. Does anyone have any insight into what's going on?
Not a Canadian.
With that in mind this is why I hate 90% of all Israel/Palestine discussion, as the innate desire of people to just throw an entire group of people in a bucket marked "evil" becomes wildly apparent.
I have ABSOLUTELY seen professors with takes like this. Maybe not a literal "Hitler was right" take but a "well how dare you mention Palestine might have ever done something as well" or "obviously no Jew could be moral".
I mean fuck the number of people on the left who will just straight up support Hamas, not Palestine, is jaw dropping, and they almost always self identify as progressive, which is wild to me given how quickly they'll explain that the religious conservative south wants the same thing and is evil for it, but you can't even get into that.
So I dunno, mileage may vary, it's a different country, etc, but while yes I've also seen/heard of professors getting nuked for saying anything positive about Palestine or negative about Israel, I have 100% personally experienced professors with these views having 0 consequences, mostly because everyone else agreed with them and it felt not even remotely worth the fight to try.
I've also seen rampant sexism(both ways) and racism (god especially against Asians, because how dare a minority not fit the model) from them and again with mixed results on anything being done about it depending on how approved the view was in the currently "higher education" paradigm.
Fuck I literally was in a poly sci class with a teacher explaining how sweeping generalizations were a fallacy and a sign of a weak argument, before, not maybe a day later, making 3 back to back. I mildly pointed it out and got a "hmmm maybe you have a point" from him and all sorts of hostility from the "progressives".
Like, i get it. This is almost certainly a bad study (it's almost always a safe bet) but you don't even have to look hard for this shit these days. You have Kanye West releasing a song called Heil Hitler and the standard reaction is "well he needs to get back on his meds, and his early work is still great". Dude clearly isn't well but also is it really that hard to believe that maybe just maybe people aren't bothering with the nuance of Jews vs Zionism vs Israel let alone the various factions and views within Israel and kinda skipping to the "oh yeah fuck em all, they're the bad guys right!".
Hell as another data point, go to any comment section or film class where Gal Gadot pops up. Loooooovely people pop out of the woodwork there to explain all the warcrimes they'd like to see done to her.
Note that these are all answers to a student survey, not records from police, court, or legal proceedings. There's no reason to think that the reported actions didn't happen, but there's also no secondary documentation to point to back up the claims.
Yes, I was trying to be very judicious in what I said with regard to several competing concerns.
Is it that hard to believe there's racists being more openly racist, in the United States as it exists right now?
There's a difference between racism and "Hitler was a hero." You know that.
Honestly, no, I don't believe there is a notable difference. American and Canadian schools hold people who shared beliefs with Hitler in high regard - Henry Ford, Andrew Jackson, hell - Elon Musk for a more modern example.
What Hitler did was a horrific crime against humanity, a stain on the soul of so many nations. And he was inspired by American racism. Concentration camps, Jim Crow laws ... both led to what we saw in Nazi Germany.
So no, I'm not surprised that people are stating shit in support of Hitler. Because we - in the USA at least - have been for a very, very long time.
A university professor outright saying "Hitler was a hero" is incredible even with all that in mind. It's not like Elon Musk had an easy time after throwing up his Nazi salute, so why would a Canadian university professor be so much more brazen? Why would students not report that en masse when we've had entire news stories here about students taking issue with professors for saying much more benign things, like reading out the n-word in a historical context from a historical document?
I have a hard time believing they wouldn't be fired for saying it with so many witnesses. Professors and leadership were fired for being supportive of Israel but not quite supportive enough very recently. So... yeah I have a hard time believing it.
Notably, this is a Canadian report about Canadian schools.
As a Canadian, there are a lot of Canadians who consume a whole lot of right wing American media and think they have things like the second and fifth amendments. American culture is an enormous, and often negative, influence up here.
I stand corrected.
It's notable that Canada has its own abhorrent history with colonialism, racism, and the like.