Roosting Clunkers
It is an academic and social disgrace that our institutes of higher learning have become so politically and socially degraded. They appear to have laid aside the notion of a university being a forum for the exchange of ideas, imparting and offering the opportunities to discover and to learn and to become educated. A place where knowledge is revered and striven to achieve. Where diverse opinions are respected and debated.
Most certainly not where divisiveness is deliberately and libellously encouraged, where students are targeted for opprobrium because of their social, ethnic, cultural or religious affiliation. And where a stalwart nation which is a practising democracy with a free judiciary in whose universities all its citizens regardless of religion, ideology and ethnicity are free to learn, with mutual respect, is slandered and deligitimized.
At Kingston's Queen's University when its student-elected rector Nick Day, wrote a scurillous accusation of Israel as a "genocidal" country whose treatment of Palestinians presented as "perhaps the biggest human rights tragedy of my generation" on the web site rabble.ca, he signed off on behalf of the student body that elected him, as rector of Queen's.
His arrogant hyperbole in characterizing a country as beneath contempt, as a nation of genocidairs was not overlooked by the university nor its students. Many of whom no doubt equated genocide with countries like Sudan and Rwanda, Iran and Burma, North Korea and Democratic Republic of Congo, Zimbabwe and Libya whose abuse of their own people through mass slaughter is not unknown.
Some members of the student body set about collecting signatures for a referendum to which 72% of eligible undergraduate voters affixed their names. In the interests of expressing their opposition to Nick Day's continuation as the university rector. A whelming enough number to represent the majority who took offence at the man's hubris in speaking on their behalf to express an indelible hatred.
The University Council will now take the results of the referendum under advisement. They will make a decision whether or not to divest this man of the position he was voted to hold. The message is clear enough; many of those who originally voted for him have expressed their lack of confidence in Nick Day to represent their best interests, let alone their concerns.
If he is divested of his position he will be free to continue his hate-fests. He was free to take part in these deviously divisive celebrations of hatred in any event, but as a private citizen committed to expressing and extending a ferocious hatred toward an entire country, and that without taking into account having adequate knowledge about what it is he detests.
If he is permitted to remain in the position of rector, it will not reflect well on the decision-making capabilities of the University Council, but it will be their decision to make. At the very least, he and they will know of a certainty that the smear campaign and the hatred expressed toward Israel and Jews is not as universally accepted as he appears to feel it is.
Most certainly not where divisiveness is deliberately and libellously encouraged, where students are targeted for opprobrium because of their social, ethnic, cultural or religious affiliation. And where a stalwart nation which is a practising democracy with a free judiciary in whose universities all its citizens regardless of religion, ideology and ethnicity are free to learn, with mutual respect, is slandered and deligitimized.
At Kingston's Queen's University when its student-elected rector Nick Day, wrote a scurillous accusation of Israel as a "genocidal" country whose treatment of Palestinians presented as "perhaps the biggest human rights tragedy of my generation" on the web site rabble.ca, he signed off on behalf of the student body that elected him, as rector of Queen's.
His arrogant hyperbole in characterizing a country as beneath contempt, as a nation of genocidairs was not overlooked by the university nor its students. Many of whom no doubt equated genocide with countries like Sudan and Rwanda, Iran and Burma, North Korea and Democratic Republic of Congo, Zimbabwe and Libya whose abuse of their own people through mass slaughter is not unknown.
Some members of the student body set about collecting signatures for a referendum to which 72% of eligible undergraduate voters affixed their names. In the interests of expressing their opposition to Nick Day's continuation as the university rector. A whelming enough number to represent the majority who took offence at the man's hubris in speaking on their behalf to express an indelible hatred.
The University Council will now take the results of the referendum under advisement. They will make a decision whether or not to divest this man of the position he was voted to hold. The message is clear enough; many of those who originally voted for him have expressed their lack of confidence in Nick Day to represent their best interests, let alone their concerns.
If he is divested of his position he will be free to continue his hate-fests. He was free to take part in these deviously divisive celebrations of hatred in any event, but as a private citizen committed to expressing and extending a ferocious hatred toward an entire country, and that without taking into account having adequate knowledge about what it is he detests.
If he is permitted to remain in the position of rector, it will not reflect well on the decision-making capabilities of the University Council, but it will be their decision to make. At the very least, he and they will know of a certainty that the smear campaign and the hatred expressed toward Israel and Jews is not as universally accepted as he appears to feel it is.
Labels: Canada, Crisis Politics, Culture, Israel
posted by Pieface | 7:07 PM
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