On The Wrong Side Of Woke

"In a social media post he admits may have been a little too blistering, he said that an academic in Pakistan calling for Palestine to be free 'from the river to the sea' was a 'pro-Nazi zealot'."

"Finlayson said he stands with Israel, against antisemitism and against Hamas, which he said takes millions meant for  health and education and uses the money to make war. "You stand with Palestine means you stand with Hitler".

John Ivison, Journalist, National Post

"[He is ] stressed and uncertain about his future ... stuck in procedural purgatory."

"The suspension has caused my client significant reputational and financial harm, as well as immense personal distress."

"[The university claims the suspension is 'non-disciplinary']. It is clearly anything but."

"[The university appears to have concluded Paul Finlayson engaged in misconduct even before holding an investigation], in flagrant violation of its own policies, its own collective agreement and my client's right to procedural fairness."

Kathryn Marshall, Levitt Sheikh Law

University of Guelph-Humber marketing instructor Paul Finlayson has been suspended pending an investigation into a social media post supporting Israel and denouncing Hamas

 

Lawyer Marshall wrote to Guelph-Humber University's manager of human rights, harassment and employment equity in January on behalf of her client in an attempt to resolve a situation that has left the 59-year-old university lecturer suspended with pay from his teaching employment at the university. Her client, she reminded him, awaits information respecting the complaint lodged against him but no one had yet contacted him. She, like her client before her, received no response.

Her letter emphasized that there is no reason that adjunct Professor Finlayson should be suspended while an investigation was ongoing. The conduct for which he gained the suspension took place outside the university, and her client poses no threat to anyone. His sin was his outraged response to another academic living in Pakistan who had expressed  his support for Hamas and Palestinians, which Professor Finlayson strenuously disagreed with, pointing out that Hamas terrorists set out to rape and murder innocent civilians.

He has been left in limbo; several complaints had been made to the university for his having had expressed his empathy with Israel's plight brought on by the Palestinian terrorist group that ruled Gaza. Whose operatives had created a hell on Earth for a civilian population living in towns and kibbutzim near the Gaza border, and who in fact had sympathized with Gaza's Palestinian population, going out of their way to be of assistance to them, and hiring many as farm labourers. Hires many of whom had briefed Hamas on locales and area situations.

His expressions however, earned  him a suspension and it has been two months that he has been awaiting results of an 'investigation'. In the absence of any move to inform him of a decision that might return him to his lecturing position at the university, despite his course lectures for the semester having been cancelled by the university. His lawyers have advised him to appeal to the Ontario Human Rights Commission. 

Several students appear to have taken umbrage over his outburst at the Pakistani academic's sentiments. And there was also a Canadian academic who had complained. That academic has been identified as Dr. Wael Ramadan, professor of project management at the Pilon School of Business at Sheridan College. Professor Ramadan's own sentiments are in stark opposition to those of Professor Finlayson, unsurprisingly. He has written of Israel as "an apartheid state committing genocide".

Professor Ramadan has a Twitter account with a small number of followers. He posts savagely slanderous and obviously false allegations about the activities of Israel and the Israel Defense Forces in the Palestinian Territories and more specifically in Gaza where according to his world view Israel has been busy committing genocide. Sheridan College has taken no steps whatever to relieve Professor Ramadan of his professional academic presence nor to penalize him in any way for his egregious statements.

But Professor Ramadan feels himself justified in inciting hatred and violence against Israel and Jews, and feels he is entitled to do so without repercussions. He also appears to be of the opinion that Professor Finlayson's fairly tame expressions have earned him censure and uncertainty of his future that could very well result in the loss of his employment at Guelph-Humber University. 

 

Such are the vagaries of cringing academic institutions under pressure by conveyors of Critical Race Theory, Wokeism and the virtues of DEI theology.