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At Ryerson, a rare win for Jewish groups on campus (and one with a pleasant twist)
Tuesday April 4th, 2017
Last November, at Ryerson University, Students for Justice in Palestine and the Muslim Students Association led a walkout of Ryerson Student Union’s (RSU) Semi-annual General Meeting in order to suspend quorum, when the group Students Supporting Israel (SSI) brought forward a motion endorsing Holocaust Education Week. Without quorum, the motion was unable to pass. It was later discovered that t... -
Mike Pence’s dining preference is ‘rape culture’? By that flimsy standard, what isn’t?
Monday April 3rd, 2017
Some years ago Tal Nitzan, a sociology student at Hebrew University and an ardent anti-Zionist, used her Master’s thesis to explore how Israel’s “racist” soldiers use rape as a weapon of terror and intimidation. There was only one problem. Once she began her research, she could not find a single documented case of rape by an Israel Defence Forces soldier of a Palestinian woman. Undet... -
A man who’ll stand up for the rights of other men (and boys) on campus and in society
Tuesday March 21st, 2017
On International Women’s Day a few weeks ago, I sat on a radio panel devoted to the occasion with two young women, both enthusiastically self-avowed feminists, who think we still live in a “patriarchy” in which men’s interests are better served than women. They were shocked when I demurred, dubbing our society a “matriarchy.” I explained that in the things that matter most to everyone — health,... -
Understanding the jihadi mind (I hope this column isn’t Islamophobic)
Tuesday March 14th, 2017
M-103 is a motion before Parliament that seeks to condemn (undefined) “Islamophobia” as a phenomenon distinct from hatred directed at individual members of all minorities. M-103 rests its case for particularity on wording from a petition, E-411, stating Islamist jihadis “do not reflect in any way the values or the teachings of the religion of Islam. … They in no way represent the religion.̶... -
Actually, it turns out that you may be less racist than you’ve been led to believe
Tuesday February 28th, 2017
I had the pleasure, a few weeks ago, of attending a seminar at Ryerson University as a specially invited guest to hear University of Toronto psychology professor Jordan Peterson address a colleague’s students on freedom of speech and gender issues that have made him a household name in Canada. I was of course already familiar with much of Peterson’s material from his videos, which didn’t dimini... -
Actually, one needn’t be a hysterical bigot to have concerns with M-103
Tuesday February 21st, 2017
I have serious concerns about M-103, a private member’s motion currently before Parliament that would condemn Islamophobia. But I want to reassure my colleague Andrew Coyne that I’m not nearly as unhinged as he seems to think we critics are. Here is what Andrew wrote of the critics in his recent column on M-103: they’re a “most extreme voice” on “a most extreme p... -
Enter Milo Yiannopoulos, progressivism’s spawn and history’s pendulum in action
Tuesday February 14th, 2017
Freedom for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) is an organization that defends freedom of speech for students and academics at American universities. They’ve tracked disinvitations and speech disruptions on campus over the last 17 years and recently published their findings. From 2000-2009 disinvitations and disruptions occurred almost equally from the left and the right (on the right mostly... -
Fascism in America? Sure, but not because of You Know Who
Tuesday January 31st, 2017
NDP leader Thomas Mulcair says Trump is a “fascist.” And so do countless others. Fair comment? No. It’s fair to say that all fascists are populists, but not all populists are fascists. When leftists say “fascist,” it often means “right-wing people or opinions that offend me.” In fact fascism can arise on the left or the right. I’ve seen several tweets linking Trump with the protagonist of Sincl... -
Betsy DeVos’ support of due process on campuses makes her an excellent pick for secretary of education
Tuesday January 24th, 2017
Barack Obama was the first president to make the advancement of feminist demands a priority. So the election of the sexist Trump has hit progressive women particularly hard. They fear that their hard-won battles for equality and rights will be rolled back by Trump through legislation or by the coming preponderance of conservative Supreme Court justices. But there is one area that could s... -
For me, another 10 years or so sounds about right
Tuesday January 17th, 2017
There was a woman at our synagogue I knew superficially, a widow about 20 years older than me, a fine amateur artist. At long last liberated from onerous maternal and breadwinning obligations, her aging father’s needs began to consume the time she had finally carved out to devote to painting. She would bring her father to synagogue, one of the few pleasures left to him in his radically diminish... -
U of T’s ‘antipsychiatry’ scholarship — and not believing in mental illness — is an attack on science
Tuesday January 10th, 2017
In November, the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), an all-graduate school at the University of Toronto, announced it had established a world first, a scholarship in the “field” of antipsychiatry, to be named after its primary instructor, Bonnie Burstow, an associate professor in OISE’s Adult Education and Community Development department. Burstow believes there is no prove... -
It should have been obvious all along that Obama really favoured Arabs over Israel
Tuesday January 3rd, 2017
Given Obama’s education, mentors and ideology, we should not really be shocked by his long-calculated decision to have the U.S. abstain from voting on UN Security Council Resolution 2334, ensuring its passage. Israel-censuring 2334 is an effective repeal of Resolution 242, which promised Israel a “right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries,” leaving unspecified which territo... -
Across North America, seeds of a religious rebound
Tuesday December 20th, 2016
My grandparents, immigrants from Poland and Romania, were Orthodox Jews and deeply observant. My parents, born here, joined a Conservative shul (mixed seating), and kept a traditionally Jewish home. My husband and I joined a Reconstructionist synagogue (liturgically traditional, theologically agnostic, anchored in Jewish “peoplehood”), and mainly express ourselves Jewishly th... -
One gay man’s lonely fight against Ontario’s new law banning ‘mother’ and ‘father’
Wednesday December 14th, 2016
LGBT rights and pro-pit-bull advocacy are niche passions for the Ontario NDP’s Cheri DiNovo. The latter cause was my introduction to the MPP. Today’s column is about the former, specifically the recently-passed Bill 28, DiNovo’s “All Families are Equal Act.” Motivation for the bill was the aim of bringing legislative compliance to a 2006 judicial rulin... -
Curb the chivalric impulse, women don’t need it
Thursday December 8th, 2016
In a recent column, my colleague Colby Cosh took Conservative Party leadership candidate Kellie Leitch’s proposal that Canadians be allowed to carry chemical mace and pepper spray for self-defence a step further (or backward depending on your perspective): He would offer the privilege only to women, writing: “Perhaps I’m a little more feminist than she is: I would be co... -
Driverless cars are coming — but what about the fight for the right to drive your own vehicle?
Tuesday December 6th, 2016
Since 1982, alcohol-related fatalities in the U.S. have come down 52 per cent overall, and 79 per cent for drivers under the age of 21. What should be cause for satisfaction, however, has been overtaken by what economists call technological biteback, what happens when tech innovations improve our lives but also bring “grim and often unanticipated side effects.”... -
When reaching out to the Muslim community, choose your ambassadors carefully
Tuesday November 29th, 2016
Crime Prevention Ottawa (CPO) was founded in 2004 to develop strategies for enhancing community safety, addressing problems like violence against women, neighbourhood gangs, abuse of the disabled and hate crimes. Between January and November of this year, according to Staff Sergeant Dave Zackrias of the Diversity and Race Relations Unit (DRR) of the Ottawa Police Servic... -
A Marxist revolution by alt-left millennials?
Tuesday November 22nd, 2016
In her post-election column, Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan described the mood of Hillary supporters as one of “enraged mourning,” an excellent description for the emotional and often irrational reactions to Trump’s win we’ve all seen in the news and social media. My favourite was the New York woman who decided to make herself and daughter the focal po... -
The deplorables’ get their moment. Break out the pointed hoods
Wednesday November 16th, 2016
An old New Yorker cartoon sprang to mind in the days following the U.S. election. In it, rain pours down in sheets. Two frowning children inside a car parked roadside are peering out at their sodden, frustrated father who is struggling to change a tire. The caption reads: “I can’t change the channel. This is real life.” The shock of Donald Trump winning has discom... -
U.S. Democrats show they still haven’t learned a thing
Tuesday November 15th, 2016
Until president-elect Donald Trump named Reince Priebus, the Republican National Committee chairman, as his chief of staff, there was concern that the job might go to Stephen Bannon, chief executive of the Trump campaign. Instead Bannon got another plum job as chief strategist and senior counsel. The double appointment evoked mixed feelings. Priebus telegraphs knowledge, prudence a...