Did #MeToo activists target a top Canadian prof for his blunt lessons about Islam?Friday October 19th, 2018
McGill University, my grad school alma mater, has, in my opinion, acted dishonourably in a recent and unusual case of tenure denial to a brilliant and popular professor.When I learned of Ahmed Fekry Ibrahim’s story, I was fortunate to receive a remarkable trove of evidence: his supporting documents for a defamation lawsuit he launched this summer against a student and a professor in hi...
A few ‘toxic’ anti-male women are derailing the validity of #MeTooWednesday October 17th, 2018
According to a survey in the latest Economist magazine, the effect of the #MeToo movement has been to elevate Americans’ skepticism over sympathy for victims. Among other findings, the survey notes that between November 2017 and September 2018, while the perception that false allegations of sexual assault are a greater problem than unreported or unpunished sexual assault remains a mino...
An Academic Mobbing at McGillTuesday October 16th, 2018
Editor’s note: More than 200 pages of supporting documents have been gathered by Professor Ibrahim for use in a defamation lawsuit he is engaged in against a student and a colleague. These documents include both the Minority and Majority Reports issued by the Departmental Tenure Committee, student testimonials and affidavits, as well as a variety of departmental communications involving P...
Another school, another recording, another free-speech crisisThursday October 11th, 2018
The old adage has it that “a picture is worth a 1,000 words.” But, as former Wilfrid Laurier University teaching assistant Lindsay Shepherd showed Canadians last November, in academia 1,000 words — unexpectedly recorded — can paint a culture-capturing picture.By now, the infamous interrogation Shepherd endured after exposing students to Jordan Peterson’s views o...
Kay: The view from the balconyWednesday October 3rd, 2018
As new members of a modern Orthodox congregation, the experience my husband and I had on the High Holidays this year was a striking departure from the previous 46 in a Reconstructionist synagogue. We’re rather old for such a dramatic change in affiliation, but, having recognized the need for personal Jewish renewal, we took the plunge.
We felt instinctively drawn to Montreal’s Shaar Hashomayim ...
Diluting the meaning of ‘woman,’ to appease transgender activists, is misogynyThursday September 13th, 2018
In his writings on totalitarianism, George Orwell powerfully exposed the link between the manipulation of language and the erosion of individual liberty. Ideologues understand that linguistic control precedes, and is crucial to, political and cultural power. The novel 1984 illuminated the shame in being compelled — figuratively — to endorse the lie that two plus two is five.For t...
The Villain in the Trans Mountain Fiasco – and Other Fiascos since 2004 – is the Supreme Court of CanadaTuesday September 11th, 2018
Donate All donations go towards promoting independent journalism and this month's charity.The Trudeau government was clearly taken by surprise at the Federal Court’s nullifying of their approval of the 1,150-km Trans Mountain pipeline expansion. Otherwise they would not have signed a deal with Kinder Morgan that explicitly stated any adverse court decisions would not be deemed to constitute a...
Pit bull lobby put on its heels by Quebec’s dangerous dog bill, CBC documentaryWednesday September 5th, 2018
In April, the Quebec government introduced Bill 128, which will authorize the province to prohibit any person from owning, breeding or acquiring “potentially dangerous” dogs, which includes pit bulls and Rottweilers, the two highest-risk dogs.Impetus for the bill — and a similar one passed in Montreal — arose largely from distress over the June 2016 fatal mauling of Christiane Vadnais by her...
Weinstein worst example of common problem in film industryWednesday September 5th, 2018
I lunched last weekend with friends, both in the film business, one a successful documentarian, the other a producer. Naturally, the tsunami of sexual assault charges unleashed by the Harvey Weinstein affair came up for review. I asked if they had ever experienced Weinsteinian moments. Indeed they had.Coincidentally, both involved bathrobes that “slid open” to reveal erect penise...
WLU’s contemptible conduct proof of intellectual assault underway on campusesWednesday September 5th, 2018
The story of Wilfrid Laurier University grad student and teaching assistant Lindsay Shepherd — who was recently subjected to a creepy, but instructive, grilling by campus superiors over material she’d used for her entry-level Communication tutorials — went viral on social media last week.A somewhat naive lament was posted by the host of TVO’s The Agenda, Steve Pa...
Trump, Trudeau and the front lines of the fight against bullWednesday September 5th, 2018
American commentator Joseph Epstein once described himself, vocationally speaking, as “standing off on the sidelines, viewing the various public escapades — political, cultural, social — and calling out with some regularity, “Bullshit! Bullshit! Bullshit!” Epstein had his work cut out for him in 2017. Didn’t all opinion journalists?Donald Trump alone provi...
Exploding the myth of cure-all female corporate boardsWednesday September 5th, 2018
The Liberals are looking at an amendment to diversity-themed Bill C-25 that would force businesses to open their diversity policies to shareholders or explain why they don’t (“comply or explain”). At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said, “Companies should have a formal policy on gender diversity and make the recruitment of women candid...
If ideologues are teaching our judges, the public has a need to knowWednesday September 5th, 2018
Legal academics are openly reinterpreting their mission. Historically teachers of legal principles and law codes, they now see themselves as social-justice warriors called upon to right historical wrongs for members of designated victim groups.In 2013, Ottawa professor Elizabeth Sheehy published Defending Battered Women on Trial, a book in which Sheehy promotes women’s right to kill ex...
We are ignoring a key part of ‘dying with dignity’Wednesday September 5th, 2018
Ing Wong-Ward is disabled, dependent on a wheelchair and afflicted with colon cancer, accompanied, for the past year, by a stubbornly persistent abdominal abscess. This seems a depressing scenario, but Wong-Ward presents as anything but depressed in her promotional article for palliative care in Saturday’s Globe and Mail, “Living — and dying — with dignity.”Wong...
Canada’s own little Stalins are making politically incorrect authors disappearWednesday September 5th, 2018
Stalin and his monstrous inner circle aren’t obvious fodder for humour, but the film The Death of Stalin is indeed hilarious, without sidestepping the horrors of that regime.Playing the role of Stalin’s vain and irresolute deputy Malenkov is actor Jeffrey Tambor, best known for his role as transwoman Maura in Amazon’s popular series, Transparent.Tambor was Hollywood’s...
The Yazidis are in danger of extinction and Ottawa’s stopped helpingWednesday September 5th, 2018
I’ll call her “Nada,” not her real name.Nada is a Yazidi woman from Sinjar, Iraq, now age 31. On Aug. 3, 2014, ISIL came for her people. The Kurdish Peshmerga, tasked with protecting them, fled, leaving them helpless. Nada and her two children — a boy, eight months and a girl, two — were separated from her husband and father-in-law, whom she never saw again.The ...
Gender studies don’t help us understand how dogs behaveWednesday September 5th, 2018
For the “dog days” of summer, a column about dogs and their social life.Last year, a certain Helen Wilson, claiming to hold a “doctorate in feminist studies” submitted a paper titled “Human reactions to rape culture and queer performativity at urban dog parks in Portland, Oregon” to the Journal of Feminist Geography.Turned out there was no evidence fo...
KAY: Elizabeth Warren’s DNA test – mocked by Trump and rejected by the Cherokees
Sunday October 21st, 2018
Did #MeToo activists target a top Canadian prof for his blunt lessons about Islam?
Friday October 19th, 2018
An Academic Mobbing at McGill
Tuesday October 16th, 2018
Kay: The view from the balcony
Wednesday October 3rd, 2018
