Written by David Murrell
Tuesday, 15 February 2011
Jewish Tribune readers are familiar with the sharp debate surrounding the Jenny Peto thesis. The 29-year-old anti-Israel activist submitted a master’s thesis to the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), The Victimhood of the Powerful: White Jews, Zionism and the Racism of Hegemonic Holocaust Education. The essay asserts that Holocaust programs in Canada absolves Jewish Canadians of the responsibility that they share in the “genocide” of aboriginal peoples, of Israeli “apartheid,” and of the “white privilege” that Jewish-Canadians have in Western culture. Master’s theses are seldom read outside of academia. But the strident nature of Peto’s thesis angered Jewish Canadians. It stirred commentary within the Jewish Canadian press and the conservative media (the National Post, Maclean’s, the Sun newspapers). The many and varied left-wing media, including pro-Palestine activist groups, defended Peto. Two MPPs in the Ontario Legislature (Steve Clark and Peter Shurman) attacked the thesis.
What is noteworthy is that, recently, the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) rose to Peto’s defence. An unsigned front-page article (Politicians Attack Toronto Grad Student), in the current CAUT newsletter, quotes CAUT executive director James Turk as being “shocked” that the two MPPs would criticize Peto and attack academic freedom. The article claims that critics of Peto’s work emulate US Senator Joseph MacCarthy’s attacks during the cold war.
What is disturbing about the CAUT article is its rather strident, anti-Jewish tone. The article quotes MPP Clark and Citizen and Immigration Minister Eric Hoskins honestly enough. MPP Clark criticized Peto’s thesis for being “shockingly antisemitic” and that Eric Hoskins wanted to stop the “rising tide of antisemitism.” The article quotes MPP Shurman as agreeing with the two Progressive Conservative MPPs, in “...condemning this attack on Ontario’s Jewish community”.... But having quoted the three politicians in defending the Jewish Canadian community, the unsigned article then goes on to attack them. After stating that the three politicians are McCarthyesque, and quoting its own executive director, the piece then quotes University of Guelph professor Michael Keefer as saying the Peto thesis is a “well-researched study with a clearly defined ethical focus.”
Yet Keefer is a professor in the English department at the University of Guelph and has written that the 9/11 terrorist attacks werre staged by the US government (unmentioned in the CAUT article). More competent observers – Brent Sasley (political science), Werner Cohn (sociology) and Robyn Urback (essayist) – have documented the serious flaws in Peto’s thesis. Much of the thesis is simply her first-person account of her Jewish education, intermingled with heavy politicized jargon and theories from Holocaust remembrance critics (Norman Finkelstein and Noam Chomsky). Peto’s critics stress that she never bothered to interview Jewish-Canadians involved in remembrance activities.
The CAUT article ignores all of this. What is disturbing is that the union – representing the majority of university professors in Canada – is tilting more and more towards political extremism. It defends a poorly-written (and antisemitic) thesis, and quotes a 9/11 truther in its defence. If one goes to the CAUT site and googles “Israel,” the result is a stream of anti-Israel articles: Academic Freedoms and Rights Violated in Israel and Palestine Territories, CAUT – Statement on Gaza Conflict, Questions Pertaining to the State of Israel Bring Strong Reactions by pro-Israel Extremists, and so on.
As a member of the CAUT, I have no say in the strident political statements coming from the national office. The full-time employees there are not held accountable by constituent members. Indeed, the national CAUT web page does not publish its annual fiscal statements. Some of my union dues go to the national office – yet its revenues and expenses are kept secret.
Ironically, CAUT purports to defend academic “freedom” – yet it wants to deny free speech to critics of OISE. Yet academic work should be held up to outside scrutiny. Clearly antisemitic work – as a work of prejudiced writers – is work of abysmal quality. This is a given. If OISE wants to certify such work, in time the school will fall into disrepute. And CAUT should not defend such shoddy, incompetent research.
David Murrell is a Professor in the Department of Economics, University of New Brunswick at Fredericton. He can be reached at dmurrell@unb.ca.