That’s not happening at other Canadian institutions. My institution (though flawed for other reasons) feels safe, whereas York feels like the last place I want to go.

Do I think reprimands are sufficient? It depends on what they could prove, I guess, and I’m not in a position to judge that. I’m willing to give Pres. Shoukri the benefit of the doubt, for now, because I think he’s in a good position to make a change if he really wants to and really gets it.

We’ll see.

thanks and happy shavuot

Neal

Do you believe this is a sufficient response?

I realize that Shoukri has his hands full, and that this is a very delicate issue because so many people are invested in it. However, it appears from reports I’ve read that some Jewish students have come to feel uncomfortable on that campus. If that’s the case with affiliated and self-identified Jewish students, you can bet that those Jewish students who are ambivalent about Israel or Jewish life or unaffiliated in general, are quietly disengaging from their identity as Jews.

It’s unpleasant to be called a racist or a supporter of genocide and murder when you’re there to get an education. Yet this is precisely the environment currently fostered on that campus with the full knowledge of the administration and faculty.

I’d rather be reporting good news about York University and every other university that we cover on Jewlicious (UC Irvine probably gets more attention from us). It would be nice if we actually received some good news about York and such news would be reported immediately by me.

I’m sure there are. But just a reminder – not Concordia.

FYI I asked President Shoukri, directly, about this incident at an alumni event last week- and I was wearing a big ol’ kippah, so it’s not like he wouldn’t know why I was asking. He pointed out two things:

1) The incident and some of the students involved were recorded, the university has the videos, and there is a process within the university of bringing students who act unacceptably to account- and sometimes that process takes months with appeals and reviews.

2) There are stories going around of horrible things that were said to Jewish students, but he (Pres of York U) told me that the University could not verify with eyewitnesses some of what was reported.

I have no idea if what Pres. Shoukri said is true or not, but it makes a certain amount of sense that if the university was, in fact, in the middle of an academic investigation, they’d keep mum till it was finished, and it also makes sense that these things take months, b/c of due process and all that.

For now, I believe Pres. Shoukri understands what so many in the Jewish community are upset about.

I am not in any way sanitizing the nastiness of some of the discourse around Israel at York or other leading universities- I’m only saying that in this particular case I’m now willing to suspend judgment, for a while, that the university dropped the ball.