[Fdu] York U Faculty Assoc urges President Lenton to defend Prof. Faisal Bhabha's academic freedom

[Cynthia Wright]

*YUFA Exec urges President Lenton to defend Prof. Faisal Bhabha's 
academic freedom*

As an expression of our unwavering support for academic freedom,YUFA's 
Executive Committee has decided to share the following letter sent from 
Osgoode Hall Associate Professor Faisal Bhabha to President Rhonda 
Lenton on August 25, 2020.This letter concerns events that occurred 
subsequent to earlier communications to YUFA members following the 
publication of the Cromwell Report.

In his letter,Prof.Bhabha describes a shocking public campaign against 
him that seeks to discredit him and that calls on President Lenton to 
prevent him from teaching courses in his area of specialization, 
international human rights. This campaign, initiated by B'nai Brith, was 
organized in response to commentsProf.Bhabha made during an online panel 
discussion about the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism.Prof.Bhabha has 
subsequently been the recipient of significant hate mail and threats 
against his life. This correspondence has been turned over to Toronto 
Police Services. Some of it replicates email messages that a number of 
members of YUFA's Race Equity Caucus received earlier this year that 
were Islamophobic in nature and similarly threatening.

The Universityhas issued no public statement about these events. 
Prof.Bhabha requests that President Lenton issue a public statement 
condemning this provocative campaign against Prof.Bhabha. By sharing 
this letter, we strongly endorse this request and call on President 
Lenton to issue a public statement condemning the campaign of 
interference that has alarmed his colleagues and students, sullied his 
reputation, and endangered his safety and wellbeing.

The details of these events are outlined in Prof.Bhabha's letter,which 
appears below this statement.

As the professional associations and certified bargaining agents of 
Osgoode Hall full-time facultyand York University full-time faculty, 
OHFA and YUFA respectively have the responsibility to protect and defend 
the academic freedom of all colleagues. The first sentence of Article 10 
in the YUFA Collective Agreement 
<https://www.yufa.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Collective-Agreement-Part-1.pdf>, 
which appears as Article 11 in the OHFA Collective Agreement 
<https://www.osgoodefaculty.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/YorkU_OHFA-CA-2019-2022.pdf>,commits 
the Universityto uphold, protect, and promotethe principle of academic 
freedom in a way that sees this as more than just a right of our 
(YUFA's) members:

"The parties agree to continue their practice of upholding, protecting, 
and promoting academic freedom as essential to the pursuit of truth and 
the fulfilment of the University’s objectives."

Academic freedom concerns our right to teach, publish,and disseminate 
research in our academic fields without political interference from 
administrative or outside bodies. The panel in which Prof.Bhabha spoke 
was hosted by Ryerson University's Centre for Free Expression, to which 
Prof.Bhabha was invited to speak in his capacity as an internationally 
respected scholar and legal authority on human rights. York's commitment 
to "upholding, protecting, and promoting academic freedom" irrefutably 
applies to his remarks in these proceedings.

In addition to defending the academic freedom of our members to conduct 
research and teaching in accordance with their professional judgement 
and qualifications, and supporting OHFA's parallel defence of its 
members' academic freedom, YUFA has asserted our strong opposition to 
racist discrimination and racist violence against Black and Indigenous 
communities and against all racialized faculty and students. We wish to 
take this opportunity to note that Islamophobia, along with 
anti-Semitism,remains an equally virulent form of racism in Canadian 
society and that it continues to tarnish and denigrate our academic 
institutions through direct and indirect attacks on the professional and 
intellectual life and reputation of university scholars and teachers.

We call on President Lenton to publicly repudiate this deplorable 
campaign against our Osgoode Hall colleague and to state clearly that 
the University supports his academic freedom, esteems his professional 
and scholarly reputation, and denounces all attacks on his personal 
dignity and safety.

Sincerely,
The Executive Committee
York University Faculty Association

-- 
*Letter from Prof. Faisal Bhabha to President Rhonda Lenton*
*August 25, 2020*

Dear President Lenton:

On June 23, 2020, B'nai Brith issued a press release and posted an 
online petition calling on you to bar me from teaching//human rights 
courses at York. On July 14, 2020, you responded privately to B'nai 
Brith in a letter addressed personally to its CEO in which you also 
referenced a prior phone call discussion.

To this day, I have not received a phone call or communication from you 
regarding the petition. More importantly, the public has heard 
absolutely nothing from the University about the petition. The petition 
triggered a wave of racist abuse directed at me, which I assume to be 
one of its objectives. The petition harmed my professional reputation in 
the public and within the University, which I also assume to be one of 
its objectives.

As I prepare to go back to fall teaching in my area of expertise—human 
rights—and as one of the few racialized faculty members teaching in this 
area, the ugly smear that B'nai Brith perpetrated against me has been 
aggravated by your refusal to publicly condemn that group's tactic and 
distance York University from the racist backlash directed at me personally.

The petition arose from my engagement in the core duties of my 
employment as a scholar and teacher in my areas of expertise. I 
participated in an academic panel discussion organized by Ryerson 
University's Centre for Free Expression (CFE) and co-sponsored by the 
Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA) on June 10, 2020 titled, 
"Fighting Anti-Semitism or Silencing Critics of Israel: What's Behind 
the Push for Governments to Adopt the IHRA Definition of Anti-Semitism?"

The petition takes aim at the substance of comments I made during the 
forum. B'nai Brith took my words out of context and presented them as 
anti-Semitic. They claimed that I had "smeared this country's Jewish 
community" by transforming "hundreds of thousands of Canadian Jews into 
'Jewish supremacists'", which is factually untrue. It also alleges that 
I suggested that the "Jewish State may have 'exaggerated' the murder of 
6-million" Jews, which is also a lie.

On that basis, CEO Michael Mostyn demanded that I "no longer teach any 
human rights courses" at York. Independent Jewish Voices (IJV) 
immediately denounced the petition as a gross distortion of my words 
<https://www.ijvcanada.org/open-letter-ijv-york-denounces-smear-campaign-against-faisal-bhabha/>.__

The issue under discussion in the panel—the IHRA Definition of 
Anti-Semitism—was timely and my remarks were well within the ambit of 
lawful and respectful speech. My credentials as someone who has lived in 
the region and worked for both Israeli and Palestinian human rights 
organizations, represented human rights causes for equality-seeking 
communities in Canada as a lawyer, taught human rights law for a dozen 
years as a law professor, and served for three years as Vice-chair of 
the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario more than qualified me to express 
my opinions on the panel. Moreover, the opinions I expressed were not 
controversial or extreme. They were consistent with my interpretation of 
the facts, law and policy, and are shared by fair-minded, well-informed 
and reasonable people the world over. In my opinion, the views expressed 
by some other members of the panel could be characterized as hard-line, 
right-wing or misinformed. This is what made the panel interesting: 
there were deeply differing views. It is also worth noting that I was 
the only racialized member of the panel, as well as the only non-Jewish 
speaker. It is also worth noting that at least one other member of the 
panel, Sheryl Nestel—a self-identified Jewish Israeli—concurred with and 
repeated my statements about Israel but has faced none of the smear that 
was directed at me.

Following the panel event, I received scores of positive messages from 
academic colleagues and members of the public locally and abroad, many 
whom I had never met before. For nearly two weeks, I did not receive a 
single piece of harassing, discriminatory or abusive communication.

Then, almost instantly upon the B’nai Brith petition launching, the 
messages began coming in: "Fuck you. Pack your camel bags and leave." 
That chilling message reminded me that no matter what accomplishments I 
achieve, my race and stereotypes about my identity will always construct 
me as an outsider. The insults continued to flow for days. "Fraud", 
"liar", "hack", "scumbag", "anti-Semite" are a few of the epithets 
directed at me. I was accused of being "a host for a virus" and that my 
students "need to be inoculated" against me. One writer threatened to 
disrupt my classroom and assault me: "I may have to attend one of your 
lectures… I will assuredly not be silent. Rotten eggs really smell..." 
Many used racist language to describe the Palestinian people, and "you 
people"; others denigrated the academy.

On the whole, the negative feedback was miniscule compared to the 
massive outpouring of support I received. However, even one piece of 
racist hate mail is an unacceptable cost for engaging in legitimate 
scholarly work. B'nai Brith should be held to account for using 
dangerous dog-whistle tactics against a racialized faculty member. 
Moreover, while the University should stand up for all of its faculty 
members' academic freedom, it should do so especially for a racialized 
faculty member facing unwarranted and unprecedented efforts from outside 
the university to interfere in my academic freedom.

The intended and actual impact of the baleful petition has been to cast 
aspersions on my character, undermine my credibility in my area of 
scholarly and professional expertise, and poison the minds of my 
students, current and former, about my ability to teach fairly and treat 
all respectfully. It makes it more difficult for me to support and 
mentor minority students. It has harmed my reputation within the legal 
community, the human rights community, the Muslim community and the 
broader community. Even those who know that the accusation is false may 
be chilled in associating with me by reason of optics or fear. There is 
indeed a widespread perception that I have been wronged at the hands of 
B'nai Brith; but the University's silence appears to tacitly endorse the 
smear. This adds to the perception that York University is not 
even-handed, perpetuating a culture of silencing and fear. This 
ultimately erodes not only academic freedom, but freedom of expression 
more generally. If universities can't be trusted to stand up for 
expressive freedom, who can?

The negative backlash I have received is consistent with how Muslims 
have generally been perceived and treated in the post-9/11 era. It is 
also consistent with how I've been treated by right-wing trolls and 
bullies for most of my career speaking out against all forms of 
oppression. This is not the first time that I've received racist hate 
mail. False accusations are made more easily against minorities and are 
more likely to stick when they exploit stereotypes. Groups like B'nai 
Brith understand that falsely accusing a Muslim of being intolerant or 
extremist, in the context of post-9/11 Canadian Islamophobia, is certain 
to cause injury by inciting hateful and even violent responses, 
regardless of the truth of the allegation. Some of the more threatening 
email I received as a result of the petition is demonstrative of this. 
B'nai Brith clearly either intended this outcome or was reckless to its 
likelihood.

What is also clear from the record is that if B'nai Brith truly sought a 
dialogue with you about me, all they had to do was pick up the phone. 
You evidently have a strong and friendly relationship with that group. 
The petition was not about getting your attention; it was about riling 
up the base, unleashing the hate on me, and setting an example for 
anyone else who dares to speak their mind. It is this tactic that you 
owed me and the broader community a duty to denounce in no uncertain terms.

My retired colleague, Jamie Cameron, has penned an insightful piece on 
the relevant issues 
<https://cfe.ryerson.ca/blog/2020/08/professor-petition-and-president-professor-bhabha-b%E2%80%99nai-brith-and-president-lenton>.Cameron 
has called out your failure to fulfil a key leadership mandate, namely 
to be accountable to faculty. It is trite to say that universities 
should be places where ideas can be freely exchanged without fear of 
reprisal or interference. It is also trite to observe in this era of 
elevated awareness of racism and the legacy of white privilege that 
university leaders must stand firm against the unfair targeting of 
minority faculty members. Yet, two months on, you have still not 
publicly rejected the racist petition calling for my removal. I am 
demanding that you do that now. It is not yet too late to get on the 
right side of this.

Sincerely,
Faisal Bhabha, Associate Professor
Osgoode Hall Law School | York University
4700 Keele Street
Toronto, Ontario, Canada | M3J 1P3
https://www.osgoode.yorku.ca/faculty-and-staff/bhabha-faisal/
View my research on my SSRN Author page:
_http://ssrn.com/author=1685246_

Read this post online 
<https://www.yufa.ca/yufa-exec-urges-president-lenton-to-defend-prof-faisal-bhabhas-academic-freedom/>.

-- 
*York University Faculty Association*
YUFA is the professional association and certified bargaining agent for 
approximately 1,500 faculty, librarians and archivists, and 
post-doctoral visitors at York University.

t. 416-736-5236 <tel:416-736-5236>  | Email <mailto:yufa at yorku.ca>  | 
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<https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_9LftP2oHhil5p7cDoPUMg/>

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