U. of Toronto Posts Anti-Semitic Tripe
The University of Toronto has accepted and posted a master’s thesis called “The Victimhood of the Powerful: White Jews, Zionism, and the Racism of Hegemonic Holocaust Education.” As the title might insinuate, it is actually an anti-Semitic screed displaying the lowest academic standards.
The author, a young Canadian Jewish woman named Jennifer Peto, gives the psychological background of her views in the introduction:
I had been attending Orthodox Jewish schools since kindergarten and all along I had been questioning the worldview that was being presented to me. In the first grade, after having been told that I could not play the lead in our school play because I was a girl, I decided that god was either sexist or nonexistent.
It’s worth pausing over this. The “logic” is clearly that of a six-year-old girl; yet Ms. Peto considers it worth presenting in her thesis!
She continues:
Over the years, both my atheism and my feminism only grew stronger within the sexist, gender-normative and heterosexist educational institutions I was forced to attend. That all these values were reinforced at home only made me more convinced of my own beliefs.
It all came to a head when she was 15 and a history teacher in her “private Jewish high school in Toronto” appeared to praise Baruch Goldstein, the American Israeli who massacred 29 (Ms. Peto gives the number as 50, but why quibble in a master’s thesis) Palestinians in Hebron in February 1994.
When Ms. Peto questioned the teacher’s attitude, he “became enraged” and sent her to the principal’s office. This led her for the first time to “start questioning” the Zionist attitudes that had been instilled in her. These included the belief that “all Palestinians were violent terrorists who wanted to kill all Jews, just like the Nazis had tried to do.”
Of course, intelligent Jews in today’s world do not think that, and in the context of a mature mind — let alone an academic thesis — it is not an issue at all. And as Werner Cohn notes:
All sections of world Jewry, with only tiny exceptions in very restricted ultra-religious circles, reacted with shame and horror at the deeds of Baruch Goldstein. Why didn’t it occur to Ms. Peto to examine … the record of world Jewry’s reaction to Goldstein?
The answer is that she had already embarked on her thrilling rebellion, and wasn’t about to be deflected — and isn’t to this day — by mere facts and reasoning. No, after a while she:
… began to read about the history of Palestine, [and] started to understand the violence that was necessary to establish the Israeli state. … The Second Intifada began shortly thereafter, which only accelerated my shift from supporter of Israel to Palestine solidarity activist.
So now it was Palestinians murdering Jews, over and over again, en masse. Ms. Peto was launched on her path! After all, she was “already an outcast in the Jewish community, and estranged from my family for being atheist, queer, gender-queer, feminist, and generally outspoken in a highly normative, Orthodox setting.” Revenge is sweet!
From now on the epiphanies came one after another. Among them: Israel is an apartheid state based on ethnic cleansing! Ashkenazi Jews in the United States, Canada, and Israel all take part in privileged “whiteness” and, hence, in oppression and genocide of “people of color” — even when these Ashkenazi Jews try to impart lessons about tolerance based on the Holocaust!
As Ms. Peto goes on to explain, after World War II “Jews and other European ethnics [in the United States] became integrated into the white middle-class.” Notwithstanding “the myth that American Jews succeeded simply because of hard work,” they were now “firmly on the white side of the black/white divide in the United States.”
And yet, because “seeing themselves as part of an oppressive white majority was like seeing themselves as goyim” (that phrase quoted from a scholar named Eric Goldstein), Jews, according to Ms. Peto, turned the focus to their own ethnicity instead. That enabled them to “enjoy the privilege of whiteness, while still feeling like an oppressed minority that is not complicit in American racism.”
What a clever trick. It came in handy for disguising the phenomenon of “Jewish racism” — a phrase Ms. Peto uses 21 times (as noted by the blogger Elder of Ziyon) in the course of this very nasty master’s thesis.
Could such cunning, nefarious people be trusted even when running the March of Remembrance and Hope — an outfit that takes non-Jewish students on tours of death-camp sites in Poland to, as its website says, “teach … about the dangers of intolerance … and to promote better relations among people of diverse cultures”? One shouldn’t be so naïve as to think so!
No, while “the MRH does not mention Israel in their literature … it is nonetheless a Zionist project” (clever indeed!). And it is in including Muslim students in the trips to Poland that the MRH’s “Zionist politics … actually becomes more visible.”
How so? The subtle aim is to produce:
… a particular “good” Muslim subject. This “good” Muslim subject engages in Holocaust education, celebrates liberal values of tolerance and even uses the teaching of the Qur’an to promote these Western, liberal ideals.
And this — in a manner that’s left unexplained:
… also produces the “bad,” intolerant Muslim subjects who do not engage in Holocaust education and by virtue of this non-involvement further prove their anti-Semitism which marks them as the enemies of civilization that must be attacked and destroyed.
So, after all, it’s a plot enabling Jews to attack and destroy more enemies of civilization!
And if the MRH is evil to such an extent, what of the March of the Living, a program that brings only Jewish students to Poland? Even worse!
In Ms. Peto’s telling, the MOL is “an entirely Eurocentric” project because it deals with Ashkenazi Jewish suffering in the Holocaust. “Herein lies [a] racist element of the MOL … the erasure of Sephardic and Mizrachi Jewish identity.”
This is tripe of the worst order, not least because many non-Ashkenazi Jews suffered in the Holocaust including the near-total destruction of communities in France, the Netherlands, and the Balkans. But for Ms. Peto:
It would be quite interesting and important to learn about how non-European Jewish youth experience this trip. Without first-hand accounts, I can only hypothesize their discomfort at being forced to identify with Ashkenazi Jewish history.
“Only hypothesize,” indeed. By this method, one can pretty much pass off any nonsense as academic work.
University of Toronto, are you listening?
And not only is the MOL a means for Ashkenazi Jews to “erase” non-Ashkenazi Jews; it enables them to do the same to the Holocaust victims themselves! These become, you see, “a racialized other to the participants on the MOL,” where:
… young, white Jewish participants encounter a Jewish Other, one who, unlike them, is excluded from whiteness and is subject to racialized violence. The MOL is structured in such a way that participants are meant to simultaneously identify with and reject the racialized Jewish Other in the degenerate spaces of Poland.
But enough of this garbage. One might ask: where was Ms. Peto’s thesis adviser, Prof. Sheryl Nestel, in all this?
Apart from the fact that the thesis is wretchedly written, with more use of the first-person singular than a therapy session, why did Nestel let her student cite only a thin gruel of crackpots like Norman Finkelstein, Ilan Pappé, Adi Ophir, and Marc Ellis, with no sign at all of ever having subjected herself to the challenge of a few dissenters from the Line? Why did Nestel approve such expression of blatant, subjective viciousness toward Jews and Israel?
The answer is that Nestel — herself an adherent to the regnant academic trends with publications like “Mapping Jewish Dissent: Jewish Anti-Occupation Activism in Toronto” — was most likely cheering Ms. Peto on.
And what of the University of Toronto? Does it want its name as a leading academic institution to be associated with a disgrace like Jennifer Peto’s thesis?
It’s a master’s thesis — for what? What kind of degree does this qualify someone to receive?
It could help them find work in a restaurant as a waiter. These graduates are ridiculed by virtually everyone outside their so-called academic discipline. Our only hope might be that these courses cease to exist because they can’t find any interested applicants. One can only hope that it is not necessary to employ the legal option. These crazies may be untouchable. New schools may have to be started.
She can work for Hamas, the Taliban or Hezbollah, or No One Is Illegal, StopWar.ca, or MAWO, or Greg Felton, Sid Ryan, or Shoukri of York, or Finkelstein, Pappe, Chomsky, or IHH, etc – in fact any Useful Idiot or antisemite or any combination thereof.
Master of what, exactly? I’d say her being awarded a degree is a shame on the contemporary academy, except for the fact that much of the “scholarship” and lecture courses the academy churns out is equally insipid.
Between your posting of the story from York University and the U of T, all that is missing is some more left wing screeds from Ryerson to complete the trifecta. If you look at the recent activities of the closing of minds and resrictions of freedom of speech across a number of University level institutions in Ontario, it is both troubling and sad.
It seems a University education is no longer a quest for truth through the thrust and parry of opposing views, but out and out indoctrination. Even my school of choice, McMaster has been involved in some ‘interesting’ political decisions.
The search for truth is not the objective of universities today if we can take Harvard as the signpost for trends. I wrote about the search for power and influence in the context of social responsibility here: http://clarespark.com/2010/11/18/harvards-alpha-dogs/. Peto simply wants to “connect” with her audience, which means that she adapts to fashionable views of coldly competent “Jews.” I summarized the main accusations directed against “Jews” here: http://clarespark.com/2010/11/14/the-abcs-of-antisemitism/.
“Tripe” is a kind word for this hokum. U. of Toronto is a hotbed for this kind of junk. The author of the thesis obviously deals only in the simplistic categories of a six-year-old. Western academia, in the humanities and social sciences, has long been in terrible shape and this thesis is unfortunately typical, if perhaps particularly bad.
Makes one proud to be a Canadian.
Put this piece together with today’s other on Dork University and it makes one even prouder to be a Torontonian.
Now, if we just had an article on what a bastion of free speech Con U. in Montreal is, we’d have the trifecta.
Hey seuss.
Don’t forget protesters at the University of Waterloo who stopped Christie Blatchford from speaking.
A bad week for Ontario universities.
Yikes.
After reading this article and the other article posted today about York University’s continuing anti Isreal agenda, I have a feeling Canada is in serious trouble.
And recall that Canada has a (minority) conservative government. However, as the gun registry fiasco has proven 30% of Canadians get to dictate to the other 70%. Yes, we may well be frakked but you have your own Trudeau now, so ….
On the other hand, even if Obama manages to get re-elected in 2012, he will end his term in 2016 after a total of 8 years. We endured our own Obama, Pierre Trudeau for nearly twice that! (1968-1979, then 1980-1984).
Not just Canada, my friend.
Students are supposed to read books, not burn them
after having been told that I could not play the lead in our school play because I was a girl,
It’s about me me me me me my my my my I I I I I
And that’s what motivates the left.
As an actor, I found that statement to be very telling. Notice she didn’t say “…after being told that I couldn’t play a small but interesting role in the show…” Nope. It was the lead! Gotta have the lead!
People who need the lead or nothing are the worst narcissists you can ever meet. The lead is rarely the part that is the most fun, the most interesting, or the most challenging. It’s just that it REPRESENTS something to the person. And don’t tell me “She was only a child.” I direct children’s productions, and I can tell you that kids display their inner adults-to-be quite plainly. A child who wants the lead or nothing is going to be a self-obsessed adult.
Mr. Hornik, you identify a seriously-understudied aspect of political correctness in the “academy:” the Far Left sieve which only allows the publication of “approved” topics. I daresay that an entire doctoral thesis and/or book could be written on the shoddy scholarship approved in Islamic studies departments in North America, as long as it’s 1) done by Muslims, or sufficiently apologetic kuffar, and 2) toes the line of Islamophilia.
Wish I had to write this book, but someone else needs to take up the gauntlet.
Sorry: “wish I had TIME to write this….”
Academia is the only realm where the opinionated, resentment laden crap Ms. Peto publishes under the guise of a mater’s thesis is regarded with anything other than scorn. A university setting is the a suitable place for this woman’s dribble. Additional proof of just how low the bar of scholarship has been lowered.
David Hornik writes, “Revenge is sweet!”
Revenge fantasies are common in angry people, but inhabit meeker folks as well. The thing about it is that even in angry people the fantasies are generally moderated by an understanding of the cost both to the individual who voices them aloud and to the victims. She did not receive the lead role in the school play because the mores of the group disallowed it. Just her mentioning of such a disappointment as reason for eternal animus unto the death of the evil enemy makes me quake with fear for this young lady’s emotional patency. Surely, I remember this episode from one of the Buffy the Vampires Slayer series. She is only one step behind the Columbine massacre perpetrators.
“University of Toronto, are you listening?” Well, no. I have no doubt that the university is getting exactly what they expected out of Ms. Peto. Note the department: Sociology and Equity Studies in Education. In creating that department, the University of Toronto clearly intended for theses such as this one to have a home.
“One might ask: where was Ms. Peto’s thesis adviser, Prof. Sheryl Nestel, in all this?” An examination of the other theses for which Nestel is an adviser suggests that Ms. Peto’s thesis may be one of the better theses.
This is not new that what passes for academic intelligence in major Universities, especially when deriding Israel and the Jewish people, today is actually infantile rantings not worthy of middle school students. Honestly it sounds like the both the student and her advisor could use a few good sessions with a psychiatrist and may actually need to be heavily medicated.
Boo Hoo!
What’s the matter David? Does the truth hurt?
You posted almost the same comments about the York University blog. Don’t you know any other rhetoric or is your vocabulary as limited as your intelligence?
Let Canada be Canada. Respect Canadian Values. Your “criticism” is hate speech based on disrespecting Canadian nationality. Everything denounced in this article is in the folkways, values, mores, and traditions of Trudeautopia, which the Canadians have voted for again and again for two generations and over 40 years. You cannot make Canadians into Americans. They’d have to admit to, well, 40 years of taking the wrong path. It won’t happen.
You know what? I tend to agree. Why should anyone care what happens in Canada? We should focus on what is happening in the US , where at least through voting, donating to our favorite political organizations, pressuring our representatives in Congress, we can have some effect on keeping us from going in the same direction. We cannot control what happens in Canada, but I bet some of this is also happening in our schools.
Actually, Canadians would be very easy to assilate into Americans. Just like Australians and Kiwis and South African whites.
If both Palestinians and Jews claim victimhood, I guess the deal breaker with the privilege aspect is being able to reverse engineer a ball point pen. If Jews and black Americans both claim victimhood, I guess the deal breaker is being able to not commit mountains of murders within their own community and actually get an education. The idea that privilege is shelled out according to skin color is naturally something that people of color buy into since they love computers but as a culture think of them as magic. This woman is an idiot. I read the paper and it sets up so many straw man arguments that exist only in her own head that she then knocks down it’s incredible. She is a walking, talking politically correct stereotype whose paper could easily be the subject of a thesis on brainwashed 20 somethings who think a band like Rage Against the Machine are actual rebels while selling t-shirts on their website and playing in front of Coors Lite banners. How does one measure naivete? This woman’s paper is so historically challenged that it is an F in my opinion. She seems unable to understand the fact that there was a civil war in the Mandate of Palestine and the Palestinian Arabs lost but never surrendered; how does peace come out of that. If you play poker and you lose, you can’t have the chips back. Even the morons in the slave owning South knew when to pack it away and quit at the end of the Civil War.
Well said; unfortunately, in today’s world wherein equality has come to mean believing everyone is equally accomplished instead of treating everyone equally, and wherein justice has become synonymous with victims’ being rewarded with riches rather than their receiving fair compensation, too many people want winners (other than evil capitalists, of course) to be allowed to keep their winnings, whereas losers (other than evil capitalists, of course) must be able to retrieve their losses with a simple, “Oh, I didn’t mean to lose all that money, it was a mistake; I need it; give it back!”
I should point out that here in Cairo, when you talk to Egyptians about this issue there is almost universal hostility towards Israel. There is no fair play or proportion but only Arabs and Islam. The big elephant in the room that few Westerners acknowledge or understand is that Islam will only be happy when their is no more Israel and that is why no West Bank has ever appeared as a Palestinian State. To accept a nation in the West Bank would put paid forever the idea of having the old Mandate of Palestine exclusively muslim. People here have told me that the Jews can go back to Europe when I asked. This stupidity which does not take into account people born in Israel is wide spread. Muslims purport to hate, not Jews but Zionism have, in turn no trouble living in a region of the world whose states are mostly specifically Islamic in the same way that Israel is Jewish. This is not hypocritical to muslims because muslims are simply always right. The concept of the greater good is literally non-existent in the middle east. In the same way La Raza never met a Latino last name it didn’t like, muslims are ferociously self-absorbed. Letting either into the U.S. is a disaster. There are no lack of Latino or muslim polities in which to express one’s Latinoness of Islamicness, only idiots who couldn’t reverse engineer a ball point pen without a racist and imperialist European to hold their hand. This is reality, no matter how politically incorrect. They flee to the West, hate it, but will not leave. Why leave when it can be subverted into yet another Latino or Islamic failed polity. Donkeys and shanty towns in Europe and America are perhaps 2 generations away. There would be donkeys in inner city Detroit right now were it not for the exceptionalism of the sinful, racist and unfortunately successful West. The baby boom in the Third World is turning the tide and there are only so many people that can fit into a phone booth and only so many exceptionalist’s to float a successful society. Once they are in the minority it’ll be hello intellectual and physical favela.
To no. 13–”You cannot make Canadians into Americans”–doubtful that this is Hornik’s aim; he’s an American originally but by now a longtime Israeli.
Toronto has a vocal and active contingent of left wing Jews whose desire for peace and justice seems mainly aimed at their more observant and zionist co-religionists.
The names of members of this group appear from time to time in the news in such contexts as manning the barricades as pro hamas demonstrators in Toronto, anti-Israel demonstrators against the wall, and as arrested persons in Israel who have interfered with security checks at the pass points into the Arab areas of Judea and Samaria.
The best known adherents of this viewpoint are probably members of the extended Lewis family: – Avi Lewis, Canadian media figure, Stephen Lewis, his father, Canadian diplomat, and former head of one of Canada’s socialist parties, Naomi “No Logos” Klein, author and wife of Avi and the wife of Stephen, Michele Landsberg, former columnist for the Toronto Star. These people, as well as many of their lesser known adherents, trace their origins to the Bund, a socialist political movement in pre revolutionary Russia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Lewis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Jewish_Labour_Bund_in_Lithuania,_Poland_and_Russia
U of T was the first place to host an anti Israel apartheid week. I recall at the time asking the then Dean of Graduate Studies, himself a member of an orthodox synagogue, whether he was in the least bit concerned. He was not. So five years later I am not surprised to see that these viewpoints are now considered acceptable for the award of a master’s degree. Let’s hope that this young lady’s academic career and that of her mentor are short lived.
Gee, you would think she had attended a Madrassa where all infidels are the pigs of the earth–oh, females are allowed in Mardrassas by the Mulahs, the male domineering sexists pigs. Don’t the Canucks have a “thought crime” commission for prosecuting racial and religious incitement–I believe Mark Steyn was recently a defendant in those Kafka like proceedings for publishing the “facts” about Islam and its preference for sheep over women–kinky. I guess it all depends on whose ox you gore in academia–thats right, Ann Coulter was threatened with the possibility of “thought crime” prosecution if she violated the ruling speech codes at, I believe, the University of Toronto, and so she canceled her appearance. A master’s thesis on the it’s all the Jews fault tripe, hum; PT Barnum was right, there’s a sucker born every day.
Don, it was U. of Ottawa.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/25/world/americas/25coulter.html
Ann Coulter did NOT cancel her appearance at the University of Ottawa, the police did. See the column she wrote about this for more information: http://anncoulter.com/cgi-local/article.cgi?article=361
Ah, the original thinking behind the “Queers Against Israel Apartheid” that proudly marched most recently in Toronto’s Gay Pride Parade, simultaneously ignoring the fact “queers” are stoned to death in Palestine, while enjoying acceptance and freedom in Israel. A logic that runs through this piece of hers all the while existing in the bliss of ignorance.
“….sexist, gender-normative and heterosexist educational institutions I was forced to attend.”
Oh good grief.
As I said before, these types of works are nothing new. The only thing new is the target groups. White Euro Christian Males have been on the receiving end of this type of demonization and villification for decades now.
Most of it thrown at them by other Euro Christian males.
We need to face up to the fact that ethnicity, race, religion, gender etc., might have little correlation with attacks directed at these groups. When intra-group attacks are as vicious as inter-group attacks then one needs to go further and examine whether or not some other, more basic, underlying forces are at work here.
Of course, there’re some hypotheses available, but that’s not the issue of this thread.
I suggest you start with Cultural Marxism, Radical 60s, New Leftism, Identity Politics.
Here is a video to get you started.
The History of Political Correctness
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5Z_kZksn3E
Self Hatred is being taught to children…culminating in the ultimate self hatred Environmental Nihilist Genocidal Misanthropy.
Leftwingism is a mental disorder.
Sure, among many others, like:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-primitivism
But my point was more basic: it must be some human individual (as well as collective) trait underneath this vicious inter- and intra-group attacks, fueling conflicts such as these, and I don’t buy the mordechaist (aka marxist) narrative. Maybe we can address this at some other appropriate PJM story.
One of the teachers in the school I teach at is showing, “The World after People”. I pointed out to him that in most of the episodes, human’s are refered to as a “toxic element” on the planet.
He didn’t exactly like the fact that I continue to refer to this series as enviro-porn, very similar in nature to the “Assainate Bush” movies during his tenure.
This teacher is a self described Vegan and an administrative leader of PETA. Therefore he sees no problem in indoctranating his grade 9 students vociferously in class.
Academia is the only realm where the opinionated, resentment laden crap Ms. Peto publishes under the guise of a mater’s thesis is regarded with anything other than scorn. – Tetwave
Au contraire! It can be seen in the HR Department’s Diversity Divisions of all major institutions. It is the law of the land, and daily advocated by “moral” authority. The mainstream media dominated by the Left is flush with these same ideas. It in fact is the zeitgeist. A zeitgeist that Jews have been very supportive of, intellectually and politically, I might add.
I wish someone can give this article to the person who had to listen to her bs thesis…
I’m left to wonder at who has been footing the bill for all those educational institutions she has been forced to attend, all the way up to a Master’s.
I’m betting on Mom and Dad, who must be so proud of their rebel, probably wondering just when she’ll start growing out of it, like the shrink told them she would all those years ago.
As a Canadian, I see this as nice clear glimpse into the thought process of those who deem themselves my “moral and intellectual superiors”, but it is certainly not indicative of the majority opinion in Canada regarding Israel.
I think Mr Harper stated that opinion rather well last week.
“But Harper said the “evolving phenomenon” of anti-Semitism targets the Jewish people by portraying Israel as “the source of injustice and conflict in the world, and uses perversely the language of human rights to do so.”
“We must be relentless in exposing this new anti-Semitism for what it is,” Harper said.
Israel, like any country, may be subjected to fair criticism, he said. But Harper told the audience that Canada must oppose what he called the “three Ds” — demonization, double standards and delegitimization.
“And like any free country Israel subjects itself to such criticism, healthy, necessary, democratic debate,” he said. “But when Israel, the only country in the world whose very existence is under attack, is consistently and conspicuously singled out for condemnation, I believe we are morally obligated to take a stand.”
http://www.cbc.ca/politics/story/2010/11/08/harper-israel-anti-semitism.html#ixzz15ky4HFhs
I wish Ms.Jennifer Peto would have to defend her thesis in the U.of Haiti. At least there would be a chance, that she get the well deserved cholera a kicks the bucket.
I’m apparently way out of touch – when did they start writing Masters’ Theses in the first person?
This sort of offal (I fear to give tripe a bad name) cries out for uncontrolable laughter, catcalls, hooting, pointing and other overt signs of mockery.
This is the ravings of a love lost Lesbian.
Why is it that everything the left(Obama,Holder etc) does is what most would call infantile.
Pardon my ignorance, but what was this Master’s Thesis for? A degree in some made up study of the Humanities? In first person?
What kind of a school would allow for that? Where is Ms. Peto’s contribution to society? What has she done for society in writing her whiny view of her short life that she deserves the respect of a degree?
She ought to study something useful. Psychology, Theater, Fashion, Marketing, Engineering, Science, Medicine, Mathematics, even Cooking, or Music –Something useful and productive.
We shouldn’t reward whiners like her.
Department of Sociology and Equity Studies in Education.
Ha!
The introduction reads more like a voyage of personal discovery than any thesis I’ve read. How many times do the words “I” and “me” appear in this political tract?
Maybe folks should just go read it and make up their own mind. I know, checking sources is a crazy liberal thing to do. But give it a go.
I’m not necessarily saying I agree with any of the thesis. She does appear to be wrong about the 50 massacred by goldstein, although if you count the people killed in the subsequent protest then she’s not too far off. She does actually define what she means by “apartheid”, so that might one place to start. And she’s not entirely original in suggesting that american jews aren’t really doing it all that tough. Elsewhere, sure, I agree that there is a serious problem with anti-semitism – particularly in the middle-east and eastern europe. But in new york? Not so much.
My brief skim suggests to me that she doesn’t stray too far into the style of critical studies or postmodernism, so it shouldn’t be too appalling to read.
So … everyone just go read it. The worst that can happen is that you disagree.
to common sense people the absurd conclusions of this demented woman are obvious. …but they are not to her.
this is the same with the muslims who try to follow islam. ..to any critical thinker the verses are absurd. ..but not to the follower or to the progs who latch on to anything that is anti-western civilization.
so many young minds have been poisoned by the lies (received at the expense of taxpayer) spouted in the education system of the west for several generations. most of these people are both morally and intellectually lost. they will wander among us till they die. in most cases they will not be in places where they can do damage. but some will. and some are there now.
Please leave this poor girl alone. After all finding our what her fate would have been in Nazi Europe of the early 40′s must be as bad as having sex with a man!
FYI:
Newspapers:
http://www.metronews.ca/toronto/local/article/163718
and:
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2010/05/26/queers-against-israel-would-support-iranian-gays-too-but-they-havent-asked/
Video:
http://vodpod.com/watch/4358826-apartheid-week-jenny-peto-1-of-2
and
http://vodpod.com/watch/4358830-apartheid-week-jenny-peto-2-of-2
I would guess that she is not poor …at least in the monetary sense.
I would also wager idiots like these never had to make it on their own. It is an interesting thing to earn ones own keep. it is a great teacher to really know where truth and co-operation come from. having everything given to you delays or prevents this knowledge this truth from being learned.
You use the word intelligent way to easy. People are still afraid of going outside the cave. People have not grown intellectually very far yet. It is still king of the hill attitude with mankind no matter where you look! Oh and I consider myself as one of the people that has a long way to go, before I use the word intelligent on myself. The one thing we can do is learn from some of our mistakes. Just like other animals can do to survive, but we are the only ones that can destroy life on this planet on a major scale!
Only when it involves denigrating Jews do the vitriolic scratchings of a mentally disturbed individual become acceptable material for a master’s thesis. She will probably end up joining some extremist cult group like Jewish Voice for Peace or International Solidarity Movement, spend several years assisting terrorists and then fizzle out and commit suicide.
What, pray tell, are terms like “gender-normative” and “heterosexis” supposed to mean. Dead giveaways for academic gobble-dee-gook.
Only when it involves denigrating Jews do the vitriolic scratchings of a mentally disturbed individual become acceptable material for a master’s thesis. — Steve in Boston
Wrong again Steve. I suggest you mosey on over the African American, Chicano, Women’s, and Gay & Lesbian, Middle Eastern, AND Jewish Studies Departments (not to mention English and Literary Departments, plus Sociology) and find out the personal hate and vitoriol being expressed in masters thesis to the White Euro Crhistian Male….otherwise known as Western Civilization.
I am my college professor’s favorite pupil. He calls himself a “philosophical progressive” (whatever that means) and he tells wonderful stories about Mao Zedong and how deeply spirtual it is to become a Progressive. He told us not to pay any attention to those horrible rumors that the Conservatives preach to us about Brother Mao’s murder of 60 million. I know it’s a lie, that’s what a girl on Facebook said. After all, President Obama had a Mao ornamate hanging fron the White House Christmas tree, right on cool. After learning all of these new political ideas, I went out and got the latest Che Guevara t-shirt. It is so rad. My professor went to Harvard like Obama did so I know he loves Che too. My professor said Hollywood helped to revive another leftist martyr but my uncle (who was in the Army) said Hollywood has dutifully churned out yet another cinematic agitprop paean and that I should read to try to discern why many supposedly democratic, civil libertarian liberals still swoon over this Stalinist mass-murderer. What ever that means, later dude.
problem here is that b/c both sides (jew/muslim) worship a god who only exists in the imagination, both sides can “believe” what they wish.
there is only one god, and that’s the earth. we are all born of her, and seeing how we are slowly killing ourselves off (pollution…) none of this monothesitic b.s. will matter.
history is ending folks. and that might just mean the end of conflicts of this type. read any history book and all you’ll read of is conflict based in an ideology of some sort.
On Academic Freedom and Academic Witch Hunts
As a graduate of OISE, I am increasingly alarmed by the growing smear campaign against my alma matter (OISE, and by extension, the University of Toronto).
First, let me state for the record that I have read Jennifer Peto’s thesis. I believe the hypothesis of her thesis is legitimate matter for serious investigation; do particular education programs (in this case Holocaust education), promote a particular worldview? There is no difference between asking this question about Holocaust education and asking it of the curriculum taught by the Taliban in Afghanistan, the Communist Chinese government’s official curriculum, the Creationist movement in the United States or the textbooks of the Palestinian Authority. Just because we may or may not agree with the politics of something does not exempt it from study.
The obligation on any scholar (and on the advisor of a student scholar) is to ensure that the topic is handled professionally and treated properly, according to rigorous academic standards.
I think many, if not most of us who have bothered to read this thesis have rightfully concluded that the author doesn’t even come close to proving her hypothesis, let alone following usual academic research standards. In fact, she makes it clear that she isn’t even going to bother trying, having stated that white Jews have no right to even be engaging in these kinds of educational programs to begin with (I refer you to the last paragraph on page 46 of her thesis in which she explicitly states this). The paper reads like it is somewhat of a narcissistic, self-aggrandizing journey in which the author references only a limited scope of literature and performs no original research to investigate a very difficult subject. In fact, she admits that she ‘didn’t have time’ to crosscheck her ‘observations’ of web-based materials by actually talking to anyone.
However, notwithstanding the questionable value of this particular work, I am also very perturbed by the withering attacks on OISE (and by extension, UofT), especially through the pen of several journalists and many web ‘commentators’, and Werner Cohn’s superficial investigation of theses abstracts (which cannot be the basis for condemning a whole institution).
First of all, there is nothing wrong with studying racism, colonialism, patriarchy and feminism, homophobia, or aboriginal and African experiences. And there is nothing wrong with incorporating reflective processes into one’s scholarship. Calling them ‘leftist’ or ‘politically correct’ is just plain ignorant. They are legitimate and important subjects of study and should not be minimized the way they are being treated in the populist press.
The problem isn’t the subject matter, as many have construed. Just because the academy may be infiltrated here and there by bigotry and fascism, and have ‘members’ who seek to use the cover of scholarship, and expropriate the language of anti-racist and human rights education to mask their own hatred and racism, doesn’t nullify the work of the academy as a whole.
OISE may (emphasis on “may”) be subject to some of this phenomenon, but this is a universal problem far beyond OISE. I have had personal dealings with some of this in the past and it’s not very easy to find the fortitude to deal with the rhetoric and angry self-righteousness contained in the work, but it is possible (a typical strategy is to condemn anyone who offers even a reasoned critique). In order to do so, we must apply the same academic standards of inquiry to their work as we demand of it, and expose the problems to the light. At the very least, a thesis or paper cannot be condemned without actually reading it.
By judging without reading, and by issuing sweeping condemnations against the whole institution, we are throwing away far more examples of legitimate work, including many outstanding theses that have helped shape positive contributions to education generally, to anti-racist education more specifically, the study of genocide and, yes, Holocaust and Shoah education in particular. Reading the recent populist media attacks on OISE in light of the Peto thesis leaves one questioning all work coming out of OISE, which is an absolute travesty.
The Provost of the University of Toronto, Prof. Cheryl Misak, has been quoted in the media as saying that freedom of inquiry lies at the very heart of the institution. I could not agree more. Let us examine each piece of inquiry and each scholar’s work individually with the freedom we all have to do so (Peto’s thesis along with others is available for free download over the Internet), rather than condemning the whole institution and throwing out the baby with the bathwater, as the old saying goes.
You ask that U of T not be judged yet by your own words you admit that the institution has accepted a joke of a thesis, placing the stamp of authenticity upon it. Who then is to be blamed if not UFT? When one looks at the shoddy nonsense that passes for Ms. Peto’s thesis and one wonders how it could ever have been granted, the conclusion must be that (a) it is for political reasons or (b) UFT’s standards have collapsed, one or the other.
I suspect (a): to turn the language of the Left onto its own source, in my opinion there is clearly a systemic bias at play here.
Whatever the cause, Peto’s shallow thesis was granted because it met with the approval of her advisors; and her advisors represent UFT; therefore it met with UFT’s approval. Therefore it is UFT that deserves censure and indeed ridicule, not Ms. Peto. You have things exactly wrong.
For you to insist that UFT’s name be held above all, misses the whole point in a rather colossal way. If you award joke theses you become an academic joke and that’s clearly where UFT is heading.