Uncomfortable Questions: The Bruce Gilley Scandal

Uncomfortable Questions: The Bruce Gilley Scandal

 Note: This is an unusually long blog. I published it in the newsletter of the (Canadian) Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship. No. 85, April 2020, pp. 16-18. I know that many people now think that protection of academic freedom is a right-wing issue, as discussed at the end of this article, but I think that it should be everyone’s concern, regardless of political persuasion. Academic freedom is an important part of freedom of speech, a fundamental human rights.  I have included footnotes in this blog for those who would like to investigate further.

 This article addresses a recent case of academic “scandal.” In 2017 Bruce Gilley, a political scientist, argued in Third World Quarterly (TWQ) for the benefits of past coercive colonialism and the probable advantages of future voluntary colonialism.[1] TWQ eventually withdrew Gilley’s article from its hard-copy publication because of concerns for the safety of its editor, who had been subjected to on-line threats to his life. The question this case provokes is whether both academic freedom and the human right to freedom of speech include the right to ask uncomfortable questions and propose unpopular answers.

 Gilley presented two arguments; that there were many benefits to colonialism, and that a voluntary re-colonialization in which independent countries accept partial control by foreigners might improve their citizens’ well-being. As benefits of colonialism, he mentioned among others efficient administration, the building of infrastructure, and provision of health and education services. Gilley also noted that colonialists had put a stop to the slave trade of earlier centuries.([1], p. 4)

 Martin Klein, a professor emeritus at the University of Toronto and a distinguished historian of colonialism in Africa, provided a careful refutation of Gilley’s views of the benefits of colonialism. Klein agrees that colonists did stop the slave trade—from which their own nations had earlier benefitted—as well as abolishing internal slavery. But other “benefits” of colonialism served colonial interests. Colonialists provided education only to a small elite of (male) Africans who were groomed for lower-level administrative jobs in the colonial civil service. Hospitals were built and public health measures instituted to ensure that Europeans did not die. Forced labourers built much colonial infrastructure. Very few colonies allowed any political participation by “natives,” to whom Gilley’s supposedly “universal” values such as the rule of law did not apply. ([2], p. 39) In general, colonial rule varied according to the needs of the rulers and their commitments to the well-being of the populations they ruled.

 Gilley also compared administration, infrastructure, education and health care in now independent countries to their counterparts under colonial rule. He argued that in some cases, a voluntary “re-colonialism,” as he called it, might be a good option for some independent countries. Using Guinea-Bissau as an example, he suggested building a city on an outlying island to be run by foreigners, along the lines of Singapore or Hong Kong. Other aspects of this so-called voluntary “re-colonization” included co-operation with international organizations such as the World Bank. ([1], pp. 8, 11) Gilley, a former journalist, admits that he has an eye for provocative headlines. ([3], p. 8) To call long-established patterns of international co-operation a form of “colonialism” seems unnecessarily provocative.

 TWQ reviewed Gilley's article twice. He first submitted it for a special issue, but after the issue’s two editors read it, they declined to send it out for further review. The TWQ Editor, Pakistan-born Shahid Qadir, then sent it out for anonymous double blind review by two scholars, for a “viewpoints” article in a regular issue. One recommended against publishing, the other for. Qadir then decided to publish and the article appeared on-line.

 Before the article could appear in print, fifteen members of the TWQ editorial board resigned in protest. They maintained that the Editor had violated the peer review process. They also wrote that “We all subscribe to the principle of freedom of speech and the value of provocation in order to generate critical debate. However, this cannot be done by means of a piece that fails to meet academic standards of rigour and balance by ignoring all manner of violence, exploitation and harm perpetrated in the name of colonialism…and that causes offense and hurt and thereby clearly violates that very principle of free speech.” [4] Several hundred scholars then signed a petition for the article’s removal, and several thousand members of the public did the same.

 The public petition was drafted by Jenny Heijun Wills, an associate professor of English and Director of the Critical Race Network at the University of Winnipeg. She claimed that Gilley’s “ideas are not simply abstract provocations, but have real, material consequences for those who Prof Gilley seeks to dominate and objectify.”[5] Gilley did not, of course, seek to dominate or objectify anyone: he made his proposals for voluntary “re-colonization,” however misguided they might have been, out of concern for people suffering from blatant misrule in postcolonial societies.

 On-line harassment of the TWQ was intense. Some people to whom Gilley referred as “Indian anti-colonial fanatics” apparently made anonymous death threats against Qadir. [6] It is possible for an academic to ignore on-line critical comments, but not always—if ever—to ignore actual threats of violence. Faced with such threats and concerned for Qadir’s safety, Gilley agreed to withdraw the article before it could be published in hard copy. After initially offering an apology, he retracted it as having been issued under pressure, and he did not retract the contents of the article. Neither the TWQ Editor, nor the publisher, Taylor and Francis, apologized.

 Quite probably, the scholars who resigned from TWQ’s editorial board actually read Gilley’s article. It was their right to resign. Possibly, although unlikely, all the scholars who signed petitions against publication also read the article. It is unlikely that more than a few of the public mobbers actually read it. 

 Some scholars now seems to think that rather than provide a written refutation of an article with which they profoundly disagree, they should collectively and loudly denounce its publication. By contrast, Martin Klein lamented withdrawal of the article. Klein argued that Gilley did the scholarly community a service by raising questions about colonialism that were “crucial parts of the divide between academic and public discourse. Many of the students who enter our classes do so with ideas similar to Gilley’s. So too do many opinion leaders…” ([2] p. 39) The distinguished leftist scholar and critic, Noam Chomsky, also called for rebuttal of Gilley’s views, but not for a retraction of the article. [7]

One African commentator defended Gilley, maintaining that “many Nigerians see the colonial era as something of a golden age.” [8] A Kenyan researcher argued that TWQ should reinstate the article, arguing “It is extreme anti-colonial sentiment that is a threat to world peace, not the pro-colonial views that have been expressed by pro-Western thinkers in the Third World who identify with the Western human rights tradition.” [9]

Before writing his article defending colonialism, Gilley had published an earlier piece on the Nigerian writer, Chinua Achebe. Long known as a hero of the anti-colonial movement, late in his life Achebe began to reminisce about the beneficial aspects of colonialism, which he himself had experienced as a student at Government College in Umuahia.[10] Yet this article garnered no protests, outraged or otherwise. [11]

 Nor did public mobbing cause withdrawal of arguments similar to Gilley’s made by other scholars. The historian Niall Ferguson, for example, published a provocatively titled book, Civilization: The West and the Rest, in 2011, arguing that the West developed “six powerful new concepts” that the rest of the world lacked: these were competition, science, property, medicine, consumption, and work. Acknowledging the many horrific evils of colonialism in Africa, Ferguson nevertheless described how colonialists conducted medical research and improved the health of their subjects. He further argued that the Protestant work ethic was an important contributor to development in countries such as China.([12], pp.  168-75, 277-88). Yet Ferguson was not mobbed into withdrawing his book.

 Similarly, many scholars have presented arguments analogous to Gilley’s on why post-colonial states such as Guinea-Bissau have failed. To succeed in protecting their citizens’ human rights, I have argued, societies require market economies with strong protection of property rights; rule of law; strong administrative and political institutions; a political culture of human rights; and a strong civil society.([13], pp. 49-66) Other scholars stress the importance of developing efficient, trustworthy institutions that can facilitate economic innovation and growth. They also stress democratic accountability, a free press, and the rule of law.[14, 15]

Perhaps the reason why the scholars cited above were not mobbed, by either other scholars or the concerned public, was that they wrote books that took too long to read. Or perhaps their arguments were simply not brought to public attention. All of them published since 2010, so presumably could have been condemned on social media. 

 Gilley himself argued that “such virtual flash mobs are becoming part of the discursive landscape of contemporary society.”([16], p.4) In the past, governments or religious officials who did not like ideas their opponents spread committed libricide, trying to kill ideas by burning books and libraries. Such tactics are still popular in the present: for example, China employed them during the Cultural Revolution and in its repression of Tibet.[17]

Nowadays, libricide is not necessary to commit ideacide; instead, mobs can use social media to condemn ideas, and spread false summaries of what scholars say. An additional advantage of social media is that people who use it can be anonymous: thus, there is little if any potential cost to them of threatening violence against those with whom they disagree.  These advantages pertain to anyone disagreeing with anything: some professors who opposed Gilley’s views were also subject to on-line harassment.([3], p. 3)

Many of the opinion pieces defending Gilley were published in journals or newspapers considered to be connected to the political right. Yet freedom of speech is a fundamental human right for all to protect themselves against abuses of power by the state, by businesses, by social institutions, and indeed by other individuals. Freedom of speech is a profoundly subversive concept.

In order to protect freedom of speech, it is often necessary to protect its exercise by people with whom one profoundly disagrees. That is what Chomsky and Klein did in their defense of Gilley’s right to publish his views on colonialism. To argue that speech that is “hurtful” violates the principles of free speech, as did the 15 scholars who resigned from the TWG editorial board, is to stretch the principle of prohibition of hate speech far beyond its original purpose.

It is dangerous to claim hurt or harm when all one is confronting is an idea. It is one thing to oppose actual hate speech with its advocacy of violence: it is another to claim that unpopular ideas promote hatred when there is no evidence whatsoever that they do. Indeed, it was the anti-Gilley mobbers who promoted violence, not Gilley, who merely proposed two politically unpopular ideas about the nature of colonial and post-colonial rule.  

Notes:

 

1.            Gilley, B., The Case for Colonialism. Third World Quarterly, 2017 (on-line only: withdrawn).

2.            Klein, M.A., A Critique of Colonial Rule: A Response to Bruce Gilley. Australasian Review of African Studies, 2018. 39(1): p. 39-52.

3.            Patel, V., Last Fall This Scholar Defended Colonialism. Now He's Defending Himself, in The Chronicle of Higher Education. 2018 March 21.

4.            Kapoor, I.e.a., Letter of resignation from members of the editorial board of Third World Quarterly. 2017 September 19.

5.            Wills, J.H., Petition via Change.org. 2017.

6.            Bouwman, M., Het Goede Van Kolonialism (The Good of Colonialism), in Elsevier Weekbland. 2018 March 3: Netherlands.

7.            Ngo, A., Noam Chomsky defends academic freedom of pro-colonialism professor under fire, in The College Fix. 2017 September 21.

8.            Lamikanra, F., Dare We Make a Case for Colonialism?, in Conatus News. 2017 October 13.

9.            Wariuru, M., Post-Colonial Identity Crisis and Partmerships with Europe: An Black African Historian Defends Prof. Bruce Gilley. 2017 October.

10.          Gilley, B., Chinua Achebe on the Positive Legacies of Colonialism. African Affairs, 2016. 115(461): p. 646-63.

11.          Young, T., The Gilley 'debate'. Journal of Modern African Studies, 2019. 57(2): p. 325-37.

12.          Ferguson, N., Civilization: The West and the Rest. 2011, New York: Penguin Publisher.

13.          Howard-Hassmann, R.E., In Defense of Universal Human Rights. 2018, Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.

14.          Fukuyama, F., Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy. 2014, New York: Farrar, Straus and Geroux.

15.          Acemoglu, D. and J.A. Robinson, Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty. 2012, New York: Crown.

16.          Gilley, B., How the hate mob tried to silence me (on-line), in Standpoint Mag. 2017-18: United Kingdom

17.          Knuth, R., Libricide: the Regime-Sponsored Destruction of Books and Libraries in the Twentieth Century. 2003, Westport, Connecticut: Praeger.

 

Gilley presented two arguments; that there were many benefits to colonialism, and that a voluntary re-colonialization in which independent countries accept partial control by foreigners might improve their citizens’ well-being. As benefits of colonialism, he mentioned among others efficient administration, the building of infrastructure, and provision of health and education services. Gilley also noted that colonialists had put a stop to the slave trade of earlier centuries.([1], p. 4)

Martin Klein, a professor emeritus at the University of Toronto and a distinguished historian of colonialism in Africa, provided a careful refutation of Gilley’s views of the benefits of colonialism. Klein agrees that colonists did stop the slave trade—from which their own nations had earlier benefitted—as well as abolishing internal slavery. But other “benefits” of colonialism served colonial interests. Colonialists provided education only to a small elite of (male) Africans who were groomed for lower-level administrative jobs in the colonial civil service. Hospitals were built and public health measures instituted to ensure that Europeans did not die. Forced labourers built much colonial infrastructure. Very few colonies allowed any political participation by “natives,” to whom Gilley’s supposedly “universal” values such as the rule of law did not apply. ([2], p. 39) In general, colonial rule varied according to the needs of the rulers and their commitments to the well-being of the populations they ruled.

Gilley also compared administration, infrastructure, education and health care in now independent countries to their counterparts under colonial rule. He argued that in some cases, a voluntary “re-colonialism,” as he called it, might be a good option for some independent countries. Using Guinea-Bissau as an example, he suggested building a city on an outlying island to be run by foreigners, along the lines of Singapore or Hong Kong. Other aspects of this so-called voluntary “re-colonization” included co-operation with international organizations such as the World Bank. ([1], pp. 8, 11) Gilley, a former journalist, admits that he has an eye for provocative headlines. ([3], p. 8) To call long-established patterns of international co-operation a form of “colonialism” seems unnecessarily provocative.

TWQ reviewed Gilley's article twice. He first submitted it for a special issue, but after the issue’s two editors read it, they declined to send it out for further review. The TWQ Editor, Pakistan-born Shahid Qadir, then sent it out for anonymous double blind review by two scholars, for a “viewpoints” article in a regular issue. One recommended against publishing, the other for. Qadir then decided to publish and the article appeared on-line.

Before the article could appear in print, fifteen members of the TWQ editorial board resigned in protest. They maintained that the Editor had violated the peer review process. They also wrote that “We all subscribe to the principle of freedom of speech and the value of provocation in order to generate critical debate. However, this cannot be done by means of a piece that fails to meet academic standards of rigour and balance by ignoring all manner of violence, exploitation and harm perpetrated in the name of colonialism…and that causes offense and hurt and thereby clearly violates that very principle of free speech.” [4] Several hundred scholars then signed a petition for the article’s removal, and several thousand members of the public did the same.

The public petition was drafted by Jenny Heijun Wills, an associate professor of English and Director of the Critical Race Network at the University of Winnipeg. She claimed that Gilley’s “ideas are not simply abstract provocations, but have real, material consequences for those who Prof Gilley seeks to dominate and objectify.”[5] Gilley did not, of course, seek to dominate or objectify anyone: he made his proposals for voluntary “re-colonization,” however misguided they might have been, out of concern for people suffering from blatant misrule in postcolonial societies.

On-line harassment of the TWQ was intense. Some people to whom Gilley referred as “Indian anti-colonial fanatics” apparently made anonymous death threats against Qadir. [6] It is possible for an academic to ignore on-line critical comments, but not always—if ever—to ignore actual threats of violence. Faced with such threats and concerned for Qadir’s safety, Gilley agreed to withdraw the article before it could be published in hard copy. After initially offering an apology, he retracted it as having been issued under pressure, and he did not retract the contents of the article. Neither the TWQ Editor, nor the publisher, Taylor and Francis, apologized.

Quite probably, the scholars who resigned from TWQ’s editorial board actually read Gilley’s article. It was their right to resign. Possibly, although unlikely, all the scholars who signed petitions against publication also read the article. It is unlikely that more than a few of the public mobbers actually read it. 

Some scholars now seems to think that rather than provide a written refutation of an article with which they profoundly disagree, they should collectively and loudly denounce its publication. By contrast, Martin Klein lamented withdrawal of the article. Klein argued that Gilley did the scholarly community a service by raising questions about colonialism that were “crucial parts of the divide between academic and public discourse. Many of the students who enter our classes do so with ideas similar to Gilley’s. So too do many opinion leaders…” ([2] p. 39) The distinguished leftist scholar and critic, Noam Chomsky, also called for rebuttal of Gilley’s views, but not for a retraction of the article. [7]

One African commentator defended Gilley, maintaining that “many Nigerians see the colonial era as something of a golden age.” [8] A Kenyan researcher argued that TWQ should reinstate the article, arguing “It is extreme anti-colonial sentiment that is a threat to world peace, not the pro-colonial views that have been expressed by pro-Western thinkers in the Third World who identify with the Western human rights tradition.” [9]

Before writing his article defending colonialism, Gilley had published an earlier piece on the Nigerian writer, Chinua Achebe. Long known as a hero of the anti-colonial movement, late in his life Achebe began to reminisce about the beneficial aspects of colonialism, which he himself had experienced as a student at Government College in Umuahia.[10] Yet this article garnered no protests, outraged or otherwise. [11]

Nor did public mobbing cause withdrawal of arguments similar to Gilley’s made by other scholars. The historian Niall Ferguson, for example, published a provocatively titled book, Civilization: The West and the Rest, in 2011, arguing that the West developed “six powerful new concepts” that the rest of the world lacked: these were competition, science, property, medicine, consumption, and work. Acknowledging the many horrific evils of colonialism in Africa, Ferguson nevertheless described how colonialists conducted medical research and improved the health of their subjects. He further argued that the Protestant work ethic was an important contributor to development in countries such as China.([12], pp.  168-75, 277-88). Yet Ferguson was not mobbed into withdrawing his book.

Similarly, many scholars have presented arguments analogous to Gilley’s on why post-colonial states such as Guinea-Bissau have failed. To succeed in protecting their citizens’ human rights, I have argued, societies require market economies with strong protection of property rights; rule of law; strong administrative and political institutions; a political culture of human rights; and a strong civil society.([13], pp. 49-66) Other scholars stress the importance of developing efficient, trustworthy institutions that can facilitate economic innovation and growth. They also stress democratic accountability, a free press, and the rule of law.[14, 15]

Perhaps the reason why the scholars cited above were not mobbed, by either other scholars or the concerned public, was that they wrote books that took too long to read. Or perhaps their arguments were simply not brought to public attention. All of them published since 2010, so presumably could have been condemned on social media. 

Gilley himself argued that “such virtual flash mobs are becoming part of the discursive landscape of contemporary society.”([16], p.4) In the past, governments or religious officials who did not like ideas their opponents spread committed libricide, trying to kill ideas by burning books and libraries. Such tactics are still popular in the present: for example, China employed them during the Cultural Revolution and in its repression of Tibet.[17]

Nowadays, libricide is not necessary to commit ideacide; instead, mobs can use social media to condemn ideas, and spread false summaries of what scholars say. An additional advantage of social media is that people who use it can be anonymous: thus, there is little if any potential cost to them of threatening violence against those with whom they disagree.  These advantages pertain to anyone disagreeing with anything: some professors who opposed Gilley’s views were also subject to on-line harassment.([3], p. 3)

Many of the opinion pieces defending Gilley were published in journals or newspapers considered to be connected to the political right. Yet freedom of speech is a fundamental human right for all to protect themselves against abuses of power by the state, by businesses, by social institutions, and indeed by other individuals. Freedom of speech is a profoundly subversive concept.

In order to protect freedom of speech, it is often necessary to protect its exercise by people with whom one profoundly disagrees. That is what Chomsky and Klein did in their defense of Gilley’s right to publish his views on colonialism. To argue that speech that is “hurtful” violates the principles of free speech, as did the 15 scholars who resigned from the TWG editorial board, is to stretch the principle of prohibition of hate speech far beyond its original purpose.

It is dangerous to claim hurt or harm when all one is confronting is an idea. It is one thing to oppose actual hate speech with its advocacy of violence: it is another to claim that unpopular ideas promote hatred when there is no evidence whatsoever that they do. Indeed, it was the anti-Gilley mobbers who promoted violence, not Gilley, who merely proposed two politically unpopular ideas about the nature of colonial and post-colonial rule.  

 Notes:

1.            Gilley, B., The Case for Colonialism. Third World Quarterly, 2017 (on-line only: withdrawn).

2.            Klein, M.A., A Critique of Colonial Rule: A Response to Bruce Gilley. Australasian Review of African Studies, 2018. 39(1): p. 39-52.

3.            Patel, V., Last Fall This Scholar Defended Colonialism. Now He's Defending Himself, in The Chronicle of Higher Education. 2018 March 21.

4.            Kapoor, I.e.a., Letter of resignation from members of the editorial board of Third World Quarterly. 2017 September 19.

5.            Wills, J.H., Petition via Change.org. 2017.

6.            Bouwman, M., Het Goede Van Kolonialism (The Good of Colonialism), in Elsevier Weekbland. 2018 March 3: Netherlands.

7.            Ngo, A., Noam Chomsky defends academic freedom of pro-colonialism professor under fire, in The College Fix. 2017 September 21.

8.            Lamikanra, F., Dare We Make a Case for Colonialism?, in Conatus News. 2017 October 13.

9.            Wariuru, M., Post-Colonial Identity Crisis and Partmerships with Europe: An Black African Historian Defends Prof. Bruce Gilley. 2017 October.

10.          Gilley, B., Chinua Achebe on the Positive Legacies of Colonialism. African Affairs, 2016. 115(461): p. 646-63.

11.          Young, T., The Gilley 'debate'. Journal of Modern African Studies, 2019. 57(2): p. 325-37.

12.          Ferguson, N., Civilization: The West and the Rest. 2011, New York: Penguin Publisher.

13.          Howard-Hassmann, R.E., In Defense of Universal Human Rights. 2018, Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.

14.          Fukuyama, F., Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy. 2014, New York: Farrar, Straus and Geroux.

15.          Acemoglu, D. and J.A. Robinson, Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty. 2012, New York: Crown.

16.          Gilley, B., How the hate mob tried to silence me (on-line), in Standpoint Mag. 2017-18: United Kingdom

17.          Knuth, R., Libricide: the Regime-Sponsored Destruction of Books and Libraries in the Twentieth Century. 2003, Westport, Connecticut: Praeger.

Reparations to African-Canadians

Reparations to African-Canadians

In 2017 a three-member Expert Panel filed a report to the United Nations Human Rights Council on people of African descent in Canada. https://ansa.novascotia.ca/sites/default/files/files/report-of-the-working-group-of-experts-on-people-of-african-descent-on-its-mission-to-canada.pdf    This report discussed contemporary problems such as the criminal justice system, health, education, and housing as they affect African-Canadians. It also discussed Canada’s history of racism.

The panel’s first recommendation was that the Government of Canada should “issue an apology and consider providing reparations to African Canadians for enslavement and historical injustices.” On June 2, 2020 reporters asked Prime Minister JustinTrudeau whether he would act on this recommendation. He evaded the question.https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-trudeau-wont-say-whether-canada-will-apologize-for-history-of-slavery/

Slavery was legal in Canada until 1834, when Britain abolished slavery in all its territories.  Canada did not have a slave-based plantation economy, but many people owned slaves, including government and military officials; Loyalists; bishops, priests and nuns; and tradesmen  such as hotel keepers. https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/black-enslavement

Nevertheless, some might argue that Canada should not pay reparations to all African-Canadians. Most African-Canadians are not descended from people enslaved in Canada.  Some are descended from people who escaped slavery in the US by coming to Canada. Many are, or are descended from, immigrants to Canada from the Caribbean, Africa, and elsewhere. Most of these people arrived after 1962, when Canada removed its racist restrictions on immigration. https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/immigration-policy

But even if they are not descended from people enslaved in Canada, most African-Canadians have suffered—and many still do suffer--from the “historical injustices” the Expert Panel mentions. Our Prime Minister could apologize both for slavery and for historic and contemporary injustices endured by African-Canadians.

Financial reparations are more difficult than apology. Many people think that financial reparation means giving every individual in a certain group a certain amount of money. Japanese-Canadians who were interned during World War II received an apology from Prime Minister Brian Mulroney in 1988, along with a payment of $21,000 to each living survivor. https://humanrights.ca/story/japanese-canadian-internment-and-the-struggle-for-redress

The Japanese-Canadian redress was relatively easy to implement because the internment had been relatively recent, some victims were still alive, and the number was relatively small. By contrast, enslavement ended 186 years ago: no victims are still alive and many of the descendants of enslaved individuals might not be identifiable now.

On the other hand, racial discrimination was not formally prohibited uniformly in Canada until the Canadian Bill of Rights was proclaimed in 1960. https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/C-12.3/FullText.html .

Reparations for discrimination before and after 1960 need not take the form of financial payment to every individual African-Canadian. But reparations for specific groups of victims of past and present harms are a viable option.

For example, the Expert Panel notes the high rate at which children are removed from African-Canadian families. Reparations might be paid to members of this group, just as it’s been paid to Indigenous victims of the “sixties scoop,” when Indigenous children were removed from their original families and adopted by Euro-Canadians. https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/sixties-scoop-survivors-decade-long-journey-for-justice-culminates-in-historic-pan-canadian-agreement-649748633.html

The federal and provincial governments could also establish funds for reparations to African-Canadian victims of ongoing maltreatment in prisons and jails. Recognition of the systemic nature of this maltreatment would mean that individuals would not have to prove their particular case for reparation in each instance.

And federal and provincial governments could establish funds for African-Canadian communities affected by environmental racism. The Expert Panel noted that “environmentally hazardous activities are disproportionately situated near neighbourhoods where many people of African descent live.”

Even municipal leaders could apologize for the actions of their predecessors.

The neighbourhood of Westdale in Hamilton, Ontario was built in the 1920s under a “protective covenant.” As historian John C. Weaver explains in his 1982 book, Hamilton: An Illustrated History, this covenant forbade sales to members of many different ethnic, religious and racial groups, among which “Negroes,” was the first group listed. The courts did not prohibit this segregation until after WWII. 

Discrimination in housing means that African-Canadians of the early 20^th century had less opportunity to acquire wealth than white Canadians. This disparity in wealth may well carry down through generations. Contemporary African-Canadians as a group may well inherit less from their immediate ancestors than Euro-Canadians.

If the municipal government at the time permitted this institutionalized racism in Hamilton, then its Mayor could apologize for it now. So could any existing private organization such as banks, mortgage companies, or real estate agencies that were involved in upholding racially-biased protective covenants during the first half of last century. They might consider what reparations they could pay; for example, by donating to scholarship funds for local African-Canadian students.

Not only all levels of government, but also all public and private institutions should examine their consciences and their pasts. Faith communities, school boards, universities, health services, and private businesses may all be implicated in systemic racism against African-Canadians. All could consider formal apologies and collective financial reparations.

Legitimate and illegitimate Criticisms of Israel

On November 19, 2019, Canada voted at the United Nations for the establishment of a Palestinian state. At the same time, Canada reiterated its position that there were too many UN resolutions about Israel, unfairly singly it out for criticism.  https://www.cjnews.com/news/canada/how-trudeau-changed-course-on-the-jewish-state   Nevertheless, Israel’s Ambassador to the UN claimed that Canada’s vote delegitimated Israel. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-israel-protests-canada-for-voting-at-un-supporting-palestinian-state/

This event prompts the question of what is legitimate or illegitimate criticism of the state of Israel, and when such criticism is anti-Semitic.

The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance defines anti-Semitism as “a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews.” It states that manifestations of anti-Semitism “might include the targeting of the state of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity.” However, it also states that “criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as anti-Semitic.” http://www.holocaustremembrance.com/node/196

Using this definition, Canada’s vote for creation of a Palestinian state does not delegitimize Israel, any more than Canadian criticism of any other state delegitimizes it.

One the other hand, activists for Palestinian rights who call for the state of Israel to be destroyed engage in illegitimate criticism. Regardless of the circumstances of its creation, Israel is a sovereign state that enjoys the right to exist. Like any other state, it also has the right to defend itself against attack https://www.un.org/en/sections/un-charter/chapter-vii/index.html

Activists who claim that Jews have no right to live in Israel also engage in illegitimate criticism. All states are permitted to determine who will live within their borders. Moreover, to suggest that Jews should not live in Israel is to advocate the creation of a huge refugee population based on religio-ethnic criteria.

Some critics call Israel a colonial power, assuming that it is illegitimate for any Jewish “settler” to live in Israel proper. This assumption is based in part on the notion that Jews are not indigenous to the Middle East. But Jews have lived in the Middle East for millennia. Israel was created in 1948 and an estimated 600,000 to 760,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled in the subsequent Arab-Israeli war. https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/the-birth-of-the-palestinian-refugee-problem-revisited/8AE72A6813CEA7DDDE8F9386313F0D97 In later years, about 800,000 Jews left Arab countries, about two-thirds settling in Israel and the other third elsewhere: many of these Jews had been forcibly expelled. https://www.algemeiner.com/2018/11/23/top-historian-simon-schama-remember-the-expulsion-of-jews-from-arab-countries/  As for European Jews, it is important to remember the context of pogroms and genocide that obliged many of them to flee to Israel.

This does not justify Israeli violations of the human rights of either Israeli Arabs or Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. It merely provides some context as to why so many Jews have settled in Israel.

Having said this, it is legitimate to criticize Israel as one might criticize any other state. Thus, the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against Israel is legitimate, as long as it does not simultaneously question the right of Israel to exist as a state. Many Jewish people both within and outside Israel who are concerned about Palestinian rights support this movement. Similarly, although it is not strictly accurate to call Israel an apartheid state, it is within the realm of acceptable political rhetoric. Technically speaking, apartheid can only occur within a state, so that calling Israel an apartheid state suggests that it has legal sovereignty over the West Bank and Gaza. https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/atrocity-crimes/Doc.10_International%20Convention%20on%20the%20Suppression%20and

A better way to judge Israel’s actions in Gaza and the West Bank is through the universal standard of international humanitarian law, especially the fourth Geneva Convention. This Convention prohibits transfers of population, either from or into conquered territories.  https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/atrocity-crimes/Doc.33_GC-IV-EN.pdf Thus, Jewish settlements in the West Bank are illegal. So is the wall separating Israel from the West Bank, in so far as part of it is built outside Israel’s territory, as the International Court of Justice ruled in 2004. https://news.un.org/en/story/2004/07/108912-international-court-justice-finds-israeli-barrier-palestinian-territory-illegal.

International human rights law is also a universal standard that protects Palestinians. Israel definitely denies some human rights to people in the West Bank and Gaza. But so do Palestinians’ own political leaders, Hamas in Gaza and Fatah in the West Bank. Both these political groups deny their subjects civil liberties and use torture and arbitrary arrest, all prohibited by international human rights law. https://www.hrw.org/middle-east/n-africa/israel/palestine https://www.hrw.org/tag/hamas

Other states also adversely affect the human rights of Palestinians. Not only Israel but also Egypt periodically blockades Gaza, thus denying Palestinians freedom of movement across national boundaries. Both these states have the right to control their own borders, but they frequently do so at the cost of Palestinians who cannot buy food, go to hospitals, or work in these sovereign states.

Arab states who have given shelter to Palestinian refugees and their descendants for decades, but refuse to grant them citizenship, also detrimentally affect Palestinians’ human rights. https://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/15363.html  However, these states are not obliged to grant citizenship to refugees and their descendants.

Serious concern for the human rights of Palestinians requires consideration of all the actors who violate their rights under international human rights and humanitarian law. These legal standards are universal. As long as they do not advocate eradication of the state of Israel and/or expulsion of Israeli Jews, states and activists who adhere to these standards are engage in legitimate criticism.

Jagmeet Singh Owes Canadians an Apology

Jagmeet Singh Owes Canadians an Apology

During Canada’s 2019 federal election campaign, voters learned that in 2001 Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau wore brown-face makeup at a party in the private school where he was then a teacher. https://news.yahoo.com/canadas-trudeau-wore-brownface-makeup-time-001607260.html

This was shocking, and the excuse that times were different in 2001 is nonsense. Decent white people in North America have known since the 1950s that it is at best insulting, at worst racist, to wear “black-face” makeup, with its demeaning implications for people of African descent. “Brown-face,” which Trudeau wore when he dressed up as the mythical figure Alladin, is also demeaning, if not racist. Trudeau repeatedly apologized, as he should have.

Jagmeet Singh

But now that the election is over, Jagmeet Singh also owes Canadians an apology. Singh is the leader of Canada’s New Democratic Party, whose general position is to the left of the Liberals, and which holds the balance of power in Canada’s new minority Liberal parliament.

In February 2018, the New Democratic Party invited Tamika Mallory, an African-American organizer of the Million Women March against Donald Trump, to speak at its convention. Mallory was accused of being a supporter of Louis Farrakhan. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/supporter-of-homophobic-anti-semitic-us-religious-leader-to-speak-at-n   This accusation was based in part on her attendance at a speech by Farrakhan and on previous statements she had made in his support. https://www.vox.com/identities/2018/3/7/17082030/womens-march-louis-farrakhan-tamika-mallory-anti-semitism-controversy

Farrakhan is an anti-Semite who as recently as 2018 said "the powerful Jews are my enemy.” https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/28/politics/louis-farrakhan-speech/index.html He is also homophobic, and attributes homosexuality to Jewish influence. In 2019 he said “Pedophilia and sexual perversion institutionalized in Hollywood and the entertainment industries can be traced to Talmudic principles and Jewish influence.” https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/individual/louis-farrakhan

Mallory has since acknowledged the reality of anti-Semitism and the need to combat it. At the same time, however, she argues that it is unnecessary for her to condemn or denounce Farrakhan. https://www.vox.com/identities/2018/3/7/17082030/womens-march-louis-farrakhan-tamika-mallory-anti-semitism-controversy. Nevertheless, Mallory’s attendance at Farrakhan’s speech and her unwilling, then and now, to denounce him for his anti-Semitic and homophobic views suggests that she was not an appropriate speaker for a national Canadian political convention.  

Tamika Mallory

Mallory has also declined to agree that Israel has a right to exist, saying "everyone has a right to exist” but not acknowledging Israel’s right to exist as a state https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/jan/18/tamika-mallory-spars-margaret-hoover-over-israels-

It is legitimate to criticize Israel for its discriminatory treatment of its Arab citizens and for its violations of international human rights and humanitarian law in the West Bank and Gaza. It is even legitimate to compare Israel’s current treatment of its Arab citizens and of people in the occupied territories to apartheid. This is not necessarily anti-Semitism; indeed, many Jewish critics of the policies of the state of Israel make such comparisons.

But when you refuse to acknowledge Israel’s right to exist, you are applying a standard rarely, if ever, applied to any other country. Anti-Israel activists do not, for example, campaign against the right of Serbia to exist as a state, yet it was founded in violence 50 years after the founding of Israel.

I have almost always voted for the NDP, as I believe that Canada needs a strong social-democratic party in Parliament. Therefore, when I learned about Mallory’s connections to Farrakhan, I contacted NDP headquarters three times to ask why it had invited her to speak. I would have been satisfied with a reply acknowledging that the NDP should not have invited her. But I received no reply.

As the leader of the federal NDP, Jagmeet Singh should apologize both to Canada’s Jewish community and to its LGBT+ community for the NDP’s having invited Malika Mallory to address it in 2018. He should acknowledge that, at best, the NDP made a mistake.

Singh should also acknowledge that anti-Semitism is not merely offensive to Canada’s Jewish population. It is offensive—or should be—to anyone who cares about any kind of racism in Canada. Singh should acknowledge the harm the NDP did by inviting someone connected to a known anti-Semite and homophobe to address its national convention. He should officially apologize for this invitation and for the NDP’s silence about the matter over the last 20 months. He should deliver this apology in the presence not only of leaders of Canada’s Jewish community and its LGBTQ+ communities, but also in the presence of other members of Canada’s social justice community who actively oppose both homophobia and anti-Semitism.

Singh should also apologize for—presumably--wishing that this issue would go away, much as Trudeau apologized for hoping that pictures of him in brown-face would never be exposed.

Trudeau last wore brown-face in 2001. 

The NDP invited a speaker who had attended speeches by a known anti-Semite and homophobe, and who refuses to denounce this individual, to address its national convention in 2018. This speaker has also refused to acknowledge the right of the state of Israel to exist. It would seem that the NDP’s error--as it can best be described--and its unwillingness to acknowledge and apologize for it, is far more egregious than Trudeau’s.

No Greater Love: How My Family Survived the Genocide in Rwanda: Book Review

Tharcisse Seminega, No Greater Love: How My Family Survived the Genocide in Rwanda, GM&A Publishing, Davenport, Iowa, 2019.

Tharcisse Seminega is an ethnic Tutsi who survived the 1994 Rwandan genocide, along with his wife and all five of his children. He is also a Jehovah’s Witness. This book is his memoir of growing up in Rwanda and surviving the genocide. The book also contains shorter memoirs by his wife and some of his children, some short pieces by some of his rescuers, a selection of documentary evidence, and a timeline of the genocide.

Born in 1940, Seminega was raised a Roman Catholic, and was training for the priesthood when he became disillusioned with the Church. He began to notice that some of his schoolmates had been sexually molested by priests (p.37). He also explains how the Church and clergy supported the early colonial division of Rwanda’s population into Hutu and Tutsi, changing a status division into an ethno-racial one (pp. 7-10). Moreover, the Church changed allegiances as it were, shortly before independence in 1959. For many years it had permitted only Tutsi to become priests and nuns, but younger European Catholic priests began to champion the Hutu cause (p.16). From supporting the Tutsi elite, it began to support the then-underdog Hutu, using racial language to accentuate the difference. Church authorities also collaborated with the Hutu-dominated government of Juvénal Habyarimana (p.48).

Seminega became a Jehovah’s Witness in 1983, joining this new Christian group which had first entered Rwanda in 1976, and which did not distinguish among its Hutu and Tutsi adherents. His wife, a former Roman Catholic nun, was afraid to convert because Witnesses were already being persecuted in Rwanda (p. xxiii), for example, because they refused to wear badges glorifying President Habyarimana (p.63).

At the same time, Seminega continued his education, eventually obtaining a doctorate in France in 1988. He returned to Rwanda to teach at the National University in Butare, as he had agreed to teach in Rwanda for at least five years in return for financial support for his studies that he had received from the government. He was well-known in Butare, and the genocidal authorities were actively looking for him. His wife was a member of the extended family of the last Tutsi King of Rwanda, Mutara III, further endangering their family.

Tharcisse Seminega and his family

The family survived the genocide in several hiding places, either together or separately. For a month they hid in a goat-pen. Their protector, Vincent, was a Hutu who was not a Witness but had studied the Bible with Witnesses. At one point two female Hutu Witnesses dressed the youngest son as a girl, taught him to modify his boyish walk, and took him through the marketplace from one hiding place to another in broad daylight (p. 117).

More than a story of survival, Seminega’s tale is one of heroic rescuers who risked their and their families’ lives to save his family. Many, but not all, of these rescuers were fellow Jehovah’s Witnesses, ethnic Hutu who could easily and safely have turned their backs on the Seminega family.

Readers will be familiar with the Judeao-Christian principles, “Love thy neighbor as thyself” and “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.” Seminega himself refers to Matthew 7:12, “All things, therefore, that you want men to do to you, you must also likewise do to them.” (p. 196). According to Seminega, though, Jehovah’s Witnesses’ guiding principle is to regard their neighbors as more than themselves. “Jesus commanded his disciples to love one another more than they loved themselves, putting others’ interests ahead of their own…and…being ready to sacrifice their lives, as Jesus had done, for one another” (p. 42; emphasis in original).

In 1994 there were about 2,500 Witnesses in Rwanda, of whom approximately 400 were killed. Those murdered included Tutsi Witnesses; Hutu Witnesses who tried to rescue Tutsi; and Hutu Witnesses who refused to participate in the genocide. Their teaching taught them not only to put others before themselves, but also not to differentiate among believers on ethno-racial grounds. 

Following Christ’s precept, “You do not belong in the world,” Jehovah’s Witnesses refuse to take part in political or military activities. Ambassadors of Christ may not take up weapons against any human being (p.56). Thus, Hutu Witnesses were impervious to calls for patriotic Hutu to take part in mass killings. But this does not mean that they sat back idly when others suffered because of politics or war; to do nothing was also against their Christian principles.

Thus, the heroes who helped the Seminega family were already conditioned to rescue others before the genocide occurred. Indeed, some Hutu Witnesses had already prepared for the genocide; one rescuer had built a tunnel to an underground room so that he would be able to hide victims when the time came. As the rescuers’ own testimonies in the book show, they put their faith in Jehovah while taking enormous risks to their own safety.

Undoubtedly, the close-knit relationships among Jehovah’s Witnesses contributed to the motivations of rescuers. All Christians are taught to love their neighbors as themselves, but few do so. In Rwanda, many Hutu Christian priests, nuns and pastors actively participated in the genocide, their ethnic hatreds easily overcoming Christians’ supposed universal love (pp. 134-142). Indeed, the only Rwandan Christian group none of whose members participated in the genocide was the Jehovah’s Witnesses (p. 142).

Not all the people who helped the Seminegas were Witnesses. Seminega’s former gardener, himself a Hutu militiaman, nevertheless protected one of Seminega’s daughters. He put his hand before her to protect her from another member of the militia, and sustained a cut himself in the process (p. 191). This was a clear, spontaneous act of altruism that could have cost him his life. Some Hutu militiamen “helped” in exchange for bribes of various sorts, or looked the other way when they saw the Seminegas escaping. Such spontaneous acts suggest that many individual Hutu were uncomfortable with the genocide, but they did not possess either the moral framework or the supportive group that enabled so many Jehovah’s Witnesses to risk—and to sacrifice--their lives.   

As of the time of writing of the book, Seminega lived with his wife and four of his children in Canada, where they had obtained landed immigrant status in 2003.