All Posts Tagged With: "religion"

What students are talking about today (March 22nd)

A 2012 Quebec protest (Alexis Gravel/Flickr)

1. Chris Bangs, front-runner for president of the Students’ Society of McGill University, has been accused by student journalist Ameya Pendse of the Bull & Bear newspaper of refusing to answer questions about about the time he allegedly forced his way into a lecture banging on drums and shouting slogans at those who went to classes during the so-called student strike. The incident was caught on video. Pendse says he posted this query twice on Bangs’ Facebook page: “When you decided to go into that room and disrupt the class, after the strike failed, do you think that you went against a student’s individual choice and right to go to class?  Don’t you feel like you disrespected the students’ choice and opinion concerning the strike?” It’s not exactly as balanced question, but it’s one that Bangs apparently deleted twice. In a Reddit “Ask Me Anything,” question and answer session, he again dodged it. He also failed to give a comment to The Political Bouillon student journal. Why no answer?

2. Also at McGill, a student writing in the online magazine Leacocks says that, looking back, she shouldn’t have complained about her residence room in Montreal or the unimpressive flat she rented on exchange in Ireland. “What I’ve failed to appreciate is that even living in a flat on a street where every sidewalk slab boasts the blot of an ostensible Rorschach test from the stains of dried urine, I didn’t live on those streets. I lived in an apartment—a secure, cockroach-free one at that, with a kindly landlord, and situated in a cool foreign locale where I’d jetted for the year to study (kick around, travel, get into dark beer, etc, etc). And my parents paid the rent,” writes Kristen Pye. I’m not sure if we should love her or hate her for only realizing this now, but she certainly has a point.

Continue reading Chris Bangs, privileged McGill girl & McMaster prayers

What students are talking about today (January 30th)

Quebec tuition opponents (Alexis Gravel/Flickr)

1. Almost a year after the start of anti-tuition marches that shut down many Quebec university programs and later toppled the Jean Charest government, the new Parti Quebecois government says zero tuition is not currently feasible, surely disappointing many of the activists who got the PQ elected. Meanwhile, François Legault, leader of the Coalition Avenir Québec, is trying to make the anti-tuition supporters heads explode by proposing a two-tier system of tuition in which the provinces “top four” universities—Montreal, McGill, Laval and Sherbrooke—would set their own tuition fees, while the remaining 14 would become much more affordable teaching-focused universities. The idea of two-tier education with research and teaching universities isn’t new and it isn’t very popular in Canada, but there’s a reason it never goes away—it could potentially work. Read more on Legault’s plan here.

Continue reading Two-tier tuition, massage ad at Memorial & prayer spaces

Prof. Pettigrew on why he was wrong

Michael Caven/Flickr

Religion is a sensitive topic for many, so discussion of it in the university classroom can be difficult. In my case, religion often comes up in literature classes and I do my best to not impose too much of my own views, lest the discussion turn too much to the religious questions per se and not enough on the literary questions. As I point out to my students, it doesn’t matter what you believe about God, but it does matter what Milton thought about God—at least when you’re reading Milton.

When your class material is religion itself though, things must become muddier. And I’ve heard many stories from colleagues over the years about awkward moments when religious students vigorously advanced their views against evolution or the Big Bang or could not be persuaded to entertain different point of view because “that’s just not what I believe.”

Continue reading Florida professor called religious students “bigots”

Fundraising underway

From The Muslim Chaplaincy

Students at the University of Toronto have set a goal of raising $70,000 by September to fund a year-long contract for the first-ever full-time Muslim chaplain on a Canadian campus.

In a slick video on the campaign website various young people make the case for donations. “I had to sit in class and listen to my professor tell me Islam degrades women,” says one young woman. “In my field, relationships are built at the bar. What am I supposed to do about that?,” says a young man. “There’s something about mosques that makes me uncomfortable,” says another man.

Muslim Chaplains provide spiritual guidance at dozens of universities in the United States. Unlike Imams, chaplains may be women. The chaplain’s role includes spiritual guidance for students and interfaith work too.

Continue reading Toronto may get Canada’s first Muslim campus chaplain

Policy effectively bars GLBTQ staff

Seth Crowell, vice-president of Crandall University, told CBC News that the Moncton, N.B. institution has the right to effectively bar GLBTQ people from working there despite public funding.

Crandall, a Christian university, has a “Moral Code” that requires staff to be “be sexually pure, reserving sexual intimacy for within a traditional marriage between one man and one woman.”

Crowell told CBC that a 1983 act of the legislature gave what was then Atlantic Baptist College the right to grant degrees with “a viewpoint that is Christian.” Since 1996, Crandall has received about $24 million in funding from all levels of government, according to Global News.

Some people in B.C. have their panties in a twist

I would guess that the vast majority of Canadian Muslims, thoughtful, tolerant, law-abiding citizens, must really hate it when their fellow Muslims go crazy over the barest of perceived slights.

If my guess is right, there must be a lot of sighing going after news broke yesterday that a brou-ha-ha had erupted at Thompson Rivers University over a photo of a woman wearing a niqab and abaya (garments sometimes worn by some Muslim women that cover almost the entire body) while looking at a bra.

Click here to see the original photo.

Continue reading Muslim’s big bra photo spurs oversized outrage

A simple solution for the Christmas controversy blues

Photo by kevin dooley on Flickr

Last year around this time I was startled to notice a small nativity scene set up in our university cafeteria. I considered making a formal complaint to the effect that at a public university such overtly religious symbols should be avoided. But it was only a little one, and even my great and growing peevishness has its limits.

Still, it’s easy to see why Christmas poses such a problem for educational institutions. On one hand, it is a venerable annual tradition for millions, with a seemingly endless store of symbols and songs to draw upon. On the other hand, for many, it is among the holiest days of the year, and one still hears a phrase like “the true meaning of Christmas” where “true meaning” is meant to suggest the religious meaning.

And so it is no surprise that controversy and indignation has become one of our new favourite holiday traditions.

Continue reading A nativity scene on campus?

A student makes Jews look bad. But that’s a good thing.

Photo by wokka on Flickr

By Emma Teitel. Republished from Macleans.ca.

There’s an inside Yiddish expression used by Jews to describe other Jews behaving badly in the public sphere: “shanda for the goyim” — shanda meaning “shame” and goyim denoting “gentiles” (non-Jews). The phrase is most commonly employed by Semitic seniors, when the modern media informs them that Jews can in fact be lechers (Dominique Strauss-Kahn), alcoholics (Amy Winehouse); unsuspecting nudes (Scarlett Johansson); and now, thanks to one 22-year-old Toronto Jewish girl, dangerously obtuse.

The woman in question—with whom I share at least one mutual Facebook friend (I am also a 22-year-old Jewish girl and it’s very possible we crossed paths, maybe at B’nai Brith summer camp, or perhaps in the annual United Synagogue Youth Limousine Sukka Hop)—is a York University senior named Sarah Grunfeld, who last week made shanda-esque headlines when she put her social science professor’s career in jeopardy over an anti-Semitic remark that turned out to be—well—not. The statement “All Jews should be sterilized,” Professor Cameron Johnston explained in the introductory lecture to his class, was an example of an invalid and dangerous opinion; his point was that in academia especially, opinions must be reasonably qualified. Grunfeld failed to catch that qualifier, though, perhaps because before the prof had a chance to offer it, she had stormed out of class and enlisted the on-campus Israel-advocacy group, Hasbara (Hebrew for “Explanation”), to call for his immediate resignation.

Word of Johnston’s so-called racism exploded virally online by way of what National Post columnist Jonathan Kay has dubbed the “Bubbie-net” (Jewish grandparents frantically emailing their kin with fresh findings of alleged anti-Semitism); at the same time widely-respected Canadian Jewish civil rights association, B’nai Brith (Children of the Covenant), leaped in with equal gusto to champion Grunfeld’s claim. Then came the big reveal: Ms. Grunfeld had made a mistake. Not only was professor Johnston not an anti-Semite, he was a Jew. To borrow a more accessible Yiddish phrase, political correctness at York University had effectively schtupped itself. Not to mention Sarah Grunfeld.

The maligned university student has since “qualified” her accusations against Johnston with claims twice as ludicrous as the original. “The words, ‘Jews should be sterilized’,” she told the Toronto Star recently, “still came out of his mouth, so regardless of the context I still think that’s pretty serious.”

A lot of Canadian Jews are embarrassed and ashamed by this kind of doublespeak, and so was I, until I re-examined the root of my disquiet. There’s a reason why this particular shanda—and not, let’s say, Woody Allen’s marriage to his adopted daughter, or Garth Drabinsky’s defrauding of his shareholders, or The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart’s changing his name from John Stewart Liebowitz—ignites such fierce indignation in the Jewish community: Because Grunfeld doesn’t simply make us look bad (like the guys above); she makes us look stupid, and in doing so debunks the cultural stereotypes of intellectual superiority that we sometimes not-so-secretly enjoy.

Jewish American author Michael Chabon explored the seductiveness of this stereotype to Jews themselves in the New York Times last year in considering the calibre of the discussion following Israel’s botched raid of the Gaza bound Turkish flotilla, Mavi Marmara, in which nine activists died at the hands of Jewish soldiers (a debacle Diaspora Jews had trouble reconciling with our supposed “cultural” cleverness):

“I would look around the Passover table, say, at the members of my family, and remark on the presence of a number of highly intelligent, quick-witted, shrewd, well-educated people filled to bursting with information, explanations and opinions on a diverse range of topics. In my tractable and vainglorious eagerness to confirm the People of Einstein theory, my gaze would skip right over—God love them—any counterexamples present at that year’s Seder.”

Sarah Grunfeld—God love her—is one such counterexample. But we’d be wrong to let our gaze skip right over her, because there’s another, more disturbing lesson to be drawn from the Grunfeld affair and it’s this: as Jews, we hold the moral high ground to call out anti-Semitism. That’s why, in part, Grunfeld’s accusation had the legs it did, and why, perhaps, it got the backing from the Jewish infrastructure organizations such as B’nai Brith, which still hasn’t distanced itself from Grunfeld or denounced her fallacious claim, but has instead published her unapologetic letter blasting Professor Johnston for a sin he didn’t commit, with a logic even more addled than before. And there lies the biggest shanda of all: Grunfeld’s false allegations and the group’s uninformed decision to support her are bad mistakes, but both parties’ inability to own up to those mistakes renders them inexcusable. Because when we cry wolf —especially on one of our own—serious apologies are in order.

But it’s doubtful that apologies of any kind will be made, and B’nai Brith will continue sniffing out anti-Semitism where there may not be any, all the while undermining cases where there is. If anything good does come from this debacle, however, it’s that our enemies and unsolicited friends (Glenn Beck comes to mind) may think twice before attributing all things grave and glorious to the “People of Einstein.” Because if public representatives of the Jewish faith continue to make exceedingly stupid mistakes, then the various calumnies the conspiracy theorists like to heap on all of us—the blood libel, the plague, AIDS, the Iraq War, and our obvious plans to take over everything from Saturday night TV to the World Bank—start to ring kind of hollow. After all, with Sarah Grunfeld leading the way, for what exactly can they blame us?

Actually, it’s the same old Campus Crusade for Christ

Photo courtesy of grendelkhan on Flickr

Campus Crusade for Christ, an international evangelical student ministry with 25,000 members, is changing its name. As of 2012, it will be called Cru, which is presumably short for Crusade.

“We believe this new name will position us to connect better with the next generation,” Vonette Bright, who co-founded Campus Crusade for Christ with her husband in 1951, explained in a press release. “We want to remove any obstacle to people hearing about the most important person who ever lived – Jesus Christ.”

In Canada, Campus Crusade for Christ recently dropped the word “crusade” from it’s name, calling itself “Campus for Christ” instead.

There are chapters at 29 Canadian schools. On the ministry’s website it warns members that, “[in Canada] the terms ‘born-again’ and ‘evangelical’ tend to carry negative weight.”

There’s nothing wrong with teaching basic facts about diversity to children

The Supreme Court of Canada heard arguments on Wednesday about whether the parents of school children in Quebec should have the right to pull their kids out of mandatory classes, if they disagree with the content.

At issue is the province’s “Ethics and Religious Culture” course, which is taught at both the elementary and secondary levels. The course is intended to help children “develop an awareness” of the growing diversity in Quebec society.

According to the course curriculum, “students will be encouraged to engage in critical reflection on ethical questions and to understand the phenomenon of religion by practising, in a spirit of openness, dialogue that is oriented toward contributing to community life.”

But some parents don’t like it.

One Catholic couple, who cannot be identified because of a publication ban, sued to have their children exempted from the class. The Quebec Superior Court rejected their arguments and the Court of Appeals dismissed their appeal of that decision. They’re now challenging the Court of Appeals’ decision at the Supreme Court.

According to the Supreme Court’s case summary, the parents have a problem with the course because of the “disruption caused by forced, premature contact with a series of beliefs that were mostly incompatible with those of the family, as well as the adverse effect on the religious faith of the members of this family.”

Yes, that’s right, these parents don’t want their children to know that some members of our society have different beliefs than they do.

But most Quebecers no longer live in parochial ghettos, most likely the children in question have already encountered children from different backgrounds, who are being raised in different religious traditions, either in the classroom or on the playground.

There’s no problem with parents teaching their children their religious views. There’s also nothing stopping religious schools from teaching explicitly faith-based classes.

But at the same time, I see no problem with the state insisting that schools teach that most basic of Canadian values: that in our society all of us are considered equal.

As Supreme Court Justice Louis LeBel put it, “Is there anything wrong with trying to teach open mindedness to students, to make that a behaviour or an attitude?

In Canada, there shouldn’t be.

The parents’ lawyers have claimed that the course will destroy pluralism in Quebec. I’m not quite sure how teaching children that pluralism exists in a diverse society will lead to that outcome.

Part of the problem is that there seems to be a lot of misinformation going around about what the course actually teaches and some of it seems to be rather deliberate.

National Post columnist, Barbara Kay claims that children will be taught that “that Christianity and pagan Animism and tinfoil-hat science fiction are equally true and equally conducive to a life of morality and spiritual vigour.”

But that’s not what the curriculum says. In fact, the course gives prominence to Christian traditions because of the “historical and cultural importance of Catholicism and Protestantism.” It also focuses on Judaism and Aboriginal spiritual traditions because of their long histories in Quebec. The only other religions mentioned by uname in the curriculum are Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism and Orthodox Christianity, though there is some time set aside for “other religions” and “other forms of expression.”

What worries me most is the precedent that a victory by these parents could set. What comes next? Will parents be able to pull their children out of science classes because they don’t want them exposed to the theory of evolution? What if a parent doesn’t like what’s taught in a history class?

Canada is a diverse society and there’s nothing wrong with teaching basic facts about the people who live in this country to children.