All Posts Tagged With: "religion"
Turned away from an exam for skinny jeans
“I thought he was joking,” says student
Photo by me'nthedogs on Flickr
A student at Brigham Young University’s Idaho campus was turned away from her final exam in December for wearing form-fitting “skinny jeans,” reports The Student Review campus newspaper.
Rachel Vermillion, a senior, thought the invigilator was joking when he first told her she couldn’t write the test because her pants were too tight.
But he was serious. He pointed to a sign that read NO SKINNY JEANS. The sign elaborated: “If your pants are tight enough for us to see the shape of your leg, your pants are too tight.”
A nativity scene on campus?
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.
Jewish groups call for cancellation of Muslim seminars at U of T
Would that stop hate or stifle free speech?
Photo by mrehan on Flickr
Jewish organizations are calling on the University of Toronto to cancel an 18-week seminar series led by Toronto-based Islamic scholar Abdullah Hakim Quick. They say Quick has made homophobic and antisemitic comments in the past and should not be allowed to speak on campus.
The Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center (FSWC), Hillel of Greater Toronto and other Jewish groups have expressed their concerns to U of T, reports The Canadian Jewish News.
“The unfortunate truth is that when you have speakers like this, that are divisive, it hurts communities,” says Avi Benlolo, President of the FSWC. “We hope that the unviersity will make the right decision to cancel it or put it on hold pending review,” he adds.
U of T spokesperson April Kemick told CJN that the “event is a booking by a campus group—one of hundreds that happen over the course of the year—and there is no connection to the university.”
Continue reading Jewish groups call for cancellation of Muslim seminars at U of T
So much for the ‘People of Einstein’ myth
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?
Back off my Darwin Fish
Keep the natural selection haters off campus
Photo courtesy of kiss kiss bang bang on Flickr
Many years ago, a colleague of mine showed me his Darwin Fish, a little plastic fish made to look like the Jesus Fish stick-ons that were popular at the time among Christians. Remember when Puddy had one on Seinfeld? Except that the Darwin Fish says DARWIN instead of JESUS and, wait for it, has little feet on it. Get it? The fish is evolving? Anyway, I thought it was hilarious and a few months later, he gave me one as a gift. It is in my office to this day, on top of my thermostat.
These kinds of things fade into the background, so I don’t think about my Darwin Fish on a day-to-day basis, but it came to mind today, when I read this story. It seems that a couple of biology profs at a university in Florida had their cars vandalized because they had Darwin Fish on them. The vandals tore off the Darwin Fish, scraped off pro-evolution bumper stickers, and put nails in the tires. To make sure that the message got through, they left religious messages in the form of letters for good measure.
Now, I am not so naive as to imagine that everyone accepts the basic scientific facts of biology, nor do I imagine that universities are bastions of enlightenment where things like this can’t happen. But at the same time, it would be naive to dismiss such acts as petty pranks.
For one thing, it’s a hate crime. Imagine if Muslim symbols were torn off a vandalized car and you’ll see my point. For another, the vandals targeted professors, presumably imagining that somehow the profs might see the light and give up teaching evolution — which, as you can imagine they are not.
But any action, however small, that is deliberately designed to intimidate an academic into changing his position cannot be taken lightly. So far, these two professors don’t seem cowed, but what about the next brilliant young biologist who is offered a position at the University of Florida and thinks to do a Google search? Perhaps she thinks twice about taking that job, and they hire someone less talented. And little by little, the Floridian students of the future are deprived of the education they might have received.
Meanwhile, I’m looking for a more prominent place to display my own Darwin Fish.
There’s a new Cru on Campus
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.”
Israel Studies institute at Concordia “not about the politics”
Some students oppose $5-million gift to university
Concordia photo courtesy of Foxtongue on Flickr
Concordia University made it official Wednesday that it will house the Azrieli Instiute of Israel Studies on campus.
The ethnically-diverse Montreal school has often been a flash-point between pro-Jewish and pro-Palestinian students. That makes it unsurprising that some students are opposed to the $5-million gift to start the school, which was donated by developer David Azrieli.
Self-described social justice advocate Rushdia Mehreen wrote an opinion piece for campus newspaper The Link in which she opposed the institute on the grounds that it “effectively strengthens links between the university and Israel, a state in constant breach of international law.” She noted that Professor Eric Shragge, from the school of community and public affairs, plus the feminism- and social justice-focused Simone de Beauvoir Institute also oppose the institute.
But one of the institute’s founders says that the institute “is not about the politics.” Instead, co-director and religious studies professor Norma Joseph told the Montreal Gazette that ”it’s about the study of a geographic area — its culture, its history, its economics, its diversity, even its food.”
She added that she believes institute will bring together Jewish and Muslim students, possibly preventing conflicts like the 2002 riots that caused the cancellation of a speech by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “Understanding eliminates conflict,” says Joseph.
Lex Gill, president of the Concordia Student Union, told The Gazette that the institute’s creation is supported by faculty and students alike.
The new institute comes the same week that Yale University has announced it will create a new Yale Program for the Study of Antisemitism.
That announcement followed criticism of Yale’s decision to close the Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism (YIISA) — a move that many supporters attributed to pressure from anti-Israeli groups, such as Palestinian Liberation Organization ambassador Maen Rashid Areikat, who called the YIISA’s scholars “anti-Arab extremists.”
The Azrieli Instiute of Israel Studies will be the third such project Canada. There are Israeli Studies institutes at the University of Toronto and at The University of Calgary.
Supreme Court should support Quebec religion and ethics class
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.
Why universities challenge faith
Higher education should undermine religious belief.
Conor Friedersdorf, over at The Atlantic, takes on Dennis Prager and the question of why students tend to become less religious as a result of university education. Friedersdorf rejects Prager’s suggestion that universities have some kind of coordinated secularist agenda. Instead, he suggests that it is mainly a matter of young people being away from home for the first time. Students, he writes,
leave their church, the community incentives to attend it, and the watchful eye of parents who get angry or make them feel guilty when they don’t go to services or stray in their faith. Suddenly they’re surrounded by dorm mates of different faiths or no faith at all. For many of these students, it turns out that their religious behavior was driven more by desire for community, or social and parental pressure, than by deeply held beliefs. [...] If high school graduates moved away from home to work in a restaurant or open a muffler repair shop or serve coffee in a Starbucks rather than to attend college, young people would still be falling away from religion – and many others would never take it up in the first place.
There may be something to this, but, to my mind, Fridersdorf misses the main point. Unless they cocoon themselves in a university where everyone is religious, students at a university are bound to have their religious faith challenged because of the nature of the university experience.
That meeting people of other faiths or no faith at all may lead students to question their own faith seems right, but not, I would say, for the reason that Friedersdorf thinks. To my mind, the issue is not that one no longer attends the Sunday social but that the presence of other religions has the effect of showing that one’s own faith is by no means obvious. Further, the presence of so many faiths and so many ardent adherents poses an embarrassing problem for religion in general, a problem pointed out by Bertrand Russell: people tend to adopt the religion most common in the culture or subculture in which they were raised. Only zealots can observe that people from various countries tend to subscribe to the religion of that country and observe that they themselves have the religion of their own country and still be absolutely confident that theirs is the one true faith.
But the most important factor, missed entirely by Friedersdorf, is that university education, when done well, emphasizes critical and skeptical thinking. Of course there cannot be some massive conspiracy of professors to secularize their students, but when one is repeatedly reminded that claims require evidence, that the most interesting arguments are often the most surprising, and that most of the important things we take as simply true are often a matter of energetic debate, it becomes harder and harder to accept religion, at least in its more simplistic forms. Religious claims, one comes to see, are typically way out of proportion to the evidence given to support them. Similarly, where one has always been taught that there must be a God, and that there is no way to make sense of the world without that idea, it’s eye-opening to see that there are plenty of good reasons to think there cannot possibly be a God and that life and happiness can still be understood in His absence.
In this sense, universities do have a secularist agenda. By this I don’t mean that religion is deliberately attacked by a concerted effort — after all even public secular universities teach religious studies. But religion has always done best in places and times when ignorance was encouraged if not enforced, because religious leaders have known from the beginning that too much knowledge and debate lead to dissent. And dissent is anathema to dogma.
Irredeemable
Redeemer University College, according to its published statements, promotes religion over knowledge.
Frequent readers of this blog will know that I have, in the past, taken issue with religious universities like Trinity Western and Crandall, the sort of institutions that require fundamentalist faith statements of all their faculty and seek to foster religious extremism in their students. You will also know that the CAUT has been after such universities too and has created a black list of universities that require a faith or ideological test for faculty.
Redeemer University College is the latest institution to fall under CAUT’s stern gaze, and the Redeemer case provides a good opportunity to address some of the sloppy and tentative thinking — so it appears to me — that always swirls around this issue. As always, I want to make it clear, that it is the particular kind of religion practiced at these schools that bothers me — I fully acknowledge that there are other, better ways practiced by others.
First, the claim is often made that all universities have an ideology of some kind or another, so why is a Christian university any worse than a secular university? The sloppiness here comes from an inconsistent use of the word “ideology.” In its broadest sense, whereby ideology means any kind of system of ideas, it’s true, a priori, that all universities must have an ideology. In this sense, a university that says that it promotes knowledge and critical thinking because these things serve the greater good of humanity — well they have an ideology.
But that’s surely not what CAUT means when they are concerned about an ideological test for faculty. Because in a more narrow sense, ideology often means a particular and focused set of beliefs about how the world works and how it ought to be. To be sure, individuals or groups at particular universities may have strong ideological commitments, but that is not the same as the institution as a whole requiring a specific ideological view of all faculty. I am a committed atheist, but I would not want my university to require everyone to be an atheist. Academic disciplines may require a certain level of agreement on some basic issues, but typically these are matters of fact (a biologist needs to accept evolution).
But what about, say a Women’s Studies department? To work there you would have to be a feminist, right? I would say no: a Women’s Studies prof would have to accept that the place of women in society is an important issue — but no Women’s Studies department should insist that its members agree on specific details or policies about, say, child care. Show me a department in a public university where all members, as a matter of published policy, must sign a commitment to specific values and views, and I will speak out against them, too.
But even if other universities did have their own ideologies, it would still be misleading to say such a university was ideological in the same way that Redeemer is. Apart from religious zealots, even ideologues differ. Committed socialists can disagree about almost everything and still be socialists. Feminists can, and do, disagree about key issues like abortion. These disagreements are possible because these ideologies, whatever their strengths and weaknesses, are at least grounded in the real world and their arguments can be evaluated by the normal standards of reason.
But Christianity as practiced at Redeemer (though not everywhere, I concede) is not an ideology like that. As with TWU, Redeemer’s vision of Christianity is precise, and exclusionary. According to their stated principles, God created the world, revealed His will to humanity through the Bible, and was incarnated as Christ who is the only hope for the world. This is not just a university with a Christian leaning — this is a university with a very strict program of belief that no Muslim, Jew, or atheist could ever sign in good conscience, and that even many Christians would reject. Indeed, according to Redeemer, knowledge itself is “made possible only by means of a true faith in Jesus Christ, in whom are found all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” (my emphasis). Am I the only one who sees the implication here? So extreme is this institution that it denies the validity of all the knowledge of non-Christians! I’m not making that up; it’s right there on the web site! The kind of religion espoused by Redeemer is not even ideology. It’s superstition.
And Redeemer does not just stop at belief: they also seek to control faculty conduct, a point not stressed in any story I can recall. At Redeemer, faculty members are expressly discouraged from doing too much work on Sunday. More incredibly, Redeemer promises to punish faculty who swear, are gay, who enjoy pornography, and who have sex outside of marriage. Some have had the gall to call the investigation a witch hunt, but how can an institution like this ask others to mind their own moral business while it claims to have jurisdiction over whether Professor Virile’s girlfriend is staying the night? We all know who perfected the art of witch hunting.
Still, if that’s their thing, as Redeemer President Hurbert Krygsman suggests, why not leave them to it? They are not publicly funded and their members are not members of CAUT, so why does CAUT or anyone else care? Well, setting aside that Redeemer does get some public money, I care and CAUT cares because all academics have an interest in preserving the clear use of academic terms like “university” and “degree.” These terms have fairly well understood meanings in Canada and having a “university education” or holding a “university degree” should carry a certain weight and should say certain things about one’s education.
If the aim of the institution is to prepare students to be knowledgeable, curious, critical, and capable of ongoing learning, then we are talking about a university. But if the self-proclaimed task of the institution is to “equip young men and women to serve as witnesses to Christ’s victory in the various vocations they will take up in society” and that they take advantages of ”the opportunities for evangelism that their positions may afford, [...] by testifying to the transforming power of Christ in every aspect of their professional or vocational conduct” (my emphasis), then you are not a university. You are a radical, fundamentalist indoctrination centre and you should call yourself that. Or Bible College. Whichever you prefer.
The case for AD
Even an atheist like me would rather live in the year of the Lord.
If you think professors spend their free time sitting around talking about esoteric minutiae, you’re right. At least, that’s how we spend part of our time. In fact, just the other day, while smoking cigars and drinking brandy, I had a discussion with a friend and colleague over the best way to refer to years from a historical perspective.
You will certainly know that most people in the Western world agree that we are, at time of writing, in the year 2011. You probably know that the year 2011 is calculated based on the supposed year of the birth of Christ and thus we say AD 2011. Why AD? For the Latin anno Domini, meaning “in the year of the Lord.” And, of course, you probably realize that the years before Christ are termed, not surprisingly, BC. This can cause a bit of confusion because novice students of history must take pains to remember that while AD 1600 comes after AD 1500, the reverse is true in BC, where 400 BC comes before 300 BC.
Still with me? Good. Now, what you might not know is that many scholars dislike the AD/BC terms because they speak directly to the Christian origins of the designations. In a pluralistic society like ours, they would say, we should not be reckoning years “before Christ” or “in the year of the Lord” because, after all, he’s not everybody’s Lord (or anybody’s really, but I digress). But since it would be prohibitively difficult to create a whole new system of counting the years (what would serve as our zero year?), the folks I have in mind have been using “CE” instead of “AD” and “BCE” instead of BC. “CE” stands for “Common Era” while “BCE,” not surprisingly, stands for “Before the Common Era.”
This convention has caught on, and, checking my new Chicago Manual of Style, I find that Chicago permits either system depending on a variety of factors, including “personal preference” (9.35). My new MLA Handbook lists both without expressing a preference (7.2). Undoubtedly the new terms are gaining traction, and some are confidently predicting the eventual demise of the AD/BC system altogether. But I think switching to the CE/BCE system is a mistake, and I’ll tell you why.
To begin, remember that the CE/BCE system does not actually change the way the years are calculated. It still uses the presumed birth of Christ as its reference point. So, at best, the change is a surface-level alteration meant to give the impression that there is no religious basis for the system, when, in fact, the religious basis remains firmly in place.
Second, the terms AD and BC have become so common as the names for the eras themselves that people do not directly associate the Christian origins of the terms with the things they designate. Saying that we live in AD 2011 does not make this a Christian year anymore than calling February 14th Valentine’s Day makes that a Christian holiday (even though technically it is the feast of a Christian saint). Similarly, naming a child Christopher (“bearer of Christ”) is not a particularly religious gesture — at least, not anymore. One day, if the CE crowd leaves well enough alone, the term AD will be as secular as “Saturday” (named for god Saturn) or January (named for the god Janus).
Finally, calling an era based on the birth of Christ the “Common Era” is even more offensive to non-Christians than calling it anno Domini. “Common Era” implies that the importance of Christ is acknowledged by all, when nothing could be further from the truth. At least AD and BC have the virtue of honesty.
Putting bibles in the classroom?
Ontario school board votes in favour of distributing bibles
An Ontario school board recently voted in favour of handing out Bibles to grade five students. The free Bibles, provided by The Gideons of Canada to the Waterloo Region District School Board, were only given out to those students whose parents had given their permission and, according to an article in the National Post, “…a guarantee that the Bibles were not intended for in-school use.”
However, according to the article in the Post, the board’s decision to get involved with handing out Bibles has the community “divided.”
“The distribution of these Bibles is causing division in our community and making many of our teachers uncomfortable,” said Rick Pryce, a local Lutheran minister. “This is an issue of justice and it is wrong to divide people along religious lines.”
A trustee with the board defended the board’s decision, arguing that the school even has an obligation to offer religious instruction in the classrooms.
“A public school needs to educate the whole child … It seems to me if we want to see students survive in life and make the correct decisions they have to have some knowledge of religious feeling,” said Colin Harrington. “The important message religion has to tell you is about compassion and love and caring for your neighbour and not being simply selfish to one’s desires. The programs in the schools are not cutting it. If you deny the religious experience in your education system you open the door to the demonic experience.”
-Photo courtesy of Andres Rueda
Religious educators hit a new low
Teachers at Canada’s Christian universities can prove their open-mindedness by denouncing Ontario’s anti-gay right-wing evangelists.
Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty did an about-face today on Ontario’s new sexual education guidelines. McGuinty called for a “rethink” (apparently English words like “review” or “reconsideration” are too tricky for the Premier) after parents and religious groups objected.
Let’s take parents first. McGuinty’s suggestion that parents should be more “comfortable” with the changes demonstrate precisely what has gone wrong with public education in Canada. It’s paid for by the public; it should be for the public benefit. The customers of the Ontario public education system are not the parents of students, but rather the general population. No wonder educators have become so weak-kneed about holding kids to high standards: like the children they teach, they are cowed by Mom and Dad.
Worse still is that McGuinty seems to have backtracked at least in part because religious leaders denounced the new policy. Some objections were simply foolish, like this one from Muslim education leader Suad Aimad:
We believe basically that sex education may be taught by the parents to their children. It’s not public, it’s a private matter and that’s why I don’t think [sex] should be part of education, especially at such a young age.
No sex ed at a young age and preferably not at all? Absurd. And of course sex is a public matter: did Aimad miss the debates over gay marriage? Or the debates of the age of consent? Or the polygamy debates stirred by the community in Bountiful?
Other religious extremists went beyond nonsense and moved right on to attack. Christian evangelist Charles McVety had this to say about children learning about sexual orientation:
This is so confusing to an eight-year-old … these are children in the strongest sense of the word — they’re innocent, they’re clean, they’re beautiful — and to corrupt them by imparting a question of gender identity is beyond the pale.
No, Dr McVety, what is confusing is growing up feeling one thing and being given the impression that it doesn’t exist, or worse, feeling natural urges that are condemned by men like you.
What is beyond the pale is that McVety, the president of Canada Christian College, has publicly suggested that understanding the diversity of sexual orientation is a corruption of natural innocence. Even learning about what it means to be gay will warp the beautiful little minds of Ontario children? Children must be saved from such unclean knowledge? His remarks are vicious, and they should be condemned as such. Oh, and in case you think his remarks have been taken out of context, you can read a fuller statement, in which McVety calls education on sexual diversity “evil” here.
When I criticized religious education in the past, readers came swarming to tell me that I was presenting a caricatured view of religious educators as narrow-minded. Well, here is a chance for those same readers to prove it. I am calling on all religious educators in Canada to denounce the comments of Dr McVety, to denounce his “Stop Corrupting Children” campaign, and to call for his resignation.
Do religious universities serve the public good?
If there was a God, he wouldn’t let me post this.
Some of my previous posts regarding the status of religious universities in Canada led to a very big question: do religious universities serve the public good? What follows is my attempt to answer that question. In addressing it, I will, no doubt, suggest things that may offend those of strong religious faith. While I do not apologize for such offense, I do wish to stress that my aim is not to insult or revile any individual or group; I present the arguments below because I honestly believe in them, and because I believe that matters of religious doctrine — at least when it comes to education — must be debated because they are vital matters of public interest.
To begin, then. Do religious universities serve the public good? I will argue that they do not. I contend that religious universities promote religious belief, and that religious belief is detrimental to the public good because it encourages belief in what is false and because it encourages belief without sound reason.
Most religious people mean well, of course. I have known many fine religious folk, and there have been many devout men and women whom I have admired. By the same token, I have no doubt that there is much in the way of quality education that goes on at religious universities in Canada, because taken as individuals, I am sure the students and faculty there are mostly decent people. But religion is bigger than the details. When humanity was at a loss to make sense of the universe in any other way, religion was understandable, but we have crossed a threshold, philosophical and scientific, whereby we no longer need the ancient baggage of faith in invented deities. As we face an uncertain future, we must marshal every intellectual resource we have to see as clearly as we can, and those who promote religion are holding us back.
That religious universities promote religious belief is probably not particularly controversial, and I will not spend much time on it. The mission statements of Canada’s religious universities make this clear enough. They do not aim merely to educate students about religion, but rather to lead them to a deeper conviction in their religious beliefs and attitudes.
On to the claims that are more controversial. To suggest that religion teaches that which is false will sound naive, if not absurd in the ears of some, either because they themselves have been so thoroughly immersed in religion that it has come to seem natural, or because our notions of cultural tolerance intervene. But the plausibility of a holy Savior existing today in any literal sense would seem plainly false to everyone if not for the centuries of Christian belief itself. The sheer long-standingness of Christianity has given it a glossy patina of intellectual respectability, so that its claims are difficult to view objectively.
But if you had a difficult problem and asked a friend how she handles her difficulties, you would be taken aback if that friend replied, “Well, I believe that there is a magical carpenter who lives in the sky and communicates with me telepathically. When I am confused I send my brainwaves out through space where the magic carpenter picks them up and beams messages back to me. Then I do what the carpenter tells me.” Indeed, if your friend said that, you would quite likely think she had gone off her medication — or badly needed to be on some. But suppose she said the following instead: “Well, I believe that Jesus is in Heaven and He answers prayers. When I am confused, I pray to Jesus and He answers me. Then I try to follow His will.” In that case, you might find your friend’s piety surprising, but, if you are like most people, you wouldn’t see the claims as crazy. But of course, the two utterances are effectively the same. Magic telepathic carpenter in the sky sounds nutty but is inherently no nuttier than Jesus, the son of God in Heaven. It’s just that the latter has centuries of indoctrination and tradition behind it and the former does not. If I told you I saw a man turn water into Coca Cola you would laugh in my face; never mind if I told you I was going to find a man who could bring my dead brother back to life. But because similar stories are in the Bible, we accept them as, well, gospel.
Let me put it another way. Imagine three scholars were proposing to start new universities in Canada this year with mission statements that included the following:
Canadian Olympian University is an innovative university dedicated to the fearsome Gods of Olympus, rooted in the classical faith tradition, moved and transformed by the life and teachings of the epic poet Homer. Through teaching, research and service COU inspires and equips women and men for lives of service, leadership and reconciliation in Zeus, Apollo, Aphrodite and their followers.
As a polytheistic community, Atlantic Egyptian University upholds pagan standards of behavior to which faculty and staff are required to conform. These standards derive not only from ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphics, but also from the culture of the Pharaohs, the priesthood and their slaves.
The mission of Canadian Mesopotamian University, as an arm of Taimat and Abzu, is to develop sky-respecting leaders: positive, goal-oriented university graduates with minds dedicated to Enlil, god of storms; growing disciples of Nin-Khursag, the earth goddess,who glorify Enki, water god and patron of wisdom.
These all sound silly, of course, and we would all think twice before hiring a graduate from any of these schools to teach our children or treat our diseases. But they are all real statements from Canadian religious universities (Canadian Mennonite, Atlantic Baptist/Crandall, and Trinity Western) with the Christian references removed and other real, if ancient, religions put in their place.
But no one believes in those ancient gods any more, so what is the point? Well, that is precisely the point. A thunderbolt-hurling Zeus is no more plausible than a Sodom-smiting God. Apollo the Sun is no less credible than Jesus the Son. It’s just that Zeus and Apollo no longer have a broad social endorsement. As my fellow humanists are fond of saying, all religious people are all atheists who make one exception.
Still, isn’t it possible that all the other ancient religions are wrong, and Christianity (or perhaps Islam) is correct? Couldn’t there still be an all-powerful, loving God watching over us? No. Why not? Because there is no sensible way to explain the horrors and suffering of history and the present in a universe ruled over by a just, powerful, and loving God. My detractors have accused me of not knowing any theology, but I have studied enough theology to know about the Problem of Evil, and to know that all the suggested answers are insufficient. We might say that good is only possible if there is evil, but that is dubious (surely the possibility of evil is enough), and that doesn’t account for so much evil. We might say evil is necessary because of man’s free will, but no just ruler allows his subjects the freedom to commit murder, let alone genocide, let alone to do it repeatedly. In any case, what of the suffering of animals? We might fall back and say that we cannot know the mind of God or his ways, but that means that God might very well simply be evil (but then we can’t explain why there is so much good).
Think like me
When should professors bring their own views into class?
A few years ago, a student of mine began a sentence with, “I don’t know what your religious views are, but…”. I can’t recall what the rest of the sentence was (I listened then, I just don’t remember now), but she went on and I wasn’t obligated to answer the implied question about my own religious views after all. But I thought about it for a while after that and wondered how open I, a vigorous atheist, ought to be about my religious views in class. It’s not always a pressing concern — I don’t teach religion — but religious questions often come up in literature — which is what I do teach — and, in any case, students occasionally ask.
This question came back to me during the explosive debate on these pages over the place of the religious university in Canada and all that that implies. Without going over that debate again — clearly we’ve covered that in enough detail — the larger question remains: when and how should a professor bring his own views into the classroom?
To begin, I think most scholars would agree that every intellectual must, by definition, have strong views on some subjects. And no expert worthy of that word could fail to hold strong convictions about issues in his own field. If I don’t have strong opinions on how to read Hamlet, or the extent to which intention is relevant to meaning, or the value of placing a play in its historical context — well, then I’m not really doing my job. Further, I think most professors would agree that it is perfectly responsible to make those positions known in a lecture of class discussion. If I have an interesting and well-supported argument for how to think about the language of Romeo and Juliet, I would be remiss if I did not share it with my class.
But now things start to get complicated. When does sharing a position verge over into trying to convince students of my position? In my own classroom, I try to give a variety of points of view, and make them as convincingly as possible, before letting students know what my own view is. Ideally, students shouldn’t be able to tell what my position is until I tip my hand, since I’ve made the case for each side so well. And if I’ve done it right, students should be able to make up their own mind, whether it accords with my personal view or not. I experienced an even better version of this multi-faceted approach when I had the pleasure of team teaching a course with a colleague: students were presented with, and could judge between, genuine debate from professors with competing perspectives.
So far, so good. Still, there are some positions where I do not feel that an equally convincing account of competing positions is honestly possible or even academically desirable. In my Shakespeare class, for instance, I usually spend a day on the so-called authorship debate, mainly so that students understand why it is that scholars agree that Shakespeare was Shakespeare despite the claims of enthusiastic amateurs to the contrary. I imagine that biologists might treat creationism the same way — if they touch on it at all.
Still, these are largely matters of fact. When broader questions like social justice come into play, the issues become even more vexing. A colleague of mine once complained to me that she had two men in her women’s studies classes who questioned the most basic assumptions of the course. It was hard to teach the class, she explained, if the students were not willing to accept at least a few basic premises about the oppression of women as historical and contemporary reality. But this raises troubling questions regarding where lines can and must be drawn. Certainly all disciplines have certain basic assumptions. My own discipline assumes that language is capable of generating some kinds of meaning (though what that means is up for grabs); science disciplines assume that empirical observation, rightly analyzed, can give us at least some information about the state of the real world. Philosophers assume that contradictions cannot be true, and theologians assume that there is a God, in at least some useful sense of the word. But are all these assumptions equally valid? What about a cultural studies professor who assumes that all culture is based on economic inequity, or a literary theory prof who takes for granted Foucault’s suggestion that all knowledge itself is a form of oppression?
In addition to assumptions about the nature of disciplines and sub-disciplines come assumptions about what the function of those same fields. What, precisely, are we trying to do to our students? Help them become better in some sense, to be sure. Better informed, more critical, more thoughtful. But what else? More compassionate? More skeptical? More tolerant? What happens when skepticism conflicts with tolerance?
I once had a student who, for a creative writing assignment, turned in a poem that ridiculed fat people as greedy, stupid, and, if they had kids, bad parents. Being rather on the wrong side of slim myself, I had a difficult time knowing how to respond to the assignment. Intellectually, I felt right in finding fault with the poem for the simplistic treatment of its theme. But at the same time, I wondered whether I would have reacted the same way if I were slimmer and fitter.
In reality, every professor will have to make these judgements in the particular moment depending on circumstances. But what will prevent students from getting an education limited to only certain points-of-view and presented from certain angles? I would say that this is precisely where the universality of the university comes in. Not that any university can provide every perspective, but that all universities must strive to present a range of perspectives and require students to study a range of courses. Similarly, students seeking the best possible education should make a point of seeking out professors with differing views and approaches, or at the very least avoid deliberately taking courses from those few profs they like and agree with.
How are you to know what your professors’ deeply held convictions? Start by asking.
Students celebrate Ramadan in food-obsessed culture
Students tell us what it’s like to fast from sunrise to sunset for one month
In a Muslim country, celebrating Ramadan is relatively simple: Most people are fasting from sunrise to sunset.
But in the U.S., most people are eating, and enticing food commercials, an overabundance of restaurants and watching others eat can make celebrating the holiday more challenging.
How do Muslims deal with the cravings, the puzzling looks and the “Are you on a diet?” questions?
The Associated Press interviewed several university students about Ramadan, which begins around Aug. 21, according to Muslim scholars, and runs for 30 days. (Ramadan is set by sightings of the moon.)
Here are their stories, edited from their own words:
NAME: Saba Shahid, 17, of Naugatuck, Conn., an incoming freshman at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Conn.
HER STORY: I can remember when I was younger, both me and my brother would pretend that we were fasting. We would go up to our parents and say, “We’re not going to eat. We’re fasting too.”
Our parents never had to force us to do it. We were brought up with Muslim customs and traditions from a very young age.
I’m pretty sure the first time I did it the correct way I was in fourth or fifth grade.
I went to a Catholic high school and everyone was supportive. I had non-Muslim friends fast with me. Sometimes I would go to the cafeteria, and other days I would go to the library at lunchtime.
There’s been days in the morning where I have been so busy I just had a glass of water. But I’m not going to lie. There are some days I can’t wait until sunset so I can eat.
At the end we have Eid (Eid al-Fitr). Everyone gets all done up and stuff. We go have community prayer and then break fast together. We’ll come back home and we’ll get presents and go to neighbours’ houses. It’s kind of like our Christmas.
NAME: Abdullah Shamari, 19, of Pomona, Calif., a rising sophomore at University of California, San Diego
HIS STORY: A lot of kids are really excited to fast. I can remember when I was six or seven, I would fast at school and then break my fast when I came home.
Now you see six-or seven-year-olds fasting all day. Their parents tell them they don’t have to, but the kids want to.
I was about 11 when I started fasting the entire day. As you grow up, you realize the significance.
There’s more to it than fasting or abstaining from food. It’s more of a moral fast. You’re bettering yourself in all aspects.
The first day and you haven’t fasted for a whole year, you’re going to get hungry. You’re going to have a headache. But generally no, you don’t get hungry.
UBC student sues over alleged religious discrimination
Lawyer admits that plaintiff had not regularly attended church for awhile
According to Xtra West, a University of British Columbia student is appealing a decision by a BC Supreme Court judge to dismiss her suit of religious discrimination against the school.
Cynthia Maughan, now 49, first sued the school November 2002 after she received a B-minus in a literature class.
Among other claims, Maughan says she missed out on at least one opportunity to further her understanding of course material because the instructor decided, along with the rest of the class, to hold an extra seminar on a Sunday. Maughan objected, saying that Sunday is her sabbath.
Maughan identifies as Anglican, and sued the university for allegedly discriminating against her as a Christian and subjecting her to hatred and contempt, naming four UBC teachers in the suit.
Her lawyer later admitted to reporters that Maughan had not regularly attended church in some time. She is seeking $18 million in damages.
Will studying science make you secular?
Education, business students became more religious during university, study finds
A new study released by the U.S. National Bureau of Economic Research is shedding some light on the relationship between the religiosity of students and how it interacts with their higher education.
Religious high school students, meaning those who attend religious services or view religion as being important in their lives, were overall more likely to attend university. That group of students may be under pressure from fellow churchgoers to pursue higher education, something the four University of Michigan researchers who conducted the study called “nagging theory.”
Additionally, studying humanities or social sciences had a negative effect on the religious beliefs of students, while education and business students showed an increase in religiosity during their university years.
For students majoring in biological or physical sciences, their religious attendance was not affected by their program of study. However, studying physical sciences did have a negative impact on how those students viewed religion’s importance in their lives.
For study abstract, or to order a copy, click here.
The right to be an exceptional Canadian
Should religious freedom trump Canadian law?
No.
Ahem. Some context:
The Hutterites are a Christian sect who live by a strict code based on the Ten Commandments and the teachings of Jesus Christ. The group fled persecution in Russia in the early 20th century and some immigrated to Canada, settling in farming communities of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba.
Some Hutterians believe that to willingly have their photograph taken violates the second of the Ten Commandments, which forbids idolatry and graven images. It is on this belief that the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) was forced to rule just days ago.
In 1974, the Alberta government began issuing photo driver’s licenses. Special licenses were available for those with religious objections until 2003 when the Alberta government began requiring photos for all licenses. The change was made as a measure to protect against identity theft. The Hutterites won cases before the Alberta Court and the Alberta Court of Appeal, but the SCC ruled 4-3 on July 24 to uphold Alberta’s provincial rules. As it stands, all Alberta driver’s licenses must have a photo.
Now, back to the overarching question. Admittedly, the fact that this particular religious debate is so inexhaustible makes me think the hastiness of my initial “no” was a bit brash. I’m not suggesting we adopt the American melting pot, and I don’t support religious stifling in the name of conformity. If, for example, identity theft concerns would not be properly quelled by license photos—as lawyers for the Hutterites contend—I would see no reason to force religious objectors to have their pictures taken. But laws exist for a reason (yawn), which is (in theory) to promote the greater good. (Yes, I know what happened during the Dreyfus affair, yes I understand the concept of “scapegoating the innocent” and no, I don’t think this was a show trial.)
These debates seem to arise precisely when the authority of Canadian law is called into question. I’m not talking about whether or not new Canadians should paint flags on their faces on July 1st, I’m talking about whether citizens should be forced to uncover their faces while voting. (See Harper’s abandoned plan.) And frankly, I’m not sure. I don’t know enough about identity theft and voter integrity to authoritatively conclude. But I do think we should stop running scared when the issue sparks a little dissent. (Again, see Harper’s abandoned plan.)
I also think us feeble sideline commoners should take some perspective. In my opinion, the question should not be “What right does the government have to interfere with religious belief?” but, “Why is the government interfering with religious belief?” If the answer is a valid one (and to some, it will never be) maybe we should put our tissues away.
The great thing about Canada (yawn) is that we have choices. If you really don’t want your picture taken, hitch a ride. (Yes, I know, “but driving is a right” and “we should strive to accommodate” and other like claims…) If you don’t like the education system, send your child to private school. Eat fish on Friday, if you want, and only watch satellite television. Believe what you will about life and death and holy texts and pray to whomever or whatever you wish—as long as you stick to the law. If you can’t, it’s on you to find a way to make it work, not the government. In Canada, we live by Canadian law. If you don’t like it, find a way to live with it. Because if I step into your mosque, I’m going to take off my shoes.
For more, see CBC News Indepth, the Toronto Star and the National Post.
robynoncampus@gmail.com
Scholar’s son pleads not guilty to stealing identities
Son of Dead Sea Scrolls academic is accused of using Internet aliases to trash his father’s rivals
New York City lawyer Raphael Golb has pleaded not guilty to stealing identities and using them to try to discredit his father’s academic rivals on the Internet, according to a report by the Associated Press.
Golb is the son of controversial Dead Sea scrolls scholar Norman Golb at the University of Chicago, who, against common historical thought, contends the scrolls were written by Jewish scholars in Jerusalem. For more on the back story from The Chronicle, click here.
According to Manhattan’s district attorney, “Golb engaged in a systematic scheme on the Internet, using dozens of Internet aliases, in order to influence and affect debate on the Dead Sea Scrolls.”
Defence lawyer Martin Garbus says the case is about free speech and that no crime was committed.
Judge Carol Berkman has set bond at $15,000 and ordered the 49-year-old to surrender his passport.
