October 26, 2016, CIJA
Toronto, ON – Today, Canada’s university presidents voted to adopt a new set of mandatory criteria for member universities at a meeting of Universities Canada, which serves as the voice of 97 Canadian institutions of higher education. The new policy stipulates that “place of origin” must be included in university codes of conduct alongside other protected grounds, such as race, religion, gender, and physical and mental ability.
“We wholeheartedly commend Universities Canada and its membership for this ground-breaking decision,” said Judy Zelikovitz, Vice President of University and Local Partner Services at the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA). “The new criteria ensure that, by the end of the decade, all of Canada’s major universities will have codes of conduct banning discrimination based on national origin.”
“This represents a crucial defeat for boycott-divestment-sanctions (BDS) activists, who openly call for discrimination against Israelis based on their country of origin,” Zelikovitz added. “Canada’s top academics are committed to building global partnerships, including with Israel’s world-class universities and scholars. This vote by Canada’s universities entrenches a zero-tolerance approach to bigotry based on nationality, and CIJA will be working hard to ensure that this policy is used to block BDS efforts.”
CIJA has had a long-standing, constructive relationship with Universities Canada. During a 2013 mission to Israel co-hosted by CIJA, Universities Canada signed a bilateral agreement with its Israeli counterpart to strengthen partnerships between universities in the two countries. For the past several months, CIJA has worked directly with the leadership of Universities Canada to ensure passage of the new membership criteria banning discrimination on the basis of national origin.
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To read more about the recent vote, please click here.
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Holocaust Remembrance Day 2023
In their research on listening to survivors of the Holocaust and other genocides, Bronwen E. Low and Emmanuelle Sonntag note listeners’ problematic tendencies towards one of two responses. On the one hand, they can regard the narratives as so unfamiliar and foreign that they must be pushed away as overwhelming, untouchable, and inaccessible. On the other, the stories can be seen as familiar, to the point that the listener cannot separate their own experiences and emotional response from what they take in.
But another, preferable response exists: Roger I. Simon and Claudia Eppert talk about a “chain of testimony” and suggest that listening imposes a duty on the listener. Listening to personal testimony at the crossroads of memory and history “imposes particular obligations on those called to receive it – obligations imbued with the exigencies of justice, compassion, and hope that define the horizon for a world yet to be realized.” In this way, bearing witness and listening to testimony demands a number of actions and responses, including that we “transport and translate stories of past injustices beyond their moment of telling by taking these stories to another time and space where they become available to be heard or seen.”
If we take Simon and Eppert’s charge seriously, as I believe we should, those of us who have been privileged to hear the direct testimony of survivors of the Holocaust. Their words come not just with the specific knowledge they impart or the emotional impact they have on us – sorrow, anger, fear, horror – but with a duty, an obligation of some kind.
On many of our campuses, this week is Holocaust Education Week, and this Friday marks International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Given the significant number of Holocaust survivors and their descendants in Canada, the scheduled events and programs have a personal resonance for many of our students and their families, but their impact can be deep and meaningful for all of us, regardless of who we are and where we come from. I encourage each of you to make time to participate in this week’s activities and to consider your place in the chain of testimony: what obligation does listening to narratives from the Holocaust place on you, and how do you carry those stories forward in time?
