UofT administration continues to protect Muslims and increasingly abuse academic freedom

Submitted by John Furedy (Australia), Jun 19, 2006 at 00:53

This more recent abuse of student academic power (as detailed in the "Culture of Comfort" opinion piece of April 10: http://www.news.utoronto.ca/bin6/thoughts/060410-2195.asp) included persuading UofT police to make people who posted flyers in favor of publishing the Danish cartoons "persons of interest", when the admiinistration was advised that the Canada's velvet totalitarian hate laws could not be used against them.

To this date no one in the administration or any other member of this university's academic community has responded to this opinion piece so that, presumably, these individuals who caused such offence to the Muslim academic community continue to be "persons of interest". I regret to say that in terms of not only not actively abusing academic freedom, but indeed proactively protecting it, the new president is significantly inferior to the previous interim president (Iacabouci) and his predecessor (Birgeneau). In this regard it is important to recognize that the statement itself issued by the President was one made to the Governing Council, and hence is likely to set a new precedent in the move of this university toward a sort of adult daycare instition where comfort (especially of Muslim organizations) is the criterion of what can be thought and said.

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