U of O Watch mission, in the words of Foucault...

"One knows … that the university and in a general way, all teaching systems, which appear simply to disseminate knowledge, are made to maintain a certain social class in power; and to exclude the instruments of power of another social class. … It seems to me that the real political task in a society such as ours is to criticise the workings of institutions, which appear to be both neutral and independent; to criticise and attack them in such a manner that the political violence which has always exercised itself obscurely through them will be unmasked, so that one can fight against them." -- Foucault, debating Chomsky, 1971.

U of O Watch mission, in the words of Socrates...

"An education obtained with money is worse than no education at all." -- Socrates

video of president allan rock at work

Sunday, January 29, 2012

Canadian university presidents concerned about human rights choose their battles


At a time when Israel, backed by the US and Canada's power elite, is calling for all-out war to destroy Iran; even having a US Zionist pundit call-out in the media for US president Obama to be assassinated by Israel if he won’t attack Iran (Globe and Mail LINK)...

At a time when a major regional war is threatened to satisfy Israeli regime ambitions...

What better time for two university presidents, two champions of Canadian-government-sanctioned human rights advocacy, Allan Rock and Lloyd Axworthy, to point out (LINK, LINK) Iran's human rights violations against Iranian Baha'i educators who had their University of Ottawa degrees stripped from them by the Iranian government?

It is heartening to see these men of principle call out for the protection of human rights irrespective of the political circumstances.

In their own words: "Those who support human rights, who believe in access to education and who deplore repressive governments are increasingly speaking out ..."

Does this mean that we can soon expect our two academic champions of human rights to jointly and publicly denounce the lack of access to higher education for the occupied Palestinians of Gaza, mainly due to Israel bombing the schools, hospitals, and public health infrastructure...?

I hope so. But somehow I fear this will not occur soon.

[Note: This author does not minimize the human rights abuses of Iran or of any state, Canada included. But it seems to this author that influential citizens should be first concerned with the human rights abuses of their own nation and nation's allies, since that is where these concerned actors have the greatest potential influence and responsibility.]

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