Where there is no police, every man is a warrior, and every group is a regiment. Carrying out ethnographic field research as a cultural anthropologist, I lived for two years in Baluchistan, a cultural region in southeastern Iran, western Pakistan, and southern...
How do societies and cultures end? What causes the death of societies and cultures? It is not always the obvious threats. Today we are struggling with the coronavirus which has unfortunately sickened many and killed some Americans. The deaths are tragic, but so are...
Half a century ago, our colleges and universities were liberal in their orientations and policies. Generally, they treated students and staff as individuals who were judged by their academic achievements and potentials. (Where they existed, the exceptions were...
Who ever imagined that the Democrat Party would move so far let that their main selling point would be “socialism”? With the leading candidate for Democrat nominee for president and the most influential junior member of the House declaring themselves “democratic...
The cost of actually building a house does not vary that much across Canada The Ford government’s plan to expand the land supply available for housing has evoked the usual dog whistles about “urban sprawl” by interests apparently unaware of the strong...
Reading is the most important skill taught in school. If students don’t learn how to read, not much else that happens there is going to matter. That’s because being able to read is important in virtually every job. Without the ability to read, life itself will be a...
Rape Culture on Campus Essay Philip Carl Salzman December 24, 2017 Rape is the physical entry into another person’s body without the consent of that person. Usually it involves the sex organs of at least one of the people. It is recognised in Western...
The view that ‘‘There is no core identity, no mainstream in Canada,’’ put forward by the Prime Minister,[1] appears to be factually incorrect. In reality, notwithstanding Canada’s official multiculturalism policy[2], Canadian culture is firmly based in Western...
The Canadian Government is sending $25,000,000 of taxpayers’ money[i] to UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which is uniquely dedicated to supporting Palestine refugees.[ii] Some observers[iii] say that UNRWA actively supports Hamas, the Muslim...
At one of Canada’s elite universities, McGill University in Montreal, a series of disturbing anti-Semitic incidents have drawn wide attention and unsettled Jewish students and faculty members. There have been repeated campaigns to “Boycott, Divest, and Sanction”(BDS)...
The foundational principle of social justice is that people in each and every societal category and class should be treated equally, and have equal benefit and respect in every social context. This means that every group and every unit of society, including sports...
Islam is difficult for Westerners to understand because we view it through our own cultural categories. Our categories have been formed by the post-Enlightenment and post-industrial revolution in the West. Modern Western society has been organized on the basis of...
The early Greek version of the Hippocratic Oath included the following commitment: “I will use treatment to help the sick according to my ability and judgment, but never with a view to injury and wrong-doing.” A Latin version states, “I will utterly reject harm and...
Academic merit results from the successful performance of intellectual tasks by individuals. But individuals are no longer considered valid units of evaluation in Canadian universities; only collective characteristics are now considered important: gender, sexual...
One Canadian study, indicates that 70 per cent of the money that people and governments spend on wood pellet heat stays within the region – compared with 10 per cent of the money they spend on oil heat.