Even being attacked can be educational and enlightening. In November 2020, eight official student groups published a public letter demanding that the McGill Administration rescind my Emeritus status. This was allegedly necessary in order to honor “the right of Muslims...
Appointed as New Zealand’s Prime Minister in 2017, Jacinda Ardern has been described as an iron fist in a velvet glove. She wooed the world with talk of kindness and compassion, while at home ruling like a dictator. No friend of free speech, she had little regard for...
Prioritizing the fight for “social justice” or any other version of “justice” is a guarantee of unending warfare. Obsession with “justice” focuses on the past, on allegedly unjust deeds suffered by the party deeming itself a victim. That the past is long, and includes...
By Jacques Rouillard, Emeritus Professor Department of History, University of Montreal On October 27, 2022, Leah Gazan, M.P., put forward a motion that was unanimously supported in the House of Commons calling on the federal government to recognize the genocidal...
It’s a well-known pattern in public policy – profligate politicians damaging their economies with out-of-control spending, massive borrowing and higher taxes – inevitably leading to fiscal crisis, sharp declines in growth and ultimately rapidly falling currency value...
Mass hysteria is the spontaneous manifestation of a particular behaviour by many people. There are numerous historical examples: Middle Age nuns at a convent in France spontaneously began to meow like cats; at another convent, nuns began biting one another. In...
While boundaries have traditionally, at least within the context of geographic statehood, represented physical demarcations, they have a much broader significance. Borders are essential declarations of sovereignty, but boundaries are equally social, political, and...
A judge found the man who drove a rented van down Toronto’s sidewalks, trying to kill as many people as he could, guilty of murdering ten and attempting to kill sixteen more. The judge also took the extraordinary decision to refer to him as “John Doe,” denying him any...
Adela Cortina, one of the most important moral philosophers in Spain, and a member of the Royal Academy of Moral and Political Sciences notes that corruption— etymologically related to the idea of “destruction”—is encouraged by the weakening of the so-called internal...
December 9 marked the International Day of Commemoration and Dignity of the Victims of the Crime of Genocide and of the Prevention of this Crime. December 9, 2020 also marked the 72nd anniversary of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of...
The Thunder Bay Police Services Board (TBPSB) was disbanded in 2018 after an investigation by Senator Murray Sinclair found the board had failed to deal with the “clear and indisputable pattern” of violence and systemic racism against First Nations people in the...
Yad Vashem means “a memorial and a name.” Though I am not a Jew, I nevertheless add my name of Lee Harding and my memories of my visit. My visit in 2009 to the World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem has left an enduring impact on me. The largest lasting...
It’s a mystery why some people suddenly eschew their past principles. This phenomenon is especially notable when people of power and fame forget principles they have sworn to uphold as responsible professionals. This mystery is evident in Senator Murray Sinclair’s...
The politicization of policing, and of law and order issues generally, has led to a chorus of protests demanding that the community or its representatives be allowed to participate in policing decisions -- a demand supported by a view that police remain too...
There is a tear in society, a gap, a chasm that is growing and contributing to the wounding of the social fabric of societies almost everywhere. Those on either side of the chasm are barely able to touch one another, to understand the worldviews from the other side,...