“In the Footsteps of Dreyfus, With Better Fonts and Worse Cowards”

The Slander, the Silence, and the Institutions That Learned Nothing from the Last Century Except How to Spell ‘Intersectional'

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I’ve been suspended from the University of Guelph -technically Guelph-Humber, but let’s be honest: students earn a Guelph degree and quietly amputate the Humber part from their CVs—sorry Humber, truth hurts.

Guelph is the senior partner and thus owns the disgrace.

Since last November, I’ve endured the full medieval treatment for calling Hamas what they are—Nazis—and for uttering the equally unthinkable: that I stood with Israel. For this, I’ve been defamed, banned, threatened with ruinous fines, accused of things I didn’t write, and portrayed as everything short of Jack the Ripper. One gem: the Vice Provost signed a statement that all but painted me as a paedophile. Charming.

Guelph’s so-called free speech policy now belongs in a cracked binder next to VHS tapes and broken promises. It’s a glossy façade, not a doctrine—performance art for donors. No one in Guelph-Humber’s upper crust has seriously considered the positive right to speak. Their instinct is punitive, not principled.

The VP, the human rights complainant, is chummy with my activist accuser. It’s all very cosy. That grand philosophical quandary—“If you offend someone, is that not the essence of free speech?”—is not entertained. It’s drowned in institutional lavender-scented detergent.

I tried to meet with my union. They refused. In person, on the phone, through smoke signal—nothing. CUPE President Fred Hahn, who delights in anti-Israel cartoons and declared “Let the uprising begin” on Oct. 7, is my assigned advocate. A real mensch. His union is my sole legal counsel. What could go wrong

Union complaints fail 99% of the time—unless the union fails to answer your emails or waits for you to be axed, then grieves retroactively. If your case involves Israel, and your management is antisemitic, your union merely shrugs and asks if you’ve tried meditation.

OPSEU, for its part, recently embraced BDS. I’m sure their motion was watched closely in Tel Aviv. Perhaps next they’ll offer a course called “Crash the Fence,” followed by a seminar on The Protocols of the Elders of Zion: A Reading Group.

Their insistence that their politics don’t influence their actions is as convincing as a cat claiming it won’t eat the canary. I’m wedged between an administration that loathes me and a union that loathes Israel. It’s like boarding a long-haul flight flanked by two 400-pound landwhales who snack exclusively on Cheetos and passive aggression.

I can’t even meet my union on campus. Guelph-Humber threatens arrest and a $10,000 fine if I set foot on their sacred soil. I’ve asked them—politely—where they derive this authority. Their legal rationale appears to be: “Because we said so.” Magna Carta is weeping.

And yet, they’ve got deep pockets and a legal department fattened on taxpayer coin. On the other hand, I went from being Norm at Cheers to being the skunk under the faculty lounge—universally ignored, occasionally hunted.

One administrator took my daughter’s toys and my dad’s will from my office, boxed them up, and hid them. No note. No courtesy. A student tipped me off. I threatened to involve the police. This makes me the villain. Management and OPSEU, the latter siding with management about 60% of the time, disagreed. They filed one token grievance, which I ghost-wrote for them using their rules.

No one—except management and OPSEU—thinks it’s okay to rummage through a professor’s items after 13 years. But I was raised with manners, so I reserve my contempt for those whose moral compass spins like a ceiling fan.

Being fined for stepping onto a campus where I’m still employed, complete with fall contracts, is Kafkaesque. I haven’t raised my voice on campus so much (except when my dogs visited). Quoting their policies earns me silence from their lawyers—silence that roars.

Asking them questions is like asking my puppy why she shredded a bag of guinea pig litter and turned the foyer into a tinsel-lined disaster zone.

Except Malibu looks guilty.

Management doesn’t. It growls and eats the rest of the bag.

Why all this? Because I insulted Hamas. And the VP and the ironically titled Manager of Human Rights decided that was a hanging offence. I ran the Hamas-o-meter again—still Nazis.

For those who missed history class, the Muslim Brotherhood founder styled himself Führer. The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem had SS fan merch. But sure, let’s pretend this is all about nuance. Chris Hedges recently claimed there was no antisemitism in the Middle East before Israel. He must’ve graduated from the Vlad Putin School of Historical Integrity.

If Guelph and Humber were pro wrestlers, they’d be Roddy Piper and his evil twin. Their Free Speech Standards have a helpful “Contact Us” button—just don’t expect a response. They might still be on a COVID work-from-home schedule—or more likely hiding under their ergonomic desks.

Their policy idea is to Chatgpt a paragraph, run it past the vegan lunch committee, and approve it with a tofu-stained rubber stamp. When I asked, “Why was I suspended?” one administrator muttered something about a post… which they hadn’t read. Brilliant.

I was yanked from classes, banned from software, and prohibited from contacting anyone vaguely associated with the university, including my students. For fun, I edited their human rights policy (it’s a wiki, of course), adding an immunity clause and free M&MS for life. I deleted it later. Alas.