DEFAMATION!

A spark that lights a forest ablaze

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On November 27, 2023, I was helping a student on their upcoming project in my university office. The assistant program head, a middle-aged Mennonite woman and a new hire I had just met, stood outside my office.  I was with a student, and the program head could wait.  But she would periodically look through the narrow vertical window by the door.  I had no idea why, but I ignored it; my student’s presentation was to run that day. 

When the student left, the assistant program head said I needed to attend a meeting upstairs in room 401. 

At the end of the hallway was 401 - I thought it was for storage. I opened the door, and inside was a burly man in a short-sleeved dress shirt who said he was from human resources. His arms were crossed as he stood by the door. The agitated Assistant Vice Provost (AVP), his tie askew, his familiar suit crumpled,  sat at the end of a rectangular yellow table.   

I wasn't sure whether the AVP  was angry or nervous, but I had known him for many years, and I expected a runway of cordiality or pleasantries before he told me why I was there. But he acted as if we had never met -  like he had been on a pleasant garden stroll and had been accosted by someone demanding to know if he knew me. It was as if he had denied any knowledge of me, cursing me, and now was determined to end this unpleasantness as quickly as possible. 

The AVP said I was suspended due to an online post that he admitted he had not read. He offered no more details and shoved a document before me.  

I was suspended. 

I was not to communicate with anyone remotely associated with the University; I was banned from coming on campus and removed from the university learning management system. I had no idea why. 

I returned to my office, packed up hastily and left. I walked out the side entrance and said no goodbyes. I barely remember leaving; I was just in the parking lot and driving home. 

I never thought it would be the last time I was allowed on campus. 

The banishment had come with the suddenness of a car accident or an assault. The campus and community that had been my second home for thirteen years, so many late nights exiting down the centre spiral staircase, past the plant wall, saying goodbye to the always cheerful Filipino cleaners. But now I was removed, and I was soon to be more than removed; a defamation campaign was started; I was to become a racist, violent monster despite never raising my voice at work, let alone being violent.  

I tried to get answers, but no one would respond.  Over the next six months, there was nothing more for me than the occasional flame-throwing letter from one of their lawyers or a public safety officer, but most of the time, I was invisible a ghost. 

But the first night, I was stronger; I knew the no-communications dictate was unlawful; that was obvious, and I wouldn’t ignore my students' demands or questions. My phone blew up with frustrated students. They had been told nothing; I just had failed to arrive at class. They were angry. 

I told them I was suspended and felt strange: a mix of resentment at being forced to say it and anger. Why does the accused person always feel angry that they must even address the lies? 

Anger was often hurt in search of a voice. 

I hadn’t felt this way since grade eight when someone, a friend, turned on me at the tennis court at St. Johns Ravenscourt School in Winnipeg. 

But the first wave of suspension was light, a brush against my ankles.  The second wave was defamation, and it picked me up, threw me and left me bruised. 

Faculty had told students that they had heard from other faculty that I had assaulted a student, and they reported that I was led away in handcuffs; I saw screenshots of a staff member,  a former student of mine, Vashti Bagot, in which she was trying to persuade a student of my perfidy through text. 

Five witnesses told me of how she was methodically pulling students aside, telling this story, and another about me threatening a family. I doubt that Bagot was the only one busy at work; she was just the only one foolish enough to try to persuade through text. All accusers walked through the same defamatory repertoire - my entire work record was reported to be a sham; I had been dancing with termination for many years, and the topper was, despite a thirteen-year unblemished record, despite all those courses developed, textbooks written, top evaluations - all that work - but no matter, the final word was that my calling Hamas Nazis was disgusting, and an unknown senior administrator had told staff that I would be terminated no matter what processes lay ahead.  Not laid off, fired, axed or sacked.  Terminated.  

The decision was made, and it was a month before I heard the official charges. All this at a Canadian university, one fully supported by the University of Guelph and Humber College. 

Any actions forthcoming that purported to be judicial would be theatre. 

According to multiple friendly students and screenshots of her own words, Bagot told students that there were many witnesses to my crimes and gleefully told them that she had inside sources.  And I knew that if the university was an ocean of talk, I was not even near the beach; I was in my basement, no one was allowed to speak to me, and any information I received was just a weak dribble carried away from this ocean of gossip and defamation.  

The announcement from the unnamed senior executive that no matter what, I was to be terminated but I still had to participate in some awkward dance with my two unions and management appointees was a weight that would remain on my shoulders through the coming months, a process that wasn’t a process, a system that hired an investigator but that did not depend on evidence, simply on opinion, or as they said,  the balance of probabilities.   

However, with the grievance meetings and the letterheaded attachments that transported all the threats, the institution still wanted to be treated as if it had earned judicial respect. In truth, their actions were more befitting of a high school locker room fight; they were the follow-up to a volcanic eruption of fury from an offended man who had gained access in person, which was a miracle in itself, to the entire executive and accused me of “many lies”  However, my lies were all true; I had offended his favourite (or one of these top two, if you include Houthis love) terrorist group. But feelings are now as important as truth. 

Though calling Hamas Nazis was an obvious historical truth, considering the alliance between the Muslim Brotherhood and the Nazi party and the emergence of Hamas out of that toxic soup, my words were, according to the anonymous senior administrator who had peacocked and strutted before staff,  disgusting.  No attention was given to the fact that my post and the one I responded to had long since been deleted, and the JPEG of my text had already been significantly altered.  In a moment of dark humour, I had, in about 30 seconds, had a friend change my text to read, “If you stand with Israel, you stand with Hitler.” 

But I realised that I was not only to be unjustly sacked but also falsely accused of criminal actions, and they had decided to denigrate my entire academic record. If the devil himself had come back and pulled the most hurtful levers, they couldn’t have done better work.

I asked multiple managers to tell the defamers to stop, but they either didn’t respond or said they were busy getting grades recorded.  

When I contacted Bagot to stop slandering me, a student told me she saw Bagot entering the assistant department head office, which was suspicious. The defamation seemed more like a planned effort than some organic gossip that had gone viral. That same evening, I received an angry, threatening letter from a public safety officer telling me that if I contacted anyone again, they would call the police and have me arrested for harassment.  

When lied about, and I don’t mean simple exaggerations or village gossip, where a story is casually embellished, I’m talking cold lies - it is a pain I have never experienced.  

It is a humiliation for which there is no rational cause. The feeling is heavy, like you have been walking at night and fallen off a bridge into a cold river - but you cannot find the headwaters of this river.  

But when a student texts you alarmed and says, “I tried to correct them, but I have heard this from at least 20 people,” it stings.

One might say you shouldn’t care what others think, but while it is said woe to you when all men think well of you, it is equally valid when you don’t know what all men think of you, but you know they have been told the most vile lies about you.  And lies are sticky things; you can wash things down with desperate truth, but some residue remains.  You just don’t know where. 

When people hear information, their natural inclination is to believe; when someone is ripped off campus, students, faculty and staff logically assume they must have done something; my absence reeked of guilt. 

Two months later, I was in a lobby of the CAMH, yes, the mental health place; it was not a proud moment; I wasn’t sleeping, my blood pressure was 180/110, and I was coming apart. 

Doctors said I had PTSD from the university-driven harassment.  It was a diagnosis approved by the WSIB. 

Now, at least, I knew officially why I was suspended; the rumour about all this coming from my crime of calling the Nazi terrorist organisation Hamas “Nazis” was true.  The human rights complaint was delivered to me at 4:01 PM on December 21, a few seconds after the university shut down for Christmas.  

It was almost a month after I was banished; it was filed by the Vice Provost, the top administrator at the University, the decider of all discipline, the one who had just recently abused and suspended our department head.  He was cleared by what they like to call an investigator but was sacked.  Not good.  

And that department head had been compliant, not pushed back. He had acquiesced to their unlawful mandates, but it had done him no good.  I would not go gently.   

 I  had responded to a man calling for the eradication of Israel by telling him  I stood with Israel, and if you stood with Hamas, you stood with Nazis.  I thought nothing of it. It was a comment you see on Twitter thousands of times a day, a historically accurate comment. 

But a group of students, too cowardly to speak to me and full of divisiveness, found a Palestinian professor and wound him up.  This professor, someone I had seen but never spoken to, was a long-time colleague or friend of the Vice Provost. He had gone into a rage, and in response to his rage, without even reading my post, the assistant vice provost had been in a panic to get me suspended, and thus, the calls down to my office and the desperation to get me into the interrogation room.  

The world had gone mad, and my employers had gone mad. Calls to the university to stop the defamation were ignored, and after a few months, a student who still supported me said that the lies were largely believed.  My reputation had been destroyed, and there was no return from this. 

It is easy to dismiss if you haven’t had it happen to you, but we do not walk in one another’s shoes as much as we might pretend. 

But it was an assault by my friends and my community. 

Perhaps it is better not to care, to do the minimum, and to separate yourself from your work in life, but foolishly forming one's identity around a role creates vulnerability.

Where was the assistant department head who said I was “highly respected” days ago? She was coaching or coddling a staff member and perhaps the chief defamer, a girl with whom I have never had an angry word.  

According to clinical psychologist Dr Guy Winch, “Reputation damage feels like an attack on our very identity and can lead to depression, anxiety, and isolation.”

Experts say that where defamation is compounded by institutional inaction, the psychological damage becomes even more severe. Being accused of misconduct or unethical behaviour without the chance for defence or remedy is said to cause lasting trauma. The inability to confront or communicate with the defamers exacerbates feelings of helplessness, a critical trigger for severe anxiety or depressive disorders. 

It rang true. 

 I held it together outside, but I was in perpetual shock; a stack of newspapers was on the basement floor. I had read a daily newspaper for 45 years but had lost interest.   I staggered from rage to depression, typing defences and appealing for support. It was the Jewish community who came to this goy’s defence. 

Writer Oscar Wilde said, “An attack on one’s reputation is like cutting the soul with a blunt knife.”

I wanted to be heard to defend myself, but I was not allowed to speak; the union was indifferent. An unfortunate coincidence was that my union was being sued for antisemitism but insisted their private collective political radicalism, which was utterly aligned with my accusers, had no effect on them and the refusal—now at eleven months—to meet or talk on the phone was purely coincidental.  It was just difficult, they said. 

Experts say forced silence can be seen as institutional gaslighting, where the system meant to protect and support is instead used to delegitimise individual experiences. 

Gaslighting used to be sort of a chic new word that I dismissed, but it now rings true; the silence, the dismissiveness that occasionally perks up around the silence, the occasional raging letter from a lawyer or some public safety person;  I wondered, in light of all the rumours, what have they heard, they treat me with the hatred and the anger they should save for rapists and paedos, what have they been told?  

Defamation leaves a scar; you never know what they heard when you walk by that person. 

The only place I felt safe was in my basement, with the door closed, and with my dogs. I knew both of them avoided LinkedIn and social media in general.

Email became something to be feared, another threat, and a dismissive response from the union—but mostly silence. My fingers would tingle when I got emails from the union, management, or the “human rights” manager. 

I saw and still see therapists for PTSD. I paid for some, and WSIB funded some, but having a real conversation without being threatened or demeaned was good.  The only conversation I’d had with the university was in a Zoomed grievance meeting where the administration had acted civil and then, once again, without listening, without asking me anything, without any knowledge at all, had looked at the PTSD diagnosis, ignored the defamation that their staff still perpetuated and said it was my fault - off with his head. 

It was dream-like, the one where you are there but not seen, trying to move but paralysed. I soon found out that at that Zoom meeting, they had quickly met and dismissed my claim, a claim that they knew no details about. I knew the union wasn’t reading my emails. My dissections of how the institution utterly ignored its policies took hours, but there was no response; I had been turned into a ghost.  

Of course, almost nobody from this community, this “family,” contacted me beyond a handful. A few said they were afraid to talk to me because association with me might get them fired—all this at a university, a celebrated “post” enlightenment place of debate and conversation.  

But it seemed more a place where illegitimate power pushed everyone aside; justice was a weak little fellow who spent most of his time getting knocked around. 

I could understand them having different views on Israel, but to allow a fellow professor who had never met me, who walked past my open door on the way to make what was nothing less than a verbal assault, to call me violent, unfit for being around students, a threat, a liar, a racist, and further hateful slander, and the fact this slander was not met with an inquiry or demand for evidence or any defence of me at all, it was embraced, it was coddled. The sense of betrayal echoed like I was doing mental checks on myself-  can they believe that?  

But the administration, my boss, the free speech writers, the human rights persons, the people I wasn’t just griping to? Only silence. 

They ignored every word, and I gave up after a try or two. Later, I was told that any attempt at communication was harassment. They gave me a single point of contact: a generic, unattended Human Resources mail account.

How can people who have worked with you for years, or those who don’t know you at all, hear the very worst and, in a university, offer no questions, no inquiry, no, “if he assaulted a student in a classroom? If the police were involved, would there not be some video or even some record on paper?” 

Everyone has a phone, and yet some people swore there were witnesses and swore this and that, but it was about me being guilty of what I had not done. Still, though I was not involved, I was a ghost, a demon, and I was getting more and more evil each day as I sat in my basement mancave with the door closed and the dogs beside me.

The administration seemed involved or, at best, complacent about the defamation; it was only administrators who knew that my HRC involved Israel, and they had betrayed me out of some defamatory drive of unknown origins; it was primitive and animalistic; it was a stage where a preacher droned on, while behind the pulpit curtain was debauchery and chaos.  

Dr Jennifer Freyd, a prominent researcher on institutional betrayal, said that “the harm caused by betrayal from institutions is often more traumatising than the original transgression itself,” as it comes from entities one expects to trust.  

Nobody ever got this. I could have dealt with the charges, though they were absurd. I was in Canada, where free speech existed, but I could not deal with being muzzled, threatened and then methodically defamed. The defamation was the issue, not the suspension.

Sue them, sue them.  But I am already being showered with lies and treated like a criminal because I said I stood with Israel and Hamas were Nazis. Can you imagine what these beasts would do if they were boxed in a corner in a defamation hearing?  They’d be calling my wife a whore, and insulting my children when the truth is no longer being pursued; they have no restraint.  

And when I read the threats, the three-line responses to two pages of questions, my fingers again tingle, my anxiety climbs, my blood pressure soars, and to face down a multi-million dollar organisation with unlimited funds, to re-traumatise myself again? 

And what if I got a judge who was like the psychiatrist, the miracle worker they said, that I had seen, the one at CAMH who, when I mentioned the source of harassment and mentioned Hamas, had argued with me; she said Hamas were not the government and became icy cold.  All this after I had waited desperately for four hours to see her, but out the door in five minutes.  

Seeking justice at the university had just brought silence and more tingling fingers. Addressing defamation in a courtroom, I’m not sure I’d make it out of there. 

Sigmund Freud said, “The wounds that are never addressed or healed always come back to haunt.” However, healing is difficult when you have people on the street you used to speak with walking around you and avoiding eye contact. What have they heard?

Perhaps it is innocent, they never heard, but the doubt remains.  I was called a violent racist, though I was neither, and what could I say? Should I chase the man who avoids me down and plaintively whine, “What did you hear about me?” He would likely have been silent even if he had heard the words.  

No, defamation is a sticky mess; it does not rinse off; it comes back. 

I mostly kept my phone on airplane mode, and my two Westies were my comfort.  Social exclusion?  Of course, but I was safe; some experts say social exclusion and loneliness have been shown in academic studies to have severe consequences on mental health, with long-term effects including depression, anxiety, and cognitive decline. According to Julianne Holt-Lunstad, a leading researcher in the field, “Chronic social isolation can be as detrimental to health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day.”  Not sure why it was 15 and not 16.  

But I suppose I am now a chain smoker. 

I am shunned and forced into silence. I called one of the few who would talk, but now she says, " Don’t you have an official person to speak to?”  It is a form of social death. They have weaponised silence.  

In his work on academic freedom, researcher Brian Martin notes, “Accusations from higher-ups or peers within academic institutions carry disproportionate weight, often smothering the accused’s capacity to fight back.”

Furthermore, the institution’s threat of harassment charges following minimal contact (such as a 30-word email) signals a systemic abuse of power. Using formal mechanisms (like harassment policies) to silence the defamed individual, the institution effectively shifts the narrative from defamation to punishment, further victimising the defamed.

And sure enough, I was soon threatened with police arrest if I went on campus; I had never even raised my voice, let alone been violent, but a $10,000 fine if I violated their latest salvo, a trespass order. I was not allowed on campus because I might talk with my accusers, who were all being kept anonymous.  Or was it because I might defend myself from organised defamation?  Nothing made sense. 

Oh, just let it go, suck it up.  

Empathy is a lie; we do not stand in another’s place.  

According to psychological theories of identity, an individual’s sense of self is closely tied to how their community and peers perceive them. When defamation attacks one’s reputation, it strikes at the very core of their identity, leading to lasting psychological harm. Over time, this can manifest as chronic anxiety, depression, PTSD, and even suicidal ideation. Even the proverb writer said that the tongue has the power of life and death, and in the New Testament, it is likened to a spark that sets a forest ablaze. The metaphor is telling and powerful.

A forest ablaze can destroy a community and kill; it is not some light burn you get when you pinch a candle wick. 

Defamation, slander, libel, and gossip are tolerated in a workplace that screams cultural approbation if you dress up like a taco on Halloween and where saying you look nice today can be a form of sexism.  

Defamation is a psychological war conducted on many fronts; at a university, a place of openness, decorum and debate, it would seem to have no place.  But I have seen it; having a community turn on you, not merely in silence, but in contempt and hatred - it is painful.  

And why, because I called a terrorist group Nazis.  The university has gone mad.  And soon they will fire me. At least, that will be the end. I will get my strength back and do other things.  And I will read all the unread newspapers, at least the editorial sections. Good will come from this all. The fire will clear the dead wood and allow for new growth.

P.S. (Nov 14, 2024) - I was informed two days ago by the WSIB (Workers Safety and Insurance Board in Ontario) that the University of Guelph is fighting them to stop them from paying for my PTSD therapy. The U of Guelph does not have to pay for it; they simply do not want me to get treatment for a medical injury that, according to the WSIB and two psychiatrists, they are responsible for. I am not sure that a University can sink any lower.

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