Everyone says apologize, it's $2,000,000

It depends on the translation of the word "apology." But the answer was no. They will fire me tomorrow. An updated older essay.

Note: July 4, 2025: I wrote this about a year ago. I still haven't apologized; they told me I'd be fired tomorrow by email, like a tacky breakup.

I was fired (SEPT 21, 2026)

Better than a Snapchat message or ‘snap’, I suppose a snap would never reach me, since I don't have the app. I will likely get the termination email tomorrow. No severance as it stands; fired with cause. I hurt a Muslim’s feelings by calling Hamas Nazis.

They are. It’s called history. I showed no remorse because I don’t show remorse when I have not done anything wrong.

For over seven months, I’ve been suspended from the vocation formerly known as “university professor.” No lectures, no hallway chats with Elizabeth the cleaning lady, no writing textbooks that students actually read, no helping fledgling entrepreneurs dream up the next Uber for houseplants. Gone. Banished.

I’ve been exiled from campus, from students, staff, and faculty—past, present, and, presumably, future. My crime? Calling Hamas Nazis. At a university that’s now so post-reason it’s looped into parody—where once-earnest sympathy for the oppressed has metastasized into outright fetishization of fascist theocrats. Apparently, stating the obvious is now a firing offense.

One public safety bureaucrat—from a neighbouring college where I don’t even teach—saw fit to warn me that a WhatsApp message to anyone on their sacred payroll could be treated as “criminal harassment.” Yes, a text. As if I were stalking interns with a chainsaw. To heighten the absurdity, she made a habit of copying not one, but two local police divisions on every email—presumably to ensure maximum theatre. You’d think I’d been caught skinning kittens while distributing MAGA hats and homebrew abortion kits. This is not policy. It’s bureaucratic pantomime masquerading as law.

It is one thing to be suspended. It is quite another to have your employer, on the very day of your suspension, actively conscript staff and faculty into spreading monstrous fictions about you. The most grotesque? That I had assaulted a student in class and been led away in handcuffs — pure theatre, fabricated and deployed with intent. Then, my accuser — an Islamist faculty member with a flair for libel — decided to up the ante by branding me a paedophile.

Management’s response? Full-throated silence. Not only did they fail to condemn it — they stood behind him. This is, after all, Canada: where slander is forgiven if done by the appropriately “oppressed.” He even bragged to students that he’d have me fired and enlisted an online hate mob of 300,000 to join the lynching. The administration? Nodded, smiled, and passed him the megaphone.

It is now effectively criminal to tell a liar to stop lying—especially if the liar’s feelings might suffer a papercut. Feelings, after all, have become sovereign.

Unless, of course, you’re Jewish, or worse, a friend of Jews. In that case, brace for silence or sanction. You may be punched in the face, but the university will discipline you for daring to obstruct the sacred arc of someone else’s fist. As for the right to defame you freely—one can only assume it was quietly scribbled into the Charter of Rights and Freedoms while the grown-ups were on a bathroom break.

I’ve had no chance to defend myself. The cancel culture machinery is entirely digital. I’ve never met my accuser; they’ve never spoken to me, not even online. My intentions were tossed into the social media woodchipper and strewn like confetti after a drunken wedding—pieces of speech drifting far from meaning, landing on digital fenceposts like tattered flags of slander.

The narrative: I’m a violent racist, a walking hate crime, a disgraced professor whose very presence endangers peace on Earth. I’ve assaulted students, menaced families, and might’ve had a hand in COVID-19’s escape from a lab—or shot JFK, depending on which Slack channel you’re in.

My accuser, a prolific anti-Semite in his own right, thousands of posts, calls Jews filth, subhuman, devil worshippers, praises Oct 7, loves Hamas, the Houthis, Putin, Maduro, Assad, hates the West - not sure why he is in Canada.

But although he has even engaged in hate propaganda, and he’s not the only prof into that - that’s okay for the human rights chicks. He is the oppressed Muslim, and he is allowed to hate, defame and attack. Being friends with the Vice-Provost helps too.

Remarkably, hours after I was suspended—before I even knew why—staff were whispering to students that what I said was “disgusting” and that I’d be terminated. I have that in writing.

My situation isn’t about education—it’s about power. Senior Guelph-Humber management is using public institutions and taxpayer resources to run a political purge. The pleasure they take in their self-righteous indignation is almost operatic. DiCaprio on the Titanic had nothing on these folks striking defiant poses on their sinking dinghy of moral hysteria.

The “investigation”? Two meetings, one 10 minutes, no defence documents read, none of my witnesses contacted. The appeal? Reviewed by the same person who filed the complaint. Truly, Kafka would blush.

Why? Because I said I stood with Israel. Because I dared describe Hamas as what they are: the spiritual heirs of the Mufti who played footsie with Hitler. Because the truth, however unfashionable, offends people who are addicted to grievance.

Meanwhile, anti-Israel faculty are untouchable. Professors openly endorse Hamas, and that’s fine. But me? The Zionist? I’m a pariah. My post—altered, stripped of context, and ghosted from LinkedIn—was turned into a Rorschach test for every latent anti-Semite with a keyboard. Over 320,000 viewers were told to contact my university to demand my head, “get the racist prof fired” was the message.

Even if 0.1% obeyed, that’s still thousands of “Fire the bastard” emails—each counted as a strike against me. That’s not justice; that’s an algorithmic lynching.

I was told I might salvage my job with a simple apology. Not the classical “apologia” of reasoned defence—no, the modern kind: grovel, beg, renounce. But if I recanted my support for Israel and expressed remorse for condemning a terrorist group that butchered 1,200 innocent partygoers, then perhaps I could return to work. With benefits. And a pension. And dignity traded for a coupon.

They say I’ll lose over $2 million if I don’t. I did the math—lost wages, benefits, royalties, and retirement income. It’s accurate. But even for two million bucks, I can’t do it.

Because here’s the rub: the people making the accusations aren’t even my students. They’re random digital crusaders, often on foreign soil, many aligned with organisations whose raison d’être is to ruin Jewish academics who dare speak up.

I was accused of racism for criticising a genocidal organisation. I’m asked to deny historical facts to appease people who already hated Jews long before October 7, 2023. The kicker? My other university looked at the same evidence, blinked, laughed, and moved on. That’s what adults do.

I still have students who write, staff who quietly say thank you, and friends—Muslim and Jewish—who know exactly what this is: a witch hunt.

I recently bought a Star of David pendant to wear beside my Celtic cross. A tribute to my roots and to my friends who stood by me. The Greek word Steko means “stand firm.” So, I will—no reverse gear.

Would I apologise for two million dollars?

Well, it depends on your definition of apology. If you mean the original Greek, apologia, a reasoned defence or profession of belief, then allow me to profess unapologetically: I stand by what I said. I stand with Israel. I stand against extermination rhetoric. I stand against the historical amnesia that lets polite society forget what happens when genocidal ideologies go unchecked. But that seems not to be what they are looking for, maybe they are racist against old Greeks.

If, however, you’re seeking the modern parody of apology—a craven confession of guilt, spoon-fed to placate Twitter mobs and faculty lounge Bolsheviks—then no. That I won’t offer.

If the real sin is calling those who murdered 1,200 innocents at Nova “Nazis,” then my regret is merely literary—perhaps a cliché, too early in the rhetorical innings. But morally? Intellectually? Historically? I stand by every syllable.

So no—I won’t trade my soul for salary, nor kiss the ring of ideological orthodoxy.

And no, I won’t sell out the name my father bore with quiet honour. A couple of summers ago, my siblings and I flew to Alberta to scatter his ashes in a golden barley field on the home quarter my grandfather bought in 1928.

If that name stood tall through drought, war, and prairie winters, it won’t buckle now under the petulance of campus inquisitors.

I won’t join the farce of faux contrition staged to soothe the outrage economy or reassure the crocodiles of academia that they won’t be eaten next.

I don’t leap into apologies—at least not the modern, soggy kind that resemble a hostage video more than a statement of contrition. No, I favour the older model, the classical one. Apologia—from the Greek—meant a defence, a profession, not a teary-eyed surrender to whatever emotional weather is currently blowing in from social media.

And while we’re on the subject of Greek, there’s a word I far prefer: stéko. It appears in the New Testament and is still preserved in modern Greek. It means to stand firm, to hold one’s ground. That’s more my tempo. Not grovelling. Not weeping, not shuffling around with a corporate HR handler. Just standing—defiant, upright, and unimpressed.

Steko.

That’s the answer. I stand firm.

If you found value in this article and wish to support my ongoing work, especially during my 18-month suspension, please consider leaving a tip. Your support helps me continue producing uncensored content on critical issues.

My dogs approve.