The Court I Can Still Afford

When rich, powerful institutions possess lawyers, public memory becomes the final appeal.

When a man cannot afford to risk his retirement taking large institutions into court, he often does what modern economics and modern justice require of him: he opens a Substack and starts speaking into the digital wilderness.

No army of lawyers. No public relations department. No carefully worded statements drafted after meetings billed by the hour.

Just a man, the evidence he says he possesses, and the increasingly unfashionable belief that truth still matters.

It is an odd arrangement.

Institutions receive legal departments, insurers, outside counsel, and resources that most individuals cannot begin to match. The individual receives a keyboard and the hope that ordinary people still possess functioning moral instincts.

So this is apparently the court I can still afford. The Court of Public Opinion.

And it is the best I can do.

If you can forward this to anyone who was a student, faculty member, staff member, administrator, or manager at the University of Guelph-Humber between November 27, 2023 and the present, I would appreciate it.

I would like the record corrected.

I would like my name cleared.

———

To students, faculty, staff, and administrators associated with the University of Guelph-Humber between November 27, 2023 and the present:

I taught at the University of Guelph-Humber beginning in about 2011. I dedicated myself completely to my students and to the institution. I consistently received among the strongest student reviews in the business department, received repeated favourite-professor commendations, wrote original course materials and textbooks, refused to rely on publisher test banks, did not allow cheating, and made myself available to students in ways that went far beyond what was required.

I believed deeply in teaching, academic integrity, and my students.

On November 27, 2023, I was suspended by the management of the University of Guelph-Humber after making comments online criticizing Hamas — a designated terrorist organization — during an exchange with an individual in Pakistan advocating for the destruction of Israel.

Whatever one’s political views, I had every legal and moral right to express those opinions. What followed was catastrophic to my reputation.

Within hours of my suspension by University of Guelph-Humber management — before I had even been informed of the allegations against me — I began receiving phone calls from students recounting shocking stories spreading throughout the institution.

Within hours of a private meeting from which I was excluded, the institutional rumour mill appeared to have achieved a level of efficiency normally reserved for emergency alerts.

Would not any reasonable person, upon learning that staff members and faculty on the job methodically spread defamation from student to student, reach one conclusion: they were directed to do so?

Each student who called me repeated exactly the same story, and that same story matched the narrative signed and endorsed by the University's head, the Vice Provost.

I was told allegations were circulating that I had assaulted a student, ripped a student’s shirt, had been arrested, and possessed a long criminal history. Later, additional insinuations of a sexual nature entered the mix. I can only shudder to imagine what these initial rumours evolved into over the following days and weeks.

Because rumours possess a remarkable quality once institutional oxygen is introduced into the room. They no longer require security reports. They no longer require video evidence. They no longer require the testimony of students whose phones today are practically surgically attached to their hands and capable of recording every waking moment of campus life.

No, apparently a different standard applies.

When people say, “I have witnesses,” or “I have inside information,” and when those statements collide with institutional gossip, ideological enthusiasm, and a system that simultaneously prevents the accused from setting foot on campus or communicating with students, staff, or faculty, evidence begins to acquire an almost mystical flexibility.

Remarkable, isn’t it?

One begins with facts and reaches conclusions. The other begins with conclusions and simply waits for the facts to catch up.

This is why so many faculty and staff later on would cross the street if I came near, and why long-time acquaintances would refuse to speak with me.

I possess screenshots from November 27, 2023, showing discussions involving multiple staff members, including a staff member and a student identified as “VB,” in which these allegations were repeated to students.

Other students informed me they heard the same allegations from faculty members and from students who said the information originated with faculty and management at the University of Guelph-Humber.

And after nearly two years, the University itself acknowledged in writing that its investigation “did not substantiate allegations that a student was assaulted by me,” while another said that it “is not aware of and did not investigate any allegations of criminal conduct by me.”

The absurd contradiction epitomizes this organization, especially those unnamed cowards who have ‘Human Rights’ on their business cards.

Yet neither the management of the University of Guelph-Humber (Humber College) nor that of the University of Guelph ever issued an institution-wide correction.

They deliberately chose to let lies do their work. They still do.

Senior management has been confronted with clear evidence that they deliberately defamed a faculty member, intending to poison the work environment, and they have not denied it.

In effect, the University of Guelph and Humber College believe that when a faculty member stands with Israel, it is permissible to invent false stories of criminal conduct to aid them in their efforts to terminate the faculty member’s employment.

Imagine a University that runs on the principle that ends justify means.

So much for the age of reason.

Indeed, my termination being based on political prejudice was only one matter; financial destruction was incidental - the true victim was my good name.

Most disturbing of all, despite ultimately acknowledging that these allegations were unsubstantiated, the institutions and their management never seemed to investigate where the allegations themselves originated or how they spread so rapidly within hours of my suspension.

But if and when the most senior administration is the defamatory headwater, one can understand this, can one not?

The chronology raises obvious and deeply troubling questions.

The allegations began circulating almost immediately after my suspension and included details that students told me were attributed to “management” or “senior administration.”

Earlier that same day, an assistant vice-provost had reportedly stated he did not even know why I had been suspended. Yet detailed allegations were already spreading throughout the institution within hours. You could only look above his head, and there was only one person there.

I repeatedly asked the management of the University of Guelph-Humber, Humber College, and the University of Guelph to stop the spread of these allegations and to publicly correct the record. They refused. Instead, when I attempted to defend myself and insist that the defamation stop, I was threatened with allegations of criminal harassment for attempting to protect my own reputation.

Think about the moral inversion of that.

False allegations of assault and criminality were permitted to spread unchecked throughout a university community, yet the act of asking that the lies stop was itself treated as wrongful.

I was never given a fair hearing by the University of Guelph-Humber. I received no meaningful adjudication process. Instead, I was subjected to approximately 2 hours of meetings with a highly hostile external investigator hissing at me insane stories of me planting evidence of hate propaganda on my accuser’s LinkedIN.

This is an investigator that is so cynical she even lets the truth slip out -in the first meeting she cancelled after 10 minutes she admitted that I would get no defence. Two witnesses.

Such an “investigator” was brought in to validate a decision that management had already made on the day of my suspension. I have screenshots from staff that support this assertion.

In fact, on the very same day I was suspended — before I even knew the allegations against me — I was informed by students that staff members were already saying senior administration had decided I would be terminated regardless of the outcome.

That is not due process.
That is not fairness.
That is not justice.

One student told me a faculty member WR openly bragged that he intended to get me fired and encouraged outside organizations to pressure my university to terminate me because I had the audacity to publically say that Israeli citizens have a right to live.

Well over 60,000 persons were contacted and asked to write in to demand my termination.

I have the evidence.

The management of the University of Guelph-Humber, Humber College, and the University of Guelph were informed repeatedly that these allegations were spreading. They were informed by me directly. Yet they refused to stop the spread, refused to issue a public correction, and refused to meaningfully repair the damage even after acknowledging in writing that the allegations of assault were unsubstantiated.

At a serious university committed to fairness and academic integrity, false allegations of criminality against a faculty member would have been confronted immediately, investigated seriously, and publicly corrected.

The University of Guelph and Humber College are not serious institutions.

The message this sent was unmistakable: if someone holds unpopular political views, reputational destruction becomes acceptable.

For those who knowingly spread these allegations, you may never have to answer in court for what you did. But if you possess any conscience at all, you should be ashamed.

Ashamed of casually spreading allegations of assault and criminality against another human being without evidence.

Ashamed of treating reputational destruction as gossip, entertainment, or ideological sport.

And ashamed that a university environment — a place supposedly dedicated to fairness, truth, evidence, and reason — became a place where rumour, fear, and character assassination were tolerated because the target held unpopular political views.

There were also many students who acted honourably — students who reached out privately, who refused to participate in mob behaviour, and who treated me fairly despite enormous pressure. I remain deeply grateful to them.

I wish I could say that one manager or staff member showed the integrity of students.

But what happened at the University of Guelph-Humber — and the refusal of its management, along with Humber College and the University of Guelph, to meaningfully correct the record after acknowledging the allegations were unsubstantiated — should disturb anyone who believes universities are still capable of fairness, restraint, due process, and basic human decency.

May the University of Guelph, Humber College, OPSEU Local 562, and the University of Guelph-Humber never wash from their hands the Macbethian stain of cowardice and moral disgrace that comes from destroying the reputation of a good man in service of ideological hysteria.

May they never escape the memory that faculty, staff, administrators, and institutional actors allowed hatred over a man’s support for Israel — and indulgence toward those who demonized, excused, or glorified anti-Jewish hatred after Oct. 7 — to metastasize into something resembling a Salem tribunal clothed in the language of virtue.

Not courage.
Not justice.
Not principle.

But gossip, cowardice, reputational assassination, and mob panic masquerading as righteousness.

And may those who participated in it remember that there are acts which evade courts not because they are moral, but because powerful institutions possess deeper pockets than the individuals they destroy.

May God one day judge what earthly institutions would not.

Shame on you all.

And to those who want to attend or donate to these institutions, you are indirectly supporting their actions.

Paul Finlayson
Former Sessional Lecturer/Professor
University of Guelph-Humber

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