A group of Jewish professors have signed an open letter condemning higher education minister Pascale Déry’s direct intervention in class material being taught at Dawson and Vanier colleges – specifically, teaching of literature by Palestinian authors.
Updates from April, 2025 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
Le Monde looks at the Inuit in Montreal, and why a precarious existence in town seems better to some than the expensive and overcrowded life their people lead in the north.
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Kate
Neighbours of a lot in Rosemont that was slated to be the site of a six‑storey, 50‑unit building have blocked the project because it would cast shade and because new residents might use street parking. These NIMBY neighbours scavenged up enough signatures to force a local referendum, but the borough has already backed down.
Question as an update: see the map shown in the article – isn’t it too close to the train tracks for safety?
Joey
The nerve of the borough mayor to say this after cancelling the project:
« On est en crise du logement, on doit développer », a expliqué le maire d’arrondissement François Limoges, en entrevue téléphonique.
Ephraim
They will use street parking if the city doesn’t require the building to build parking. But the locals shouldn’t expect free parking either. The NIMBY is a way of proving that the city doesn’t charge enough for street parking… if it’s all being used.
DeWolf
Good lord. Imagine thinking six storeys is a tower.
But also… François Limoges has never been known for having much of a backbone. The borough has every power to force the project ahead but they’re probably scared to do it in an election year. Typical of his administration: lots of waffle and crummy compromises that please no one.
Blork
Kate, to answer your update question, no, it’s not too close to the tracks. In fact the illustration of the proposed building is from the POV of standing near the tracks. There’s a fence (immediately behind the “camera”) then the tracks. Looking forward there’s a bike path, rue Dandurand, and then the proposed building.
Streetview: https://maps.app.goo.gl/SMYhpiLvwp5RyR6H7
Kate
Blork, that still looks awfully close. I remember some discussion here about the proposed idea of turning the Van Horne warehouse into a hotel, and it was mentioned that it would probably be considered too close to the tracks. But it’s no closer than this location.
Blork
Good reference, but according to Google’s measuring tool the VH warehouse is about 8 metres from the tracks whereas the existing building on Dandurand (which would be replaced by the housing units) is about 30 metres from the tracks.
Kate
Wouldn’t make much diff if you had a Lac Mégantic style crash on the line, though, which is what we were considering during that discussion.
Blork
Sure, but there are currently hundreds of housing units that are 30-40 metres from the tracks throughout Montreal. It’s not like we’re going to tear all those down, so there’s precedent. Also, the odds of a Lac Megantic thing happening again, especially in the city, are extremely low, so I’m not sure we want to limit housing builds based on that remote risk.
Not to re-open the Van Horne discussion again, but I think catastrophic derailments were only part of the concern. When you’re only 8 metres from the tracks even small derailments can pose a risk to the building. Plus, who wants to live in an apartment that has trains rumbling by at only 8 metres away?
Ian
8 metres? My Dad grew up with a freight train running right up the middle of the street, several times a day including weekends. I also lived with my grandma for a while, and got to experience it too. At first yeah, the whole building shook, the windows rattled, there was an alarming amount of weird noise… but after a few days you don’t even wake up to it. I know everyone jokes that you get used to it, but you know, you really do.
dwgs
Middle of the street several times a day? You had it lucky. We used to have to get up out of the shoebox in the middle of the night, and lick road clean with tongues!
Ian
You had tongues? Well la-de-dah! WE…
😀
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Kate
A man who allegedly attacked motorist Antonio Zaccagna earlier this week, after seeing him knock down a pedestrian, has been charged with manslaughter and let out on bail. The case is being called road rage because of a report that the accused had been in an altercation with Zaccagna minutes previously.
This is one of those stories it’s difficult to sum up in a sentence.
Tim S.
I will say that behind every road rage incident is a failure of enforcement.
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Kate
Bloc leader Yves-François Blanchet wants federal employees working in Quebec to be subject to the secularity law aka Bill 21. Federal judges and prosecutors, border and prison guards are among those whom he feels should follow those rules.
They would also have to work with their faces uncovered, but I have not yet heard of anyone in those positions serving in niqab, although niqab is an idée fixe with some Quebec nationalists.
Uatu
It’s important that we can see the face of the person who tells us that there’s a 16hr hour wait because the ER is on overcapacity protocol./s
bob
What do you call a politician who panders to racists? A racist.
Kevin
I am very tired of this bébé la-laïque movement.
If you are going to be brainwashed by seeing a religious symbol, you should not be left alone unsupervised. Grow up.
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Kate
Weekend notes from CultMTL, CityCrunch and La Presse.
The Mercier bridge will be closed all weekend.
Nicholas
It is weird that the headline says the Mercier is closed this weekend, when the article, and the Mobilité Montreal site, says one of the two spans is closed, provincial segment only, and the other will have one lane in each direction.
Kate
OK, here’s CTV’s summary of weekend road closures instead.
I started posting road closures on Fridays at someone’s request awhile back. I don’t remember who it was, so I don’t know if they’re even still around. Does anyone find this Friday link useful?
Nicholas
Sorry, Kate, I wasn’t trying to blame you. But those reports are usually just stenography from the MM site, I guess it’s really really cheap content, but I’m surprised they couldn’t even get that right. I’ll let others opine on the usefulness.
jeather
I like the links, I check your site regularly and don’t always check the other ones.
Kate
Thank you, jeather.
Ian
Same, I think of this site as a news aggregator with commentary, the aggregator aspect being the primary purpose – and I appreciate it too.
jeather
Well I will say that despite all that I didn’t actually click through this time and of course got caught in the Decarie closure. But in theory it’s very useful!
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Kate
Valérie Plante has signed a collective letter from Canada’s mayors addressed to the federal party leaders, pleading for more attention to climate change, because cities are on the front lines of the consequences.
This is in response to revived notions for Canadian pipelines woken by the unbalanced chicanery coming from south of the border.
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Kate
The eastern side of the orange line is down after smoke was detected, and buses are now in service.
Update: Running again as of 10:00.
bob 03:04 on 2025-04-12 Permalink
What “direct intervention”? Did Déry ban the teaching of literature by Palestinian authors?
Kate 08:27 on 2025-04-12 Permalink
In February, CBC reported that Déry went to Dawson and asked them not to speak about sensitive topics during a course on Palestinian culture. And she said outright that she had intervened.
She did something similar at Vanier.
It isn’t normally a part of the minister’s job to control the content of specific CEGEP courses, although Déry seems to think it is.
Tim S. 08:37 on 2025-04-12 Permalink
To quote the February article:
“”I indeed intervened on the content of a course,” she said at a Tuesday news scrum at the National Assembly.”
MarcG 08:41 on 2025-04-12 Permalink
Say you work in an office that has no dress code and you like to wear fun, colourful socks. Your supervisor invites you to meet after work to discuss it and asks you to produce a detailed report explaining and justifying the socks. Does that count as direct intervention on your wardrobe or is it veiled enough to be indirect intervention via intimidation?
steph 10:08 on 2025-04-12 Permalink
It’s nice to see Jewish professors standing up to CIJA. They’re a little harder to hit with the anti-semetic stick.
SMD 10:34 on 2025-04-12 Permalink
Classic CAQ. Liberté académique for me, not for thee. Laïcité for thee, not for me. Political theatre declaiming grand ideals… until those ideals are politically inconvenient. A party that, in the end, stands for nothing other than maintaining power and the status quo.
jeather 12:30 on 2025-04-12 Permalink
Important to have academic freedom to say the N word in class but not Palestine.
Chris 12:54 on 2025-04-12 Permalink
I find it interesting how so many (not necessarily people here, I mean generally) are against cancel culture only when it’s their “side” that’s being cancelled.
Palestinian voices being silenced? The horror! Right wing speakers bullied off campus: justice!
Right wing speakers bullied off campus: the horror! Palestinian voices being silenced? Justice!
Kate, I also find it a bit odd that you allow commenting on this thread, but not the one about the vandalism at the Azrieli Institute.
Tim S. 13:19 on 2025-04-12 Permalink
Chris: all the more interesting that it’s Jewish profs sticking up for Palestinian literature, no?
Mind you, I find it distasteful that people have to identify their personal background to gain entry into the conversation, as if simple citizen participation isn’t enough anymore.
Kate 14:45 on 2025-04-12 Permalink
Chris, I play it by ear. Once the media have used a hot-button term like “vandalism” there isn’t much else to be said. But I had the notion this subject would spark some interesting discussion, so I left it open, and so it has.
Nicole 15:19 on 2025-04-12 Permalink
Chris, those aren’t equivalent situations. Teaching about a topic in the context of an academic course, which allows for questioning and criticism in the context of discussion and critical thought, is not the same as offering an institutional platform to a speaker promoting a specific agenda, which implies support–or at least not rejection–of those ideas.
walkerp 15:52 on 2025-04-12 Permalink
Just to add to the lack of parallels, there are no government figures intervening in courses to ensure that they don’t include conservative thought. Much of that resistance comes from the students themselves. Very different situations.
Nicholas 16:31 on 2025-04-12 Permalink
I’m confused. If I’m a teacher at an institution giving a course on a topic, that’s valuable critical thought and discussion, and says nothing about the institution platforming or promoting or supporting me and my ideas, even though they pay me a regular salary? If I visit another school and give a single talk there, even for free, even if sponsored by a student group and not the institution, that’s the institution supporting me? Or do other profs get an exception? Or researchers? Or journalists? If I rent a room at a library or a community centre or religious institution to hold a craft fair or have a book club, is the institution platforming and supporting me, or just taking my money without looking at how we’re expressing ourselves? At what point do our discussions become the institution’s support?
Joey 16:58 on 2025-04-12 Permalink
We’re feeding the trolls today, eh?
Extra troll points to Chris for comparing a real, specific and concrete example with a vague hypothetical one.
Ian 20:46 on 2025-04-12 Permalink
It’s also worth noting that the “intervention” from the Minister carries the threat of disciplinary measures, whereas protest isn’t punishing anyone, but rather giving people the opportunity to speak out despite not being given an official platform to do so.
It’s also important to consider the false equivalency of types of speech, ie, academic exploration of different ideas vs invited speakers in a public space within an academic institution.
Finally, it is legally within the purview of a teacher to decide the specific content of their approved courses. As long as that content is specifically relevant to the course outline, this is acadmeic privilege.
If there is an issue, it should go to their Program Dean, maybe the Academic Dean, maybe even escalate to the Board of Governors… but for a Minister to jam their thumb right into that pie is overreach by many degrees and is actually a violation of several legislated precedures and several more collective agreements.
Kate 15:47 on 2025-04-13 Permalink
Thank you, Ian. That’s the kind of information I was curious about.
Chris, since you asked, I didn’t see this story as really about Israel vs Palestine, but about the CAQ’s wobbly commitment to academic freedom. Ian explains it well.
bob 15:28 on 2025-04-14 Permalink
@Kate – I’m no fan of her politics, but this scandal is not about academic freedom. It is a story about Jewish influence from the Jewish Minister. Or, if we want to be more guarded, the Zionist influence from the Zionist minister. Who is a Jew. Or “happens to be Jewish”, if that pleases us more. For example, from Le Devoir – https://www.ledevoir.com/politique/quebec/845785/ministre-pascale-dery-encore-accusee-conflits-interets
What @Ian says is irrelevant to a separate issue of academic freedom, which is the right to study in an atmosphere free from “comportement pouvant raisonnablement faire craindre pour la sécurité physique ou psychologique des étudiants”, which is currently a right denied to Jews.
Along with Chris I also find it a bit odd that you allow commenting on this thread, but not the one about the vandalism at the Azrieli Institute. And, find it odd that as background for that thread one you used an article by a notable not-not-antisemite, whose conspiracy minded tone would not be out of place posted to The Daily Stormer.
Maybe, in classes where people are learning to speak French we can exclude incendiary topics from discussions, as you have here.
Tim S. 17:18 on 2025-04-14 Permalink
It’s absolutely about academic freedom – the freedom of colleges and professional teachers to chose their material free from political interference. The government generally outlines the outcomes courses are supposed to have in terms of student skills, and academic freedom means professionals are trusted to use their judgment to achieve those outcomes. Imagine telling doctors they can’t assign particular medications not based on their effectiveness, but on the nationality of the inventor.
Ian 19:32 on 2025-04-14 Permalink
Bob, I find it telling that for all your talk ofJewishness, Zionism and anti-semitism, not once did you mention nationality. Conflating Israeli government foreign policy with pro or anti-semitism is part of the problem. That we can’t even discuss Palestinian authors without being accused of creating an unsafe environment for Jewish students is the result. Do you even hear yourself?
And yes, formally, academic freedom is clearly laid out in regulations put forth by the Ministry of Education and negotiated through collective agreements from the local to provincial level. PD is overstepping the role of minister in an obvious and pointedly political manner. I can tell you have never participated in a program revision – I assure you, it is no small thing. A course outline is quite literally a contract.
bob 03:07 on 2025-04-21 Permalink
@Tim – They are trusted to use their judgment, and one would hope held accountable when their judgement is bad. Is an awareness of Middle Eastern politics an outcome we demand of a french course?
@Ian – There is no conflation. The separation is a device used by antisemites to conceal their antisemitism in anti-Zionism. There is no Zionism that is not Jewish, and no Jewishness that is not Zionist in some form or another (before you try – exceptio probat regulam). Anti-Zionism is not a critique of Israeli policy, it is a critique of Israeli existence.
Palestinian authors are discussed plenty, in contexts where that makes sense. I wouldn’t want someone studying political science to be able to avoid the issue. But why does it make sense in a French language course? Why does learning French need to involve Palestine? Why should learning French not involve a study of Marxist-Leninist principles? Or a thorough discussion of the Second Coming of Christ our Lord and Saviour? Is there some pragmatic rationale – those learning French need to learn terms for apartheid and genocide and colonial settler baby murder, specifically by Jews?
A young woman attending Dawson can look around and if there are sexist posters, or untoward attitudes, nothing is off the table to make her feel safe and comfortable. Unless she’s a Jew, in which case we’ll condemn the body shaming and ban frat parties, but we will certainly not prevent constant overt and covert charges that she is inexorably a member of an inherently immoral race, the real Nazis, genocidal baby killers – the latter falls under academic freedom. But no – that’s just a critique of Israeli foreign policy.
Imagine, if you will, that a black student complained of something that made their learning environment fraught. Say, the name of a character in a piece of American literature. In that case, we must look inward, to our own internalized racism, question whether our behaviour displays microaggressions, hold some discussions to sensitize everyone to the issue in question. When a Jew says that being called a genocidal baby-murderer, and seeing posters and stickers calling for 7 million Israeli Jews to be – well, they don’t really say what, do they? In that case we don’t need to look at a couple thousand years of antisemitism woven into Western history as if it might have some kind of influence on attitudes and behaviours. We don’t have to look at the history of Quebec’s above-average commitment to antisemitism. “Money and the ethnic vote.” but that was then, this is now. Quebec’s education policy is run by a Jew, so obviously all of that is water under the bridge.
I was in the room when Concordia’s Arts and Science Faculty Council approved the Azrieli Institute, supporting our rep who was there to vote against (so may non-antisemitic reasons to have done so). I sat on committees at all levels from department to the Board, for some years. I saw the sausages being made. I am pointedly aware of the difference between principled defense of academic freedom and people feathering nests and grinding axes.
Tim S. 08:00 on 2025-04-22 Permalink
It’s a French language literature course. Palestinians produce literature: https://arablit.org/2021/06/01/5-writers-a-brief-look-at-palestinian-literature-in-french. It’s OK to ask students to read it.
For those who you who never went to CEGEP, or don’t remember it, each teacher has to choose a theme for their class. When I was in CEGEP, my class was about living in a city. We read some Baudelaire, IIRC. But if students don’t want to study a particular topic, they can easily chose a different class with a different theme, often in the exact same schedule block.
bob 08:43 on 2025-04-24 Permalink
@Tim S. – As reported repeatedly, the courses are French language courses on Palestinian identity, not literature courses. Your link is irrelevant. There are limits to what teachers can choose, as you well know. If this had been an investigation into a course by some Jordan Peterson acolyte there would be no question of academic freedom from the people who are so vocal right now, as you well know, because the concern would be for providing a learning environment where students belonging to identifiable groups are not targets of harassment and violence intended to threaten and silence them.