LESSONS LEARNED FROM ELLY GOTZ
(A Holocaust Survivor)
When I started this essay, I didn't plan my conclusion; I knew it would come to me. While I was angry at the surreal, Kafkesque echo chamber some unnamed, unknown, and vindictive administrators had thrown me into because I insulted a man who wanted Israel destroyed, I said I was not bitter; I was just a pursuer of justice.
Really?
When we suffer injustice, we wear it proudly; bitterness does not have the same fashion appeal. But perhaps, as I now rewrite the intro, I was blind to my bitterness; it was a root that ran deep and left its plant well nourished, erect, proud but toxic and undigestable.
I relied on words like those from the former Dutch Prime Minister Abraham Kuyper, who said when the principles against your deepest convictions win the day, the battle is your calling, and peace has become sin. Peace is the price, and you must lay your convictions bare before friend and enemy with all the fire of your faith. Certainly, this is possible, even today, but pursuing justice does not preclude the growth of bitter roots.
That is my lesson.
I tried convincing myself that all my frustration and angst were related to injustice. I was always prepared to accept that if I had been mousey from the start, I might have satiated the thirst of the anonymous, “Fire him now!” multitudes of digital zealots and silent and anonymous administrators pining for my banishment. Standing up to bullies is never a great job retention strategy; I wouldn't approach the podium at an Olympics dedicated to pragmatic job retention strategies. But I can live with that.
My convictions on the absence of justice but the surfeit of politics at Guelph-Humber remain the same, but my spirit has changed, and such a change was needed.
I have not discovered contrition for my relatively minor comments; I still believe the decision of an institution to accept and pursue a Human Rights Complaint over what was comfortably within the confines of a civilized society’s concept of free speech was unwarranted, especially considering they ignored the complaints of Jewish students who felt afraid of a professor who proudly broadcast antisemitic tropes including a call for the destruction of the inhabitants of Israel, the celebration of Hamas and the Houthis and bitter, obsessive hatred of all things Jewish or Israeli - he used them as synonyms.
The university knew what they were doing. They knew the resultant upheaval of my career, family, and purpose, my sudden extraction from my community, like a primitive Roman banishment, and the loss of many friendships and acquaintanceships would be devastating. They knew their process was their punishment; they knew it was cruel and unwarranted; and now, even in my now non-bitter perspective, just because I have toned down or even turned away from the bitterness doesn’t mean I’ve had to turn off my brain.
The fact remains that after eight months, I still have no clue whether I will ever be allowed to teach again at the University of Guelph-Humber, with the school’s latest gambit being to threaten to call the police when I arrive on campus to try to meet the union, in my quest to try and get some clarity of whether or not the school will honour contracts signed for this fall’s teaching (When someone is utterly unresponsive, when the university and unions were unresponsive to email, and phone calls were too 90s and too pushy, and texting too Gen Z I didn’t think knocking on administration’s door, a place I’d been hundreds of times over the last thirteen years was untoward, and certainly staff I spoke with were quite pleasant. Unfortunately, the next day, their pit bull, a London Lerners lawyer, couriered me a letter ludicrously threatening to sic the police on me even if I just came to my own office to collect my paperwork. Even their policies, which have been ignored from the start, said it was allowed.
I foolishly clung to the hope of being able to speak face to face with a flesh-and-blood human, and somehow, that merited more threats from mysterious lawyers—who, like everyone now, were just digital presences behind laptops as they lounge in their basements, hopefully like me, surrounded by faithful and non-digital dogs.
It’s absurd that it will be nine months of banishment before I can make a defence - in some ad hoc investigation that clings to an almost Nurenburg level of pretence when, in reality, they are amateurs flailing about, unsure how to react to an avowed anti-semite’s overheated response to criticism of his favourite terrorist group.
I am sure that with a bare modicum of human decency, courage and even the tiniest spark of good faith, this entire affair could have been solved without ad hoc bureaucratic panic and procedures; it could have been solved by one man simply having the courage to look in the eyes of another and say, “ I was offended by what you said” and him being willing to talk and not metaphorically lead off howling “Off with his head” with a zeal that hasn’t been heard since the French Revolution.