If not resolved by immediate reinstatement, Paul Finlayson will pursue a human rights complaint under the Ontario Human Rights Code
The reason academic politics are so bitter is because so little is at stake, it’s said.
But to Paul Finlayson the stakes of his suspension from the University of Guelph-Humber are high indeed. Teaching is his career and his passion, and it has been taken away from him, without process or explanation, by an employer that appears to have been cowed by cancellers and bullies.
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The 59-year-old marketing lecturer remains suspended with pay two months after making a social media post he admits was “hot-headed” but, in my opinion at least, constituted fair comment. Lack of movement by the university has forced him to consider taking his case to the Ontario Human Rights tribunal.
I wrote about Finlayson late last year. He has been teaching at Guelph-Humber for 13 years, has no disciplinary record and no history as a political activist.
In a social media post that he admits may have been a little too blistering, he said that an academic in Pakistan calling for Palestine to be free “from the river to the sea” was a “pro-Nazi zealot.” Finlayson said he stands with Israel, against antisemitism and against Hamas, which he said takes millions meant for health and education and uses the money to make war. “You stand with Palestine means you stand with Hitler.”
Hitler references aside, it was all fairly standard stuff.
Guelph-Humber didn’t see it that way, after receiving complaints from students and, it seems, another academic (more of which later). The university suspended Finlayson pending an investigation and cancelled the classes he was set to teach this semester.
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His lawyer, Kathryn Marshall, wrote to Guelph-Humber’s manager of human rights, harassment and employment equity earlier this month, saying her client has still received no particulars of the complaint against him and has not been contacted by an investigator. As of this Tuesday, she had received no response from Guelph-Humber.
Marshall, a partner at Levitt Sheikh (the same firm that represented Jordan Peterson), said in her letter there is no reason Finlayson should be suspended during an investigation, since he poses no threat to anyone and the alleged conduct took place outside the university.
She said he is “stressed and uncertain about his future … stuck in procedural purgatory.”
“The suspension has caused my client significant reputational and financial harm, as well as immense personal distress,” she said.
Curiously, the university claims the suspension is “non-disciplinary” but did not provide any comment to the National Post to explain.
“It is clearly anything but,” Marshall said.
She said the university appears to have already concluded that her client engaged in misconduct, even before holding an investigation “in flagrant violation of its own policies, its own collective agreement and my client’s right to procedural fairness.”
She said if not resolved by immediate reinstatement, she and her client will pursue a human rights complaint under the Ontario Human Rights Code.
Because Finlayson is a member of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, he cannot sue the university. The union has filed a grievance but unions are rarely incentivized to stick up for individual rights, saving their leverage for collective bargaining. CUPE, remember, is the union of Fred Hahn, the current president, who celebrated the “power of resistance” the day after Hamas massacred Israeli civilians on October 7th.
There was one other detail in Marshall’s letter that caught my eye — that the identities of the complainants against Finlayson were not revealed, except the initials of the main complainant, WR. Surely this could not be Dr. Wael Ramadan, professor of project management at Sheridan College’s Pilon School of Business?
I’m told it is. I wrote about Ramadan a week or so after Finlayson. He had called Israel “an apartheid state committing genocide” but he was not suspended by Sheridan — in my opinion, quite rightly, since it is not the college’s place to protect the delicate ears of generation Z from opinions with which it may disagree.
To me, Ramadan’s comments did not constitute incitement to violence, so his Charter rights to freedom of expression prevailed. I argued that Oliver Wendell Holmes had it right when he said we should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions we loathe.
Ramadan did not respond to requests for comment then or now, but I am told that the man whose right to free speech I defended is at the centre of the effort to shut down Finlayson’s right to the same, and get him fired in the process.
Academia is in a shocking state when the desire to root out anything that a complainant disagrees with, or considers “unsafe” is gratified by academic bureaucrats.
People far beyond Guelph-Humber are starting to take an interest in this case, aware of the chilling effect on academic speech it will have if it is not challenged.
The university has made a mistake. It should admit as much and reinstate Finlayson.
jivison@criffel.ca
Twitter.com/IvisonJ
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