DAVID NOBLE VS. YORK UNIVERSITY
The professor's next battle
September 23, 2009
Louise Brown
EDUCATION REPORTER
He is a thorn in the university's side.
History professor David Noble has taken on York University for years; accusing it of playing religious favourites by cancelling all classes on Jewish holidays (and he's Jewish); claiming pro-Israeli members of its fundraising foundation have too much sway over campus operations; slamming former president Lorna Marsden for expelling a pro-Palestinian protester and questioning the credentials of a recent faculty hire.
Since 2004, he has written a pamphlet critical of the influence of what he calls the "Israeli lobby" at York – whom he named, one by one.
He has filed union grievances against his employer and taken York to the Ontario Human Rights Commission over its practice of cancelling classes on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, which he claimed discriminated against students of other faiths. York stopped the 34-year-old practice this fall before the commission made a ruling.
He even won a $2,500 award from his bosses when a labour arbitrator ruled York curbed his academic freedom by issuing a 2004 press release that criticized his pamphlet on Israeli influence.
This week, he is asking a human rights tribunal to find York has penalized him for all his rabble-rousing. Noble says York assigned him less popular timeslots for his lectures in 2006 – Friday afternoons. He says the university's press release suggested he himself was anti-Semitic. He claims he was threatened with reprisal in 2005 if he held classes on Jewish holidays, so he did not – not until 2008, when he would demand a security guard unlock a classroom so he could lead a tutorial on a campus otherwise empty for Rosh Hashanah.
And York failed to intervene, he contends, when a student disrupted his class in 2005 over his stand on the Jewish holidays, and the student then launched an internal complaint against Noble with the help of B'nai Brith and York's human rights office.
"The disruption by that student was very traumatic, and part of the campaign of reprisal against me for my efforts to end discrimination," said the professor, 64, this week.
"I've been teaching for 35 years and I no longer can trust my students when I walk into class. I don't know which one of them could be spies."
Yesterday former president Lorna Marsden denied any retaliation against Noble when she appeared as a witness before the Human Rights Commission of Ontario, which is hearing the complaint.
"To suggest that is totally inaccurate; the thought of reprisal never crossed the mind of anyone in administration, and certainly not me," said Marsden during a cross-examination by Noble, who is representing himself in the case. She said the administration would not have been involved in setting his teaching timetable.
Marsden admitted that she had asked York lawyers in 2004 to consider whether Noble's article might have constituted a hate crime, but denied, when asked by Noble, that she was prompted to do so by members of the Jewish community.
Today, current President Mamdouh Shoukri will appear before the tribunal. Shoukri became president in 2007 when Marsden retired, and he was in office in 2008, when Noble decided to hold classes on Jewish holidays and informed the president by letter. Shoukri responded by referring the matter to the dean of arts, which Noble called "a threat of reprisal, since the dean oversees matters of discipline."
Testimony wraps up tomorrow, with both sides presenting closing arguments Nov. 3. Tribunal chair Michael Gottheil will make a ruling at a later date.
Meanwhile, Noble is lending his support to York students upset that the university did not send out a bulletin last Tuesday when an undergraduate was sexually assaulted in the campus library.
York spokesperson Alex Bilyk said the alert was issued Friday after a student was arrested and charged with that assault as well as another, and noted the university must try to strike a balance between notifying students of a threat and causing undue panic.
Doctoral student Tasia Alexopoulos, a supporter of Noble, said some students were considering protesting today when Shoukri arrives at the building where Noble's case is being heard.
Toronto Star