Shiraz Dossa: Professors attack him for attending Iran's Holocaust Conference

We were surprised to read in The Globe and Mail that the Canadian Association of University Teachers was so outspokenly supportive of Professor Shiraz Dossa, who attended the Holocaust denial conference in Teheran this past fall.

Professor Dossa's complaint, as we understand it, is that he has been subject to much criticism, not to discipline. Academic freedom and freedom of expression, which we all support, does not render any of us immune from being criticized. Professor Dossa attended a notorious conference whose Holocaust revisionist theme - whether Professor Dossa agrees with that theme or not - was advertised by the organizers worldwide.

A keynote speaker at the conference was David Duke, former imperial wizard of the Klu Klux Klan. Professor Dossa labels himself a scholar of "the global South". If he was not previously familiar with Mr. Duke's call for revisiting the accepted history of the Holocaust, he might therefore have been familiar with the same Mr. Duke's call to revisit the accepted history of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, which in Mr. Duke's published view was a salvation rather than a nightmare for Africans. The position taken by CAUT that Professor Dossa was being admonished for attending a conference expressing "unpopular views" is, quite frankly, offensive to us. The conference expressed abhorrent, racist views. As an academic Professor Dossa had a right to attend this event, but we would hope Canadian academics of good conscience would condemn it.



Prof. Irving Abella
York University

Prof. Aviva Freedman
Carleton University

Prof. Victor Glickman
University of British Columbia

Prof. Nora Gold
University of Toronto

Prof. Michael Grand
Guelph University

Prof. Ernie Lightman
University of Toronto

Prof. Jack Mintz
University of Toronto
Prof. Maureen Molot
Carleton University

Prof. Ed Morgan
University of Toronto

Prof. Arthur Ripstein
University of Toronto

Prof. Bryan Schwartz
University of Manitoba

Prof. Gil Troy
McGill University

Prof. Carol Zemel
York University