Scholarship questioned

PAUL LUNGEN CANADIAN JEWISH NEWS

Faculty at the University of Toronto should be “concerned” about the school’s reputation for excellence after a master’s thesis was approved that fell far short of acceptable academic standards, a retired sociology professor has asserted.

Werner Cohn, who taught at the University of British Columbia, said, “It’s the university faculty who need to be concerned. It’s their university that’s under attack. [U of T’s] Ontario Institute of Studies in Education [OISE] is becoming a huge liability to this truly great and famous institution.”

Cohn has been at the forefront of those criticizing the university for granting a master’s degree based on a thesis that focused on “Jewish racism” and denounced the March of the Living (MOL) and March of Remembrance and Hope (MRH) as promoting “Jewish victimhood.”

The thesis, titled The Victimhood of the Powerful: White Jews, Zionism and the Racism of Hegemonic Holocaust Education, was submitted by Jennifer Peto as part of a master of arts degree in OISE’s department of sociology and equity studies in education (SESE). OISE is a branch of U of T.

In a letter to U of T president David Naylor, Cohn argued that the thesis is averse to empirical data and its author “makes wild … charges against her fellow Jews without a shred of evidence.” Cohn later stepped up his critique, saying that “the Peto thesis is no aberration at OISE, and the public’s attention should not be confined to it. On the contrary, the thesis is unfortunately rather typical of what is done at OISE, at least in [SESE].… OISE, or at least SESE, often resembles a political cult more than an institution of higher learning.”

Cohn said he had looked at the abstracts of 36 OISE theses and found 18 “were political without scholarly merit…. I found a prima facie case that they’re not scholarly.”

Cohn went on to say the political approach in the theses all came from one particular side of the political spectrum. “There’s hypocrisy at the University of Toronto bureaucracy that says it defends freedom of speech. There is no freedom of speech for dissenters. It’s a political cult without dissenters, and they’ve found a way for the public to finance it.”

The university declined to take questions about the controversy. When first asked to comment about the thesis in late November, the university issued a statement by vice-president and provost Cheryl Misak that read in part: “Due to our privacy obligations to students, I cannot discuss an individual student’s academic work or his or her performance. What I can, say, however, is that freedom of expression issues are ever-present in our society, especially on a university campus. The University of Toronto’s Statement on Freedom of Speech makes it clear that freedom of inquiry lies at the very heart of our institution.

“The university is committed to allowing and encouraging a full range of debate. The best way for controversy to unfold is for members of our community to engage with the perspectives and arguments they dispute. It is intelligent argument, not censorship, that lies at the heart of our democratic society and its institutions.”

In early December, Misak issued a follow-up statement: “Nothing has happened in the last week to change our view. Please do remember that this is a piece of student work, submitted to be considered as part of the requirements for a master’s degree, along with six courses. It was judged to be acceptable in that context.”

She added: “In terms of the OISE culture, OISE is a very diverse place where different views are expressed and brought to the table for academic discussion. No one point of view dominates others.”

One U of T professor who requested anonymity said, “I think this is essentially a standards issue and not an antisemitism issue…. I’m not saying it’s not anti-Jewish. [Peto] sounds like a mixed-up person. But I think the core is a matter of standards.”

The professor and Cohn pointed to a second master’s thesis at OISE that Cohn called “incoherent” and the professor said was “unintelligible.” The thesis, by student Griffin Epstein, is titled Extension: Towards a Genealogical Accountability: (The Critical [E]Race[ing] of Mad Jewish Identity). Its abstract suggests Ashkenazi Jews “have been deeply implicated in structural violence.”

The U of T professor suggested that when such poor-quality scholarship is considered for a master’s degree, “the problem is less with the student. The question is what sort of supervision and oversight, checks and balances are in the department. These are the questions to ask.”

An OISE alumnus also came down hard on her old school. Karen Mock, who served as executive director of the Canadian Race Relations Foundation from 2001 to 2005 and as national director of the League for Human Rights of B’nai Brith Canada for 12 years, was scathing in her critique.

“Having led the Holocaust and Hope Educators Study Tour to Germany, Poland and Israel for 12 years … and having published articles on the topic in textbooks and refereed journals, I was outraged by the lack of scholarship and also embarrassed that my alma mater would pass a thesis that cited none of the relevant literature on Holocaust education in the context of anti-racist education in Canada,” said Mock, a Liberal candidate for the federal riding of Thornhill.

“The fact that the author did not speak to anyone who had designed or participated in either of the programs in her so-called case studies, citing only their websites, certainly does not meet the rigorous academic standard usually required for a successful thesis…. She did not use empirical data, but simply opinion to support her ideology. To call what she did ‘research’ is a misnomer. And to call the MOL and the MRH of the Canadian Centre for Diversity ‘racist’ is unfounded and completely false. Such rhetoric and shoddy work have no place in the University of Toronto,” she said.

Concerns about the thesis were also raised in the in the provincial legislature last week. Ontario Citizenship and Immigration Minister Eric Hoskins said he was “disgusted” by it, while Thornhill Progressive Conservative MPP Peter Shurman said he found the thesis “a piece of garbage.

“If I’m a privileged white person and if I’m guilty of something, it’s working hard, supporting my family, having a good life and not thinking ill of other people,” Shurman said. His father, he continued, was a Holocaust survivor who lost everything. How could his family be considered privileged, he asked?

Responding to suggestions that the legislature’s interest in the issue could be construed as inhibiting free speech, Shurman said, “We’re not interfering with anything. The legislature is the house of the people. There is nothing that happens in the province of Ontario that is off limits.” The government’s response was “appropriate,” he added, and to the extent “that this kind of thing is accepted as a learned thesis, it is questionable. It needs a look, but not necessarily under the aegis of government. We’re pointing a spotlight at the University of Toronto. Let it get its house in order,” he said.

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