Alice Walker

Israeli Apartheid Week­­—a week-long series of events designed to raise awareness of alleged Israeli human rights violations against Palestinians—highlights the ongoing debate around the world concerning the birth of the Israeli state, as it did at McGill this past week.  

Israeli Apartheid Week is praised for its promotion of open-forum dialogue by some and condemned by those who believe it is anti-Semitic. This week’s events in Montreal elicited similar controversy.

Palestinian-American journalist Ali Abunimah delivered the keynote address on Wednesday evening at the Bronfman Building. His talk, which was organized by Israeli Apartheid Week Montreal in conjunction with QPIRG McGill and Concordia, was designed to draw attention to policies Israel has imposed on Palestinians, which he called racist.  

“Israel is very, very committed to a one-state solution, but the only problem with Israel’s one-state solution is that it is an apartheid state,” Abunimah said.

Abunimah argued that Israel was limiting opportunities and rights to Palestinians based simply on their ethnicity, and covering up these abuses by either denying them or denouncing critics as “anti-Semites.”

“If Israel placed a different arbitrary restriction [on Palestinians] … and said you can’t come back because of your skin colour, then nobody would deny that this is apartheid,” he said.  

Aaron Lakoff, the event coordinator and a Concordia student, said the lecture was in keeping with Israeli Apartheid Week’s goals, which he described as “to foster education and debate on campuses.”

Lakoff added: “The issue [raised by Israeli Apartheid Week] is important for two reasons, the first being the magnitude of the situation. The war in Gaza in 2009 showed that Israel was strong and brutal enough to kill thousands of civilians. The second reason is because Canada is one of the biggest supporters of Israeli apartheid.”

Regarding the charges of some, notably Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff, who recently described Israeli Apartheid Week as anti-Semitic. Lakoff responded that he sees a distinction between Judaism as a religion and the state of Israel.

“I myself as a Jew am incensed that Israel claims a right to speak for Jews around the world,” Lakoff said. “There is discord within the Jewish community and there is no consensus around Israel.”

Victoria Shore, a U3 humanistic  sudies major and president of Hillel McGill, a campus Jewish group, called Israeli Apartheid Week “divisive.” Responding to Abunimah’s lecture, she said, “University students are smart; if they do some reading, they will easily find that Israel is a fully functioning democracy, the only one, in fact, in the Middle East.”

“The week does not achieve dialogue about Palestinian human rights,” she added. “It only provides a negative environment for all students on campus. It creates a divisive and hostile atmosphere. University is meant to be a place that provides a positive learning environment, where issues can be discussed in an open forum, meant to provide real solutions to problems; this week is a platform for hate speech and intimidation.”

While McGill students debated, the same argument was echoed at a national level this week. The rector of Queen’s University, Nick Day, wrote an open letter to Ignatieff on news blog Rabble.ca to in favour of Israeli Apartheid Week, citing the Liberal leader’s “deep lack of intellectual integrity.” Day did not claim to be writing on behalf of students, but the letter makes reference to his elected position, and he signed the letter as “Rector.”  

Believing that this was an inappropriate use of his position, 2,200 students petitioned to have the Queen’s Alma Mater Society Assembly consider it at last Thursday’s meeting.  The Assembly voted unanimously to put the question of whether Day should be impeached to referendum. 

Jason Samson

Earlier this month, McGill PhD candidate Jason Samson and a number of other researchers released the world’s first map of human vulnerability to climate change.  

Samson, who studies climate change ecology, originally conceived of the idea while studying species adaptation to climate change. With his team, he applied similar techniques to human beings and found parts of Africa and Central America to be at the highest risk. Areas in the extreme global north and south, like Russia, Australia, and Canada, are in less danger.

“I was studying beavers and how they affect their environment,” Samson said. “I was also studying how species are affected by environment changes. We are seeing species move outside their normal range. Now we see species in Quebec we didn’t have before.”

While studying beavers, Samson came across a picture taken by NASA of the earth at night, and thought it would be interesting to see how humans are distributed across the globe and how they are affected by their environments.

“I used census data taken by governments all over, around 400,000 censuses from everywhere,” he said. “What I found is that human distribution is more related to environment than many other species like birds and trees. They tend to live in nicer climates, with very few living in the Arctic, Sahara, or the Amazon … It turns out climate is very important for where people live. “

Interestingly, some of the countries with the lowest emissions were found to be the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change.

Murray Humphries, an associate professor in natural resource sciences at McGill, is Samson’s PhD supervisor and was a co-author of the paper.

“My main role was to encourage Jason in getting and following up on ideas,” Humphries said. “Lots of work has already been done in collecting climate control data, we mostly pulled [climate data and human vulnerability data] together.”

Samson had use of a supercomputer at McGill and was able to crunch the numbers in a matter of months. On a regular computer, the task would have taken years.   

Dominique Berteaux, professor and Canada Research Chair at the University of Quebec at Rimouski, was another co-author and co-supervisor of Samson’s research. As an expert on Quebec mammals, Berteaux became involved in Samson’s research early on, when he was mainly studying beavers.

“When he was studying beavers we worked together to study how climate change affected these creatures. Then [we] figured why not get involved in doing it for humans too,” Berteaux said.

Logan Smith

Psychology professor Donald Taylor does his best to make students feel comfortable in his office.

“I tell my students that if they want to come and see me, we don’t have to talk about a chapter in the book, but they have to say something nice about my bottled lights,” he said as he pointed to a bottle full of Christmas lights sitting on his desk.

Unfortunately, most students are still afraid to come in and see him. He’s not alone: sparsely attended office hours are common all over McGill.   

More often than not, professors and TAs find themselves alone during the time they designate for students.  

“The number who come in is far less than you would expect,” said Taylor.  

According to Louis Hermo, a professor in anatomy and cell biology, students are probably just intimidated.

“I would say most of the students are really shy and they don’t like to come see the professors,” Hermo said. “I think they feel that maybe we may jump down their throats or be aggressive with them.”

Hermo receives more questions through emails than physical meetings.  

Gershon Hundert, a history professor, agreed that class size probably correlates with the frequency and amount of office visits by students.  

“I think that in the smaller classes the dynamics might be different because the professor becomes an actual human being and may be thought of as more accessible,” he said.  

The second problem, Taylor said, is McGill’s structure.

“The university indirectly sends the message of education as compartmentalized and class-driven so as to give students the idea of going to university as only of going to class,” he said.  “Their life is class, home, and their computers, where they have access to everything. The on-campus environment of intellectual stimulation is not part of the current education corporation that we’ve become.”

According to Taylor, all of this means that in their office hours, professors either get visits from students who are greatly excelling or those who are struggling. For the vast majority, education is scheduled—and office hours aren’t included.  

“The university needs to propagate the idea that students are expected to learn and fully participate outside of classes,” Taylor said. “[Attending university] should involve at the very minimum going to class, but more importantly talking to professors and engaging with each other as students on intellectual matters.”

Hundert said that students think of attending university as getting done only what is required and nothing more.

“It should be seen as a great intellectual supermarket in which you have four years to take advantage of all these interesting people who have things to say,” he said.  

Hundert obliges his students to come see him to talk about their term papers.

“That way, I see each of them at least once to talk one on one,” he said.

Furthermore, he sees office hours as an important way to deepen the student’s understanding.

“By having a conversation about whatever idea or notion it is in consideration its an educational opportunity that most students simply don’t take advantage of,” he said.

For simple questions, professor Craig Mandato said that “A TA is just as good, if not better, at answering than me.”

Anna Katycheva

Anna Katycheva

Students’ Society Councillor Maggie Knight was elected SSMU president Friday night, beating opponent Cathal Rooney-Céspedes with 67.2 per cent of the 4,172 votes cast.

Chief Electoral Officer Tais McNeil made the announcement in a two-thirds full Gert’s, which erupted in celebration at the announcement. A number of audience members chanted “Maggie! Maggie! Maggie!”

“It’s really heartwarming for me to see that people believe in my abilities to do this work,” Knight said.

Approximately 21 per cent of undergraduates voted in the elections.

In general, the crowd expressed overwhelming enthusiasm for each winner announced.

Rooney-Céspedes was surprised by the large deficit, but said Knight won for a simple reason.

“More people came out to vote for her,” he said.  “The day that campaigning started, her Facebook event had something like 50 people on it, because she had the support of all of Council.”

Knight attributed her success to the help she received on her campaign.

“I had a campaign team of 60 people. I don’t know if that’s the biggest ever, but it’s certainly close,” she said.  “It was exciting to know it was worthwhile.”

The election for VP clubs and services was the night’s tightest, with Fraser, a coordinator with Midnight Kitchen, beating Fabian, the current interest group coordinator, by a mere 27 votes.

“It’s a real honour,” Fraser said. “Monika Fabian ran a really good campaign and I think she would have been just as good as me, and I think it was reflected in the vote.”

The four-candidate race for VP internal was also tight. Todd Plummer inched out Kady Paterson  (24.3 per cent) and Natalie Talmi (24.0 per cent) with 25.4 per cent of the vote.

Many thought the election for VP university affairs would be close, but Emily Clare beat opponent Lauren Hudak by 10.8 per cent.

“I had an incredible team campaigning for me,” Clare said. “I couldn’t have done it without them.”

Shyam Patel won the VP finance and operations election handily, and Joël Pedneault was acclaimed VP external.

All five of the referendum questions passed, including ones that increased funding to the Midnight Kitchen and TV McGill. Students also approved increases to the SSMU Ambassador Fee; funding for Queer McGill, Nightline, and the Union for Gender Empowerment; and the creation of a fee for the McGill International Students’ Network.

Jason Leung and Matthew Crawford were elected Arts senators.  Annie Ma and Max Luke were elected Science senators with 35.5 and 36.8 per cent of the vote, respectively.  Ryan Kirsch, Emil Briones, Ian Clarke, and Haley Dinel were acclaimed Dentistry, Music, Law, and Religious Studies senators, respectively. Tom Acker became Management Senator with 39.0 per cent of the vote, while  Usman bin Shahid was elected Engineering senator with 50.0 per cent of the vote. Sameer Apte was elected Medicine senator with 40.8 per cent of the vote.

“Next year’s executive is excited to work together,” Fraser said.

“We got to know each other during the campaign. We were all really supportive,” she said.

Why is it important that the VP clubs and services be an elected position and not something like the interest group coordinator, who is an appointed administrator?

When you’re hired as IGC you kind of already have an idea of what you’re supposed to be doing and you fulfill a certain role, whereas with the VP clubs and services portfolio there are certain responsibilities, but you can cater to all the needs of the clubs within your term of office. I think that’s going to be really important especially for next year, because I hope to implement a lot of changes that will better the whole system in general, because it’s a bit of a mess.

What are some of the issues that you’ve noticed this year and how would you try and fix them?

A lot of clubs haven’t been active for a number of years, so it’s really wasting the resources that we have to offer clubs and services. I’ve been looking into the way a bunch of other universities in Canada handle their clubs and services programs and a lot of them have been super successful because of the fact that they make clubs reapply every year.  I think this would be really beneficial for our system here at McGill because then we would be better able to help the clubs in growing and being successful on campus and we would not be wasting any resources on clubs that aren’t active at all.

The last two VPs of clubs and services were both former interest group coordinators.  How does your position as IGC prepare you for this role?  

This is a big part of the difference between Carol and I. As IGC you learn thing that you can’t in any sort ofposition to prepare you for VP clubs and services.  You learn the inner workings of SSMU, you work with the people, you develop relationships with everyone in the office, you see how people within SSMU interact and how to go about certain things.

If you were a mixed drink, what would you be, and why?

A B-52. It’s a shot of Kahlua, Bailey’s, and Crown Royal. I think having those different layers can be related to me.