Niagara College and political courage
I’ve grown used to a certain kind of political cowardice from some of our elected officials in Niagara.
Given the choice between taking a moral stand on an issue or attempting to avoid the matter like Floyd Mayweather slipping punches, a whole gaggle of them will choose the latter.
There is perhaps no more clear example of this than the muted political reaction to Niagara College’s continued, troubling and deepening relationship with the theocratic dictatorship of Saudi Arabia.
For those who are catching up, Niagara College runs campuses in Saudi Arabia, a nation famed for its oil, suppression of women, beheadings and playing a major role in the international export of Islamic fundamentalism.
Niagara College started its ethically dubious venture with a menonly campus that teaches tourism courses and thereby deliberately partaking in the country’s violently enforced gender apartheid known as Sharia law.
For those who think that is an exaggeration, consider that women cannot work or go to school without the expressed permission of a male “guardian.” They cannot go out in public with a man who is not a family member. The punishments for breaching this strict segregation are severe, including death.
When asked how the college can ethically run a segregated school in a segregated society, the college has repeated three general points.
First, there are single gender schools in Canada, so this is no big deal. Second, the college has trained some female nurses at another Saudi school and now runs a women-only campus. And third, the college chooses “engagement” over “isolation.”
These facile excuses can be dismissed as easily as they are offered:
• Canadian law does not require,
nor violently enforce, students into single gender schools. Those are private institutions that parents and students can attend, or not, of their own volition. •Training women in segregation
does nothing to dismantle Sharia law or promote the rights of oppressed women. Rather it perpetuates that system. • And finally, Niagara College
needs to stop believing itself to be the educational equivalent of
Richard Nixon going to China. There is no greater plan at work here than to make profit for the
college.
In the face of this, most Niagara politicians have stayed completely silent, at least publicly, including those who sit on the college’s board of directors.
Their silence is as baffling as it is frustrating. Would they have been so quiet, I wonder, if the college
had a white-only campus in South Africa during the days of Apartheid? Would that have been ethically acceptable to them? If not, why is this?
At least one Niagara politician has found the courage to stand up for basic Canadian democratic values — Niagara-on-the-Lake town councillor Martin Mazza.
During Tuesday night’s council meeting, Mazza objected to the town giving the college a $20,000 tax break because of the college’s relationship with Saudi Arabia.
Mazza said $20,000 isn’t a giant pile of money in the grand scheme of things, but the town should stand on a matter of principle and there were issues in the town that cash could be used to address.
Lord Mayor Patrick Darte defended the college with what I can only describe as a word salad of an almost Trumpian nature:
“Their stance on it is if they are not there and making a difference, they have to get a foothold in there, that’s how things change. They have to get into the country, they have to get into the educational system, part of whatever system. If they just stay away they will just keep doing what they do. So, that is a bit of an editorial.” This falls squarely in line with
the college’s narrative of changing the Saudi theocracy by “engaging” it. It is also an idea that cannot be taken seriously by any
thinking person.
Niagara College is not in Saudi Arabia to end the subjugation of women, fight religious fundamentalism or promote democracy. It is not giving students the intellectual tools to question or oppose
the political and religious orthodoxy.
All Niagara College is doing is teaching politically neutral, utterly tepid tourism courses that, by design, will not so much as hint at rocking the Saudi boat.
The college is not some educational Che Guevara bent on revolution. It is manifestly not engaging Saudi Arabia politically on any level whatsoever. It is fulfilling its
contract, one that conforms to misogynistic Saudi laws, and collecting a tidy sum for doing so. If other politicians cannot find
the fortitude displayed by Mazza, they should at least not insult the public by repeating a ridiculous story of Niagara College being an heroic agent of clandestine change in one of the most repressive countries on Earth.
They should, in absence of moral fibre, just do what they have
proven themselves adept at and say nothing.