An open letter signed by over 500 people is criticizing the Commission on Inter-Cultural, Inter-Religious and Inter-Racial Relations and has accused the commission of bias.
“The Report rightly acknowledges Aboriginal peoples’ marginalization on campus, but it ignores the problems other racialized groups face, and focuses primarily on a small fraction of Jewish students and employees,” the letter read.
“This selectivity of focus and response suggests that the Report is not the neutral, inclusive document it purports to be.”
Current and former Carleton students and professors are among those distancing themselves from the report, including two members of the commission, current vice-president (finance) of the Graduate Students’ Association (GSA) Elizabeth Whyte and former GSA president Kimalee Phillip.
Phillip, the GSA representative in the commission’s first year, said she expressed concerns about its “direction and purpose” in the initial stages. She said the administration created the commission at a time when Students Against Israeli Apartheid (SAIA) was “gaining momentum.”
“[I was] concerned that this report was created to quell the organizing that SAIA was engaging in,” she said.
Human rights professor Bill Skidmore said he believes the administration’s commission was struck to silence debate on the Israel-Palestine issue.
“It’s fascinating, because all of the sudden there was a need for a special committee for Jewish students, faculty, and staff, supposedly there being greater problems for them at this university,” he said
Chair Landon Pearson claimed that the letter was the result of a “misunderstanding” of the commission’s role.
“It seems to me that the kind of criticisms that they are making would suggest that this was something like a research [commission or] a commission of inquiry,” she said. “We used the statistics and the survey to start off the discussion.”
“Any time you think somebody is hurt, you feel like you need to pursue it. It doesn’t matter whether or not it’s statistical . . . if somebody is indicating that they have some concerns about not feeling respected, then that’s what you look at,” she said.
Pearson said she thought the report was the commission’s subjective interpretation of the cultural climate on campus.
Whyte said she dissents from the final report because that wasn’t her understanding of the project.
“I really couldn’t have my name publicly associated with something that I felt presented itself as research, and then now I hear . . . was a subjective endeavour,” she said.
Pearson said she was disappointed because these concerns were not brought to her attention during the commission.
“I regret that having made what I think was an honest and honourable effort to come up with some ideas that might promote a culture of respect, we seem to have elicited some concerns that I wished had been expressed earlier in the process,” Pearson said.
Phillip insisted the questions she raised were never taken into account.
Whyte said that when she initially voiced concerns, “I was made to feel like my voice wasn’t always welcome.”
After that, she said, she tended to keep quiet.
Pearson stood by the commission’s work.
“We were a group of people doing our best, our honest best, to see what we could do to promote a culture of respect,” she said.
“It’s a work in process, and it will be eternally.”
Whyte demanded more of the commission.
“I admire [Pearson’s] commitment to human rights and I think we share that in common . . . [but] if we’re going to be engaging in something as complex as inter-racial, inter-ethnic and inter-religious relations on campus, we need to go in with more than just good intentions,” she said.
“We need to go in with sound research methodology, we need to go in willing to hear from a wide range of voices, and we need to go in with an open mind to hear from a broad range of students because that’s the reality of our campus now.”
