Take Back Your Degrees

Howard Rotberg, who has two degrees from the University of Toronto, has returned them in disgust due to the university's hosting the annual Hate Israel Week. What follows is from the letter he sent to David Naylor, U of T honcho:

...We have now reached a stage where Jewish students and others identifiably Jewish fear for their safety at various universities in North America and Europe, and where various Jewish speakers are denied permission to speak because of Islamist intimidation. We have now reached a situation where various student groups, such as the Muslim Students Association are being funded by radical Islamist groups, and where various University departments across the “free world” are becoming beholden to radical Islam due to financial funding from Saudi Arabia and the Emirates.

I am sure you have read how young Muslim students are being “radicalized” at universities in England, and such was the case with the attempted terror attacker on the Delta airlines jet on Christmas Day.

The situation at English universities and even at York University has gotten out of hand. To the extent that your views are infused with cultural and moral relativism, I suggest that the University of Toronto is poised to eventually join those institutions where Jewish students will be viewed as “offensive” per se to Muslim students and other illiberal antagonists who apply double standards and factually incorrect legal and historical judgments against the Jewish State, and interpret Islam as holding Jews and Christians to be second class citizens, which is the real apartheid that your University will not allow to be discussed. Moral equivalency is not appropriate between liberal democrats and terror supporting illiberals.

I feel such shame to have been associated with a University that feels that its facilities must be given to those who would destroy our freedoms, and one which fails to understand that tolerance is a two-way concept. Your moral equivalency is misplaced. Israel is the first front in a war that has already come to our shores. That war has nothing to do with “sharing” land, but is about an attempt to enforce Western submission to Islamic values, including Sharia Law.

I have recently written a book called TOLERism: The Ideology Revealed. You might be interested in reading it, although I must warn you that while Chapters Indigo carries 8 different titles by or about Noam Chomsky, my works have been banned by Canada’s monopoly book retailer because they are “offensive” to illiberals.

My grandparents and aunt were gassed to death in the gas chambers of Auschwitz and my father was slave labour there and barely survived. For years, I felt that it was possible as a Jew to attend the University of Toronto and still publically adhere to the biblical value of justice. Unfortunately, in your quest for “tolerance” you have abnegated the historical values of our country, based on Justice being a more important value than Tolerance. My father and his family were certainly not helped by “Tolerance” and I dare say that a continuation of the trends at your university will make it impossible for my grandchildren to attend there. My daughter has two degrees from University of Toronto and my son-in-law has three degrees from U. of T. I believe that if present trends continue, no further members of my family will be able to attend University of Toronto. By abnegating all standards in the name of freedom and tolerance, and by failing to stand for Justice over Tolerance, you are party to the decline of a once-great university.

Please take me off all mailing lists for University of Toronto, University College, and the Faculty of Law, whether it be for financial solicitations, reports or magazines.

I am removing from my office wall my two degrees from University of Toronto. I shall be mailing them back to you.

Shame on you.

S. Howard Rotberg B.A., LL.B

Kudos to Howard for speaking truth to dhimmified power--again. Would that other Jews were inspired by his actions to not only return their degrees, but to decline to financially support the university until the filthy hate-fate, an ugly stain on an august institution's reputation, has been given the old heave-ho.