sunlight in the reading room

Cemeteries are gardens for ghosts and I think that's beautiful

Thursday December 14th

On campus again today. After picking up a book at the University College library, I’m working at Robart’s library this evening. But on a different floor this time to change things up.

As this paper nears completion the book stack gets larger. I am glad it will be finished today (it has to be, it’s due at midnight), but I will miss the process. It’s been nice to get back into the groove of schoolwork after everything.

University College (U of T) - taken last autumn

by Gil Troy

Fortunately, 555 Jewish Physicians in the University of Toronto’s TFOM – Temerty Faculty of Medicine – have shown us how easy it can be to do the right thing. Like all those heroic Israelis who fought back ferociously to save Israel from Hamas that day, these 555 physicians had the Zionist impulse to defend themselves, their people, their state, their highest ideals, and Western civilization.

Here is their full statement, released earlier this week:

OPEN STATEMENT TO THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO TEMERTY FACULTY OF MEDICINE FROM JEWISH PHYSICIAN FACULTY

The Israel Gaza War is causing agony for many TFOM faculty and polarization in the TFOM. We feel immense anguish over the suffering and deaths of innocent Israelis and Palestinians. We believe in the right of both Israelis and Palestinians to self-determination and statehood. Yet, on the streets of Toronto and in the TFOM itself, the hostile and belligerent position towards Jews who identify with the state of Israel, or who identify as Zionists, is discriminatory. The distinction between anti-Zionism and antisemitism is tissue thin. Only for Jews is self-determination and autonomy – Zionism – denounced as a racist endeavour.  Only for Jews is living in their indigenous homeland considered “colonialism.” We, therefore, hold the following as central to our identity as Jews in the TFOM: We affirm the right of TFOM faculty to be openly Zionist and to support the right of Israel to exist and defend itself as a Jewish state and for those faculty to be free of public ostracism, recrimination, exclusion, and discrimination in the TFOM. To us, being a Zionist in 2023 means that we accept the right and the necessity of the survival of the Jewish people, and the existence of a Jewish state that ensures their survival. Anything that undermines or threatens Israel’s survival, undermines, or threatens the existence of the Jewish people and is, ipso facto, antisemitic. We know that accusations against Israel as “apartheid”, “colonialist”, or “white supremacist” or committing genocide are mendacious and aim to promote the argument that Israel should be dismantled as a Jewish state, making such accusations themselves antisemitic. We reject as antisemitic any blame on Israel for Hamas’ slaughter of Jews and non-Jews, and any justification for the slaughter because of historical context, opposition to settlements and occupation, or legitimate resistance. We reject as antisemitic any claims of equivalency between the Israeli people’s right to self-defence against terrorist groups who seek to annihilate Israel and the Jewish people, and the Hamas terror attacks against Israeli civilians. We reject as antisemitic any claims of equivalency between the duty of Israel to rescue its citizens who are being held hostage by Hamas and the Hamas terror attacks against Israeli civilians. We reject as antisemitic the imposition of a collective political responsibility on Jews to denounce Israel simply because they are Jews. We affirm the right of Jews alone to define antisemitism for themselves absent any interference from those outside of the Jewish community. We implore the TFOM in any investigation of antisemitism to apply the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism. We reject the expectation that Jews must reach total consensus on the definition of antisemitism; we know that the vast majority of Jewish TFOM faculty endorse the IHRA definition; and we disavow the weight given to a tiny minority of Jewish faculty who object to the IHRA definition. We abjure the cover of “academic freedom” within the TFOM to permit unrestrained antagonism by some TFOM faculty to Zionist Jews and their publicization of grotesque and antisemitic characterizations of Israel, the only Jewish state. We believe that academic freedom is not absolute. In particular, leaders in academic medicine with power over learners and faculty, who in some cases are the sole leader responsible for thousands of learners and faculty, should not be issuing statements which collide with equity, diversity and inclusion for Jews or which make Jews feel unsafe and unwelcome in the TFOM and which are unrelated or unessential to their core academic role, research, and publishing of results. We ask and expect that Jews receive the same consideration and protection that the TFOM provides to other minority groups.

How did this statement come about?

Dr. Philip Berger, an Officer of the Order of Canada and an inductee in the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame, is among those who initiated the effort. He has spent his 45-year-career practicing at the intersection of medicine and social justice. The Canadian Medical Hall of Fame describes him as “an advocate for refugees, members of the LGBT community, people with HIV/AIDS, those suffering from addiction, homelessness, and living in poverty.”  Dr. Berger “has also worked to promote methadone treatment, needle exchanges, documentation and recognition of the aftereffects of torture, academic infirmaries for the homeless, and clinical treatment of AIDS in Africa.” This “tireless champion of social justice and accessible health care in Canada and the world,” has “been a crusader never afraid of the controversial,” while serving “the needs of the sick and those who have suffered abuses of power.”

Alas, he has one strike against him. He is also, he reports, “a defiant left-wing Jew and Zionist.”

Dedication service for WWI Soldiers Memorial Tower - Toronto 1924

"LAZIEST UNDERGRADS HIRE STENOGRAPHER," Toronto Star. December 14, 1931. Page 1. --- Lectures Taken in Full for 50 Cents Week --- Commerce students at University of Toronto have decided it is too much of an effort to take notes in lectures so they have arranged to employ a stenographer. The scheme is to be tried out immediately in the political science course. For six economic periods a week the students will be able to concentrate on the lecturer, or to dream dreams. The committee in charge has arranged notes will cost a maximum of 50 cents a week for each student. A stenographer will attend the lectures and take down a word for word copy. This will be typed and mimeographed and the copies distributed to students in the scheme.

CUPE 3902 Unit 3 members will be on strike in 13 days. They are fighting for:

💪🏼Job security

📢Improved access to healthcare and benefits

✊🏾 Fair compensation

🗣️and more!

You can support their fight by sending a message of solidarity to the University of Toronto administration here: https://weareuoft.com/support-unit3/

Researchers develop new insight into the enigmatic realm of 'strange metals'

The behavior of so-called "strange metals" has long puzzled scientists—but a group of researchers at the University of Toronto may be one step closer to understanding these materials.

Electrons are discrete, subatomic particles that flow through wires like molecules of water flowing through a pipe. The flow is known as electricity, and it is harnessed to power and control everything from lightbulbs to the Large Hadron Collider.

In quantum matter, by contrast, electrons don't behave as they do in normal materials. They are much stronger and the four fundamental properties of electrons—charge, spin, orbit and lattice—become intertwined, resulting in complex states of matter.

"In quantum matter, electrons shed their particle-like character and exhibit strange collective behavior," says condensed matter physicist Arun Paramekanti, a professor in the U of T's department of physics in the Faculty of Arts & Science. "These materials are known as non-Fermi liquids, in which the simple rules break down."

Read more.

08/25/22: today’s study mood: there’s good light coming in through the library and I feel excited to begin

HEY Y'ALL

Live in Toronto and want to do something in solidarity with those living in the US and dealing with transphobic laws?

Come join us on March 31st at noon for a rally in support of the trans community in the US!

Listen to speakers, voice your concerns, and show your support.

Lovely promise and quick ruin

Dress: @the-gloomth

Friday

I’m sick today, and staying home. So enjoy these photos of Victoria and Emmanuel College from earlier this week.

Complicit UofT

"Scarborough Health Network (SHN) says it has received an “unprecedented” donation from the Orlando Corporation to modernize Scarborough’s hospitals.

SHN confirmed Wednesday it received $50 million of the $75 million donation, with University of Toronto Scarborough receiving the remaining $25 million.

The network said the money would “strengthen the region’s ability to provide world-class care for the community and train future healthcare professionals.”

SHN said the donation will go towards the new Birchmount Hospital, mental health needs such as creating the Orlando Corporation Mental Health Centre of Excellence that would focus on a recovery-oriented model of care, and other urgent priorities."

Full article

tagging: @allthecanadianpolitics