Gavin Miles McInnes
In defence of Jared Taylor, shut out of the University of Ottawa for his views on multiculturalism
Note: the opinions expressed here are solely those of Gavin Miles McInnes. They do not represent the views of his employer, Vice Magazine, its editorial board or any of its affiliates or subsidiaries.
Harvard president Larry Summers recently stumbled into a hailstorm of controversy after he dared to imply that men tend to be better at science and mathematics than women. When cognitive scientist Steven Pinker (Harvard had just snatched him from MIT in a big science coup) was asked, “Do you think Summers’ remarks were within the pale of legitimate academic discourse?” he replied, “Good grief, shouldn’t everything be within the pale of legitimate discourse, as long as it is presented with some degree of rigor? That’s the difference between a university and a madrasah [an Islamic theological college].”
It seems the University of Ottawa is leaning more to the madrasah side. On January 12, my brother Kyle suggested to his university that they invite a speaker, Jared Taylor, to do a talk on the pros and cons of diversity. The university’s community life board was thrilled. It said diversity has become “the most pressing issue with students today.” The University of Ottawa has had some serious friction as ethnic student groups try to assimilate into the West without sacrificing their values. This problem is prevalent in most Canadian universities. Including my alma mater, Carleton University.
In fall of 2002, Muslim student groups were outraged to notice that all the bars on campus serve
alcohol. So one of the bars, Rooster’s, was made into an alcohol-free spot where Muslims could relax and enjoy Western culture without its infuriatingly non-Muslim characteristics.
Similarly, if you tune into CKCU (the community radio station based at Carleton) today you will hear almost nothing but ethnic talk shows spoken in that particular special interest group’s native tongue. Is that what the Billboard charts define as college radio? CKCU was started by Dan Akroyd back in the ’60s as a place to hear commercial-free rock ‘n’ roll you would hear nowhere else, not to push the university’s multicultural agenda.
And if you look at The Charlatan, Carleton’s school newspaper, today you will see a highly censored trade journal that is about as irreverent and daring as the Tulip Festival. Go into the archives of the paper and you will see an editor’s photo from back in the 1970s consisting of a penis wearing sunglasses. In the early ’90s the only pubic hair in the magazine was when they discussed banning my magazine, Vice, on campus.
Today the paper doesn’t even mention genitalia for fear of offending its non-Western readership. So the bars can’t serve booze, the radio station can’t play college radio, and the school newspaper can’t talk about its students. This is the story of the Canadian university. What better place to discuss the ins and outs of multiculturalism?
LOVE AND HATE
Kyle and I quickly made a flyer that had two fists with “love” and “hate” on them and a picture of Jared Taylor’s face. The flyer was a bit incendiary, as all good posters are, but it prompted student groups to google Jared and find out if anyone disliked him. Of course, few went to Taylor’s website (www.amren.com ) or checked any of his writings. Most did what most intellectually lazy leftists do; they checked the Internet for potential enemies. Probably, if the poster featured a flower and said, “The garden of culture, a look at diversity on campus,” nobody would have said a word.
If you google Taylor you will find rhetoric like, “He uses a pseudo science to disguise supremacist beliefs in expert language.” After pressure from googlers at University of Ottawa the Faculty pulled out and the talk was banned. It was painfully obvious where they got their information. Almost everyone opposed to the talk used the terms “pseudo science” and “expert language.” Kiavash Najafi from the political studies student association told Kyle, “we do not wish to spend time and money on discussing racist propaganda, even when it is disguised in expert language.” Bob Kimberly, the president of the communications students association, let slip that he feared Jared’s command of English would be eloquent enough to make everyone else look bad. “That,” he declared, would create “an unfair balance of power.” Similarly queer language was used by Caroline Andrew, the dean of the faculty of social sciences, who told Kyle she “can’t support the talk” because she “doesn’t agree with Jared Taylor’s origins and links.”
Research associate Mohammad Akram said, “If we will promote the idea of Jared Taylor, a time will come in future [when] people will fight together just for color supremacy. Canada is the best country of the world. Like India, where we have beauty and unity in diversity.” (Is there a nation on Earth whose history is more rife with ethnic tension than India?)
The problem, of course, is that Jared Taylor discusses the downside of integration and mass immigration and he is white. Filipina Michelle Malkin says the same things. She even wrote a book, called In Defense of Internment, about the merits of racial profiling, but she can do that because she’s Asian. Black liberal demigod, writer and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston, was passionately against integration, but she spoke during something liberals call “her crazy years.” Los Angeles radio personality Terry Anderson is black. He thinks mass immigration is out of control. You never hear the left talk about him. Or what about Juan Mann (www.deportaliens.com)? Nobody seems more eloquent than this U.S. Hispanic at discussing the problems with diversity and illegal aliens but nobody calls him a white supremacist. Have any of Taylor’s critics been to issues-views.com where blacks furiously criticize affirmative action, immigration, reparations, multiculturalism and much more?
“LEGITIMATE DISCOURSE”
The truth is Jared Taylor has never said anything to imply whites are superior to anyone else. Neither has anyone listed here. The only times you will see racial superiority discussed with any kind of power behind it is when Hispanic nationalists discuss their plans to replace North Americans with Latinos or when you talk to Israelis about why their homeland is the most segregated place on earth. But all of these opinions are “within the pale of legitimate discourse.” They should be discussed, openly, in schools, so students can learn the truth for themselves. Isn’t that what academia is all about? Stirring up the water so the truth can float to the top?
Nobody was willing to discuss it further with Kyle. He offered to make the talk a debate and even promised to get NDP MP Ed Broadbent as an antidote to Jared’s so-called “toxic talk.” But no. The consensus was “I am for free speech but there is no way I am going to let this talk happen.”
Recently I spoke to Stuart Trew of Ottawa XPress, who told me, “Christ, these guys aren’t made of money. They can’t bring to town every hack with something to say.”
The truth is pro-diversity campus groups are made of money. OPIRG receives $98,403 per semester from students at the University of Ottawa. International House receives $52,893 per semester. This means that over four years of study, Kyle and his fellow students will have contributed approximately $1,210,368 to the pros of diversity. The University of Ottawa spent $20,000 having Ralph Nader tell them things they already believed. Taylor is a Yale grad who has written five books, speaks fluent Japanese, has visited every country in the Middle East, and was merely asking for plane fare.
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