Want to create an interactive transcript for this episode?
Podcast: North Star with Ellin Bessner
Episode: Ottawa’s Jewish community has a message for their school board: 'Nothing about us, without us'
Description: On Sept. 13, 2022, the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board held a special meeting. They were finally set to discuss a brewing fiasco in which the board, last spring, disinvited Irwin Cotler, Canada’s special envoy on combatting antisemitism, from giving a speech to senior staff. In his stead, they invited a professor with a deep background in Palestinian human rights and anti-racism education.
The move angered the local Jewish community, sparking a new battleground in the ongoing war between pro- and anti-Israel activists, which is increasingly being played out in government departments, university campuses and public school boards just li...