In a letter dated April 25, 2001, the Manitoba Human Rights Commission ruled that “it did not appear to the Board that the University’s actions were based on your actual or perceived political beliefs.” The letter was signed by Janet Baldwin (Chairperson). The Executive Director of the MHRC is Dianna Scarth.
You be the judge:
February 26, 2001
Board of Commissioners
Manitoba Human Rights Commission
7th Fl. 175 Hargrave Street
Winnipeg, MB. R3C 3R8
File 00 EN 165
Henry Makow Complaint Against The University of Winnipeg
Dear Board of Commissioners,
Last summer, the Board overruled a recommendation from MHRC staff to dismiss my complaint against the University of Winnipeg for discrimination on the basis of my political beliefs. The legal opinion from the staff lawyer was that since feminism was not a political movement, I could not have been discriminated against.
Seven months have passed and again, I ask the Board to overrule another staff recommendation to dismiss my case. This is the basis of my request.
1)Derek Legge, the Human Rights Officer, has re-framed my complaint to make it harder to prove and easier to dismiss without any investigation. My primary complaint is not that I wasn't rehired because of discrimination, although this is certainly the case. My complaint is that I suffered discrimination because a small group of disgruntled students, who disliked my ideas, made false allegations against me, and the university accepted these allegations as fact, without any genuine effort to determine the truth.
The respondent’s contention that no inquiry was required because the complaint wasn’t formal, is disingenuous. The complaint was certainly taken as having merit. Dr. Rooke told me so herself in our meeting April 19.
In her letter to the MHRC dated August 24, she admits: “in this case there was no reason to suppose malice (or that the complaint was frivolous and vexatious.)” This is the crux of my case. She admits she assumed the letter had merit without any inquiry. She didn’t even speak to me.
She says there was no reason to suspect malice despite that fact that the letter writers were taught that men have oppressed women, and I challenged this assumption.
In the very same letter, the students also complained heatedly that my standards were too high and my marks were too low. Certainly this is another reason to suspect malice.
Had these false charges been made against a feminist, or a gay or colored teacher, they would not have been accepted as fact.
When I wrote a letter to the university saying the students misrepresented my words and actions, I was completely ignored.
In a meeting April 19, Dr. Rooke told me I was anti feminist and, although she denies it now, she did say “anti feminists are anti women.” I have been a newspaper reporter and I have learned to get my quotes straight. On another occasion, Dr. Rooke told me I “beat up my girlfriend”, which is a slander. Under these circumstances, my re employment is certainly a mute point.
In her letter to MHRC, Dr. Rooke writes that I was “disrespectful” of the feminist letter-writers. These students made false and highly incriminating accusations. For example, they said I asked a female student how she lost her virginity. In fact, the whole class could witness (if asked) that the student raised this subject herself, in the context of a discussion of innocence as a spiritual condition. I said, in jest, “Tell us more” and the whole class roared with laughter. Yet Dr. Rooke is concerned only that I, a white male, had been “disrespectful” to the letter writers. She is not in the least concerned that a dedicated member of her teaching staff might have been unjustly slandered by a handful of disgruntled students. This the meaning of discrimination.
2) The University persists in maintaining that I refused to take part in a meeting with the students, and Mr. Legge persists in ignoring my protestations to the contrary. I was ready to meet with the students at any time. I said this to Naomi Levine more than once. It was the students who dallied until the last week of classes. I agreed to participate in the presence of the Chairman of the Department, Neil Besner. He then advised me that Ms Levine, the sexual harassment officer and a student council “advocate” would also be present. On the other hand, he said I could not bring along a student to testify as to what had actually taken place in my class. I felt that this meeting was not intended to get to the truth but rather to extract from me some kind of apology and repentance. I therefore declined to attend.
3) The university says that I breached confidentiality by giving the names of the students to a reporter. I did this so the reporter could get both sides of the story. These students did not have to speak to the reporter. In fact, they responded with alacrity. One was quoted in the as saying she had a nightmare that she stayed after class for help, and I raped her! Another later sought out the Editor of the Winnipeg Sun and said I went around asking many female students how they lost their virginity! Such lies certainly suggest intentional malice. I am currently suing the Sun for defamation.
4) The University of Winnipeg continues to discriminate against me. As Dr. Rooke says in her letter to the Commission August 24,2000: “It is the position of the university that no one is “above” the [university’s] Harassment and Human Rights Policy, and that any member of the University community is entitled to bring forward a complaint.” On May 12, 2000, I filed with the university a formal complaint of discrimination against Dr. Rooke herself, along with Naomi Levine and Neil Besner. Despite the fact that university policy requires that an investigation of all complaints take place within 75 days, my complaint has been ignored.
5) Finally I am concerned with the manner in which the MHRC has handled my complaint. I had intensive discussions with Walter Budge, the original investigating officer, and provided him with documentation showing how false “sexual harassment” allegations are being used to curb free speech in universities across the continent. My case must be seen in the context of a fierce cultural war that is taking place right now. Serious journalists and scholars have documented this cultural struggle. (See enclosed.) They have shown that many feminists are working for something more far reaching than simple equality; they wish to transform society by denying the biological/psychological differences between men and women. The result of this campaign is fewer successful marriages, and birth rates in Canada and the US at the lowest point in history.
I supplied Mr. Budge with the names and numbers of 15 students who could testify that the complaint against me was false. I don’t know if he contacted any of them. Now Mr. Legge tells me it is irrelevant. Far from irrelevant, the fact that false charges were automatically accepted as true is the essence of the discrimination I claim.
Mr. Budge studied the wider cultural and political context of this case and promised that he would file a report before retiring. He did not and I find this disturbing. Two weeks after Mr. Budge’s retirement, Derek Legge took over the case and recommended its dismissal.
We live in a time when the ideals of Western Civilization justice and truth are being trampled and destroyed by zealots who believe white men are responsible for all evil and oppression. They have no difficulty manipulating the truth because they believe truth is a “social construction”, merely a function of power with no basis in reality. Young people are indoctrinated to behave like Maoist Red Guards or Salem witch hunters and “denounce” the “oppressor.” They are being taught that members of the designated “oppressed” groups should gain preference whether they earn it or not. We live in a time when reverse sexism and reverse racism pose the gravest threat to human rights and freedom, and to the finest traditions of our civilization. I am the victim of reverse sexism and I appeal to the Manitoba Human Rights Commission to redress this injustice.
Sincerely,
Henry Makow Ph.D.
