WSD Superintendent apologizes after in-service told terrorism is ‘resistance’

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The Superintendant of the Winnipeg School Division (WSD) apologized to about 2,200 teachers and 3,500 staff members after a speaker at their in-service on Wednesday said, “Resistance to colonialism is not terrorism.”

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The statement by best-selling author Christopher Emdin was highlighted on the centre-ice scoreboard at the Canada Life Centre at the in-service at the $50,000 event. Emdin is an associate professor of mathematics, science and technology at Teachers College at Columbia University.

“There is no circumstance when terrorism should be excused,” WSD Matt Henderson said in a statement to attendees.

He told employees, “Excusing terrorism by trying to downplay it and reframe it as resistance to colonialism cannot be the lessons we pass on, and the speaker’s view does not reflect the views of the leadership of WSD in this context.”

“My immediate action is to send a formal apology to all of you and assure you all that our focus is on and must be on, Indigenous education, reconciliation, and equity for all. There is no equity in terrorism.”

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A Jewish teacher who has asked not to be identified to protect her safety walked out of the session along with dozens of others.

“This is about Canadian values and the degradation of it by people who are negligent. You have to vet the people you have speaking at events like this and what they stand for. In light of all the things that have been happening at Columbia University, they had to do their due diligence.

“Today is an extreme example of what’s been happening around the Division with discriminatory behaviour and differential treatment,” she said, referencing other previous professional development days and speakers at workshops.

“When you have a main speaker who encourages terror under the guise of truth and conciliation it’s either wilful or negligent, and in opposition of what we value as Canadians. When you connect terrorism in dialogue that is supposed to be about uplifting out students and creating environments that are inclusive and culturally responsive, you create unsafe spaces for both students and staff.”

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The teacher said, “Matt believes that apology is sufficient but if he and his trauma re not engaging in learning about anti-semitism, the apology is just empty words.“

The Sun has learned Emdin was scheduled to facilitate a portion of the WSD administrative day at the Leaf on Thursday, which is mandatory for every principal and vice-principal.

Tamara Gottlieb is co-founder of JEF — Jewish Educators and Families Association of Canada — which has a chapter in Winnipeg.

She told the Sun, “As I understand it, the speech he gave is in keeping with the themes of speeches he typically does. The school board can’t say this is ‘off-topic’ for this speaker.”

She said this is the second incident in a week with school divisons in Winnipeg.

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The Seven Oaks School Division sent an email to staff to mark Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, mentioning “the tragic events of October 7th”

The email included documents from anti-Israel educators on the “conflict” between Israel and Palestine.

“The truth is that in both these cases, the leadership in the boards have moved very quickly to apologize about the false information,” Gottlieb noted, but added “the question is how to do we avoid these incidents in the future?”

“Clearly there is a province-wide issue with both vetting content and the very sad and unfortunate use of equity to spread false and libellous information affecting the Jewish community.”

Shai Davidai, an assistant professor at Columbia and a Jewish civil rights activist, explained that “professors have this way of conveying the message they want to convey without saying the words that will get them into trouble.”

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Davidai believes that while the event was supposed to focus on Indigenous education, “the words that were on the screen did not say Indigenous people’s rights. The words were “resistance.” Professors know how to use words. If he wanted to say something else he would have said it.”

“If this was against any other minority in the world, we would call it for what it is, dog-whistling (and) this person would have been fired before his airplane landed at JFK.”

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