Professors William McNally and David Millard Haskell have written an important editorial directed at all Canadian universities:
It’s one thing to make unsubstantiated claims of systemic racism, but making claims that fly in the face of the evidence is tantamount to propaganda. But false claims are precisely what a diversity administrator adduced last month at the University of Waterloo.
On Jan. 27, the university’s vice-president of equity, diversity, inclusion and anti-racism, Dr. Christopher Taylor, issued a public statement condemning the death of Tyre Nichols. Like George Floyd, Nichols was a Black American who died at the hands of police. Also, like Floyd, there was graphic video evidence.
But a key difference was left out of Taylor’s account — he failed to mention that Nichols’ assailants were five Black police officers. This first omission was a hint of what was to come: Taylor did not intend to let “truth get in the way of a good story.”