Speech

• Saskatchewan recently became one of four Canadian provinces that recognize sign languages as official languages with the passing of the Accessible Saskatchewan Act or Bill 103 in December.
• The bill states, “Sign languages are recognized as the primary languages for communication by deaf persons in Saskatchewan,” including American Sign Language (ASL) and Indigenous sign languages.
• Nationally, the Accessible Canada Act was passed in 2019 also recognizing ASL, Langue des signes du Québec and Indigenous sign languages in Canada.

Access to services, opportunities

• A historic polarization between adherents of sign language and of auditory-verbal therapy (AVT) has hindered provision of educational services for DHH children.
• Under the belief that sign language would hinder oral development, many DHH individuals were forbidden to learn sign language — an attitude which still lingers among some today.

Human Rights Commission findings

• In a 2016 report, the Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission (SHRC) documented that some health professionals were telling parents to avoid sign language in favour of cochlear implants, lip reading and AVT to achieve spoken competence.
• Adherents of sign languages argue in favour of giving children sign language instruction as early as possible.
• The lack of language during critical periods of development, some argue, can lead to language deprivation syndrome, isolation and mental health issues.

Parents need full range of options

• Regardless of good intentions on either side of the AVT versus ASL argument, the real need is to ensure DHH children can reach their developmental milestones.
• In an interview, Robyn Holmes, president of the Saskatchewan Deaf Association, who is also an early childhood and family services specialist for Saskatchewan Deaf and Hard of Hearing Services, said that rather than an either-AVT-or-ASL approach, parents should have a full range of options and that “sign language as the ‘last’ option is not acceptable.” The SHRC also notes parents of DHH children should be provided with a full list of options.

Compounded systemic failings

• In 2016, a case documented by the office of Saskatchewan’s Advocate for Children and Youth demonstrated how systemic failings in educational services are compounded for DHH Indigenous children and youth whose communities are drastically under-resourced.
• The report details cascading failures at multiple levels including the lack of access to language, barriers to health services and other systemic, procedural and policy issues.

Resources for deaf learners

It remains to be seen how K-12 school divisions will respond to making public plans to accommodate deaf students in light of the Accessibility Act. Some resources for DHH learners in Saskatchewan are appearing. For example:
There is a provincial curriculum available to teach ASL and Deaf Culture for high school.
The Children, Communicating, Connecting in Community (CCCC) preschool was opened in 2018 in Saskatoon that offers full access to ASL and English. The preschool serves children who are deaf or hard of hearing and those who have connections to the Deaf community.
St. Philip, a Catholic School in Saskatoon, offers a bilingual/bicultural program for DHH students and Henry Janzen School in Regina offers educational services for DHH learners from pre-kindergarten to Grade 8.
People can take ASL classes and access DHH-related services at the Saskatchewan Deaf and Hard of Hearing Services (SDHHS).

Accessibility plans needed

• Over the next two years, they must develop an accessibility plan that identifies, removes and prevents barriers.
• The bill currently offers no guidelines for the kinds of services or level of accommodations that need to go into the accessibility plans.

Classroom considerations, technologies

• Therefore, all teachers should have access to training in how to communicate with DHH students through both the ASL alphabet and basic conversational and classroom-related signs.
• I have used FaceTime and the Video Relay Services (VRS) to communicate with deaf friends, colleagues and fellow learners.

Money, time and effort needed

Teacher training, as well as reviewing, selecting and preparing both digital and non-digital resources for classrooms and for school-DHH community communication will take money, time and effort. Educational institutions will require support and resources to ensure our publicly funded educational institutions can provide the appropriate services and learning technologies.
Marguerite Koole does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

• A man named Hadi Matar has been charged with second-degree attempted murder.
• He is an American-born resident of New Jersey in his early twenties, whose parents emigrated from Lebanon.
• Review: Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder – Salman Rushdie (Jonathan Cape) Knife is very good at recalling Rushdie’s grim memories of the attack.

• “Let me offer this piece of advice to you, gentle reader,” he says: “if you can avoid having your eyelid sewn shut … avoid it.
• Here, for a number of reasons, Rushdie is not on such secure ground.
• Read more:
  How Salman Rushdie has been a scapegoat for complex historical differences

  Rushdie, who studied history at Cambridge University, described himself in Joseph Anton as “a historian by training”.

• Indeed, a speech he gave at PEN America in 2022 is reprinted in the book verbatim.
• For these intellectuals, principles of secular reason and personal liberty should always supersede blind conformity to social or religious authority.

Old-fashioned liberal principles

• In Knife, though, Rushdie the protagonist confronts a world where such liberal principles now appear old-fashioned.
• He claims “the groupthink of radical Islam” has been shaped by “the groupthink-manufacturing giants, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter”.
• But for many non-religious younger people, any notion of free choice also appears illusory, the anachronistic residue of an earlier age.
• Millennials and Generation Z are concerned primarily with issues of environmental catastrophe and social justice, and they tend to regard liberal individualism as both ineffective and self-indulgent.
• A new book traces how we got here, but lets neoliberal ideologues off the hook

Suffused in the culture of Islam

• The Satanic Verses itself is suffused in the culture of Islam as much as James Joyce’s Ulysses is suffused in the culture of Catholicism.
• In their hypothetical conversation, the author of Knife tries to convince his assailant of the value of such ambivalence.
• He protests how his notorious novel revolves around “an East London Indian family running a café-restaurant, portrayed with real love”.

Attachment to past traditions

• Rushdie discusses in Knife how, besides the Hindu legends of his youth, he has also been “more influenced by the Christian world than I realized”.
• He cites the music of Handel and the art of Michelangelo as particular influences.
• Yet this again highlights Rushdie’s attachments to traditions firmly rooted in the past.
• Part of James’s greatness lay in the way he was able to accommodate these radical shifts within his writing.

‘A curiously one-eyed book’

• Particularly striking are the immediacy with which he recalls the shocking assault, the black humour with which he relates medical procedures and the sense of “exhilaration” at finally returning home with his wife to Manhattan.
• Yet there are also many loose ends, and the book’s conclusion, that the assailant has in the end become “simply irrelevant” to him, is implausible.
• He insists he does not want to write “frightened” or “revenge” books.

• This was despite several brave comeback attempts by Milburn that likewise cited Pataudi as an example.
• Knife, by contrast, is a curiously one-eyed book, in a metaphorical, as well as a literal sense.

Paul Giles does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

• Two of them resigned shortly thereafter.
• Here, Lynn Greenky, a scholar of communication and rhetoric, gives her take on how Shafik handled being in the same hot seat as her colleagues.

How did today’s hearing differ from the one on Dec. 5?

• Of course, they had the benefit of being able to first see what happens when you don’t.
• Shipman in particular made it clear that Columbia is suffering a “moral crisis” on its campus.
• They even thanked the committee for the investigation and asked for the committee’s help to address antisemitism on campus.

What did committee members say about faculty?

• Several members of the Congressional committee singled out Massad, who on Oct. 8, 2023, described the Hamas attack on Israel as “awesome” and “innovative” in an online article, for particular scorn.
• The committee’s chairperson, Virginia Foxx, a Republican from West Virginia, warned that radical faculty remain a huge problem at Columbia.
• If not, she says, Columbia will be brought before the committee again.

Was there any conflict over what is hate speech?

• Shafik seemed reluctant to label students or faculty as engaging in hate and harassment.
• She tried very hard, sometimes unsuccessfully, to assert the need to balance constitutionally protected speech with the educational mission of the university.
• Still, Shafik frequently testified that the policies and structures in place at Columbia prior to the Oct. 7 attack were inadequate.

What action did Shafik and her colleagues say they would take?

• They said they are working on revising policies and practices that will promote vigorous debate while protecting student safety.
• As a result of some of the preliminary recommendations of Columbia’s Task Force on Antisemitism, the university has updated the reporting and response process regarding harassment and discrimination.

How will all this affect free speech on campus?

• Certainly, a college or university has a compelling interest in protecting its students, faculty and staff’s freedom, safety and integrity.
• Often, when colleges and universities undertake the task, I believe it is the freedom to speak one’s mind that suffers.

Lynn Greenky does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.