racism: Okanagan faculty targeted in hate-mail campaign
Leamore Cohen, The Phoenix (Okanagan U. Col.)

KELOWNA - As many as 30 faculty members at Okanagan University College have received death threats in the mail in the past month.

The letters, all copies of a form letter addressed "Attn: Foreigner," threaten a worldwide "racial holy war" unless all non-Europeans leave North America. The letter specifies that the first victims would be "misguided educators and their indoctrinated progeny."

The letters arrived in plain envelopes with a Kelowna return address. Each envelope was addressed to a college educator.

Ricardo Trumper, a sociology professor who received the hate letter, said that while the targeting of professors was surprising, the letter itself was not.

"This is standard fascist or Nazi fare. The only thing that's new is that we receive it at this particular historical moment," Trumper said.

Police are investigating and say they are treating the letters as a criminal act. Gordon Geary of the Kelowna RCMP's serious crime unit said the letters appear to be motivated by the events of September 11.

The letter reads: "[The] 9-11 attacks on my people have strengthened our resolve on a global scale."

The letter also suggests that people of European decent are now compelled to forcibly expel all members of ethnic minorities from North America.

Trumper said there is a strong link between the hate campaign and the federal government's reaction to September 11 because the letter is directed at foreigners and much of the immigration and new security measures are also directed at outside citizens.

"To be a foreigner in this country right now and in the United States is to have different rights. The courts in Canada have made that distinction. The newly legislated Bill C 36, for instance, establishes that personal rights have to be weighed against national security."

Sociology professor Patricia Tomic, who also received the letter, agrees.

"It is disturbing; not just the letter, but the politics surrounding it. To be deemed 'foreigner' makes you tremendously vulnerable. But on the other hand, it is not surprising because in these times anything is possible.

"September 11 has completely re-shaped the discourse of what is acceptable and what is not."

David Lethbridge, a psychology professor at OUC's Salmon Arm Centre and an anti-racist activist, believes the letters are a part of a much wider effort, possibly organised by the American racist organisation National Alliance.

"I suspect that a local agent received a copy of a similar text over his or her e-mail. The text probably was intended to be sent to non-white professors at universities local to local agents," Lethbridge said.

"A National Alliance agent working in San Francisco, for example, would be expected to send the letter to professors in the San Francisco area. The Kelowna agent probably took the letter and tailored it for a Canadian milieu."

John Pugsley, president of OUC's faculty association, said the letters are an attack on the fundamental principles of places of higher learning. "This is an attack on the very idea of community and on the very idea of the university with its commitment to tolerance, to integrity, tolerance and truth."

"We are tolerant people in a tolerant environment, but that doesn't mean that we will tolerate anything and everything. When individuals or individual groups - racists - are aiming to use the benefits of our toleration in order to destroy our tolerant society, then we must react."

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