Between 1915 and 1923, the Ottoman government that ruled what is now Turkey massacred between 300,000 and 1.5 million Armenian civilians. Many perished in forced labour camps in the Syrian Desert where Ottoman authorities had deported them. The Treaty of Sèvres, which dismembered the defeated Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I, clearly states that the Turkish government must acknowledge and take legal responsibility for these crimes. The term “genocide” did not yet exist – but these stipulations fall within the parameters of genocide as it’s defined today. Indeed, when the Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin coined the word “genocide” as a defined legal concept in 1943, he had this case in mind: he used the Armenian massacres as an example to broaden his thesis on the Axis powers’ activities during World War II.

However, the politicized nature of genocide recognition today means that it cannot be understood from within a moralizing vacuum. At present, more than 20 countries worldwide, including Canada, officially recognize the Armenian genocide under the 1948 UN Genocide Convention. The Turkish government, though a signatory, still virulently denies these allegations. The U.S. has always avoided weighing in on the subject for strategic reasons.

While the congressional panel’s resolution appears to be a strong moral stance, the likelihood that the administration will allow it to pass to a general vote in the House, much less uphold it should the resolution go through, is low. Turkey is a key American ally in the Middle East. It is stable, secular, and generally pro-Western. The military base at Incirlik is a major hub for U.S. operations in Iraq. In addition, the U.S.’s desire to place more stringent sanctions on Iran will require Turkish cooperation.

Clearly, an angry Turkish government runs counter to U.S. interests. However, the precedent of making genocide recognition a purely pragmatic calculation is worrisome. It helps normalize the use of one of the most heinous crimes imaginable as just another card in the political game. What will happen, for instance, when it comes time to label the events in Darfur of the past decade as genocide? Western oil interests in the region might make their governments hesitant to anger the Sudanese state.

Genocide recognition is characterized as an emotional issue. And while it is emotionally charged, in foreign policy it is a technical and legal term that defines a certain set of relevant historical circumstances. It should be treated as such.

Turkey is still in denial of a significant portion of its political heritage. Though the House’s decision is a noteworthy one, the U.S., through policy errors of its own, has placed itself in a position in the Middle East which makes alienating Turkey, even in an attempt to be morally upright, politically unfeasible. While distance in time by no means diminishes the irreparable damage these crimes wreaked on the Armenian people, we can perhaps be slightly less disturbed by this outcome due to the fact that these atrocities were committed nearly a century ago: the direct perpetrators and victims are mostly long dead.

But in other cases, like in Sudan, categorizing events as genocide or not could have real legal and political impact for people alive today. The precedent set by the debate on Armenia does not bode well for them.

Adrienne Klasa is a U3 Honours student in political science and philosophy, as well as the editor of the McGill Foreign Affairs Review. Write her at mcgillfar.editor@gmail.com.

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Having handed down a guilty verdict in May, Quebec Superior Court Justice André Denis sentenced Désiré Munyaneza with the maximum penalty allowed under Canadian law: life in prison, with no chance of parole for 25 years. The crimes committed: two counts of genocide, two counts of crimes against humanity, and three counts of war crimes.

None of these atrocities were perpetrated in Canada, or anywhere nearby. A Canadian court, however, was condemning Munyaneza for his role as a militia commander for the majority Hutu government during the horrific 1994 Rwandan genocide. For international humanitarian law, this is a breakthrough.

As part of its obligations as a signatory of the 1998 Rome Statute, which set up the International Criminal Court (ICC), Canada was the first nation to enact domestic legislation that allows it universal jurisdiction over humanitarian crimes. Under Canada’s Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act, our judiciary has the power to indict individuals for offenses they may have committed thousands of miles away.

The Munyaneza case was the first test of the Act’s effectiveness. The precedent set by Denis’s decision is unequivocal: Canada will not tacitly accept the legacy of war criminals. By bringing them within our jurisdiction, we as nation have taken a concrete step toward accepting the cosmopolitan obligation to administer justice not just for our own citizens, but also for those who have suffered abominations in other states. I’m sure Kant is smiling down at us, somewhere.

To be sure, the universalization of jurisdiction over humanitarian crimes is still the subject of criticism from some quarters. However, we should always remember exactly where those quarters lie. When such venerable humanitarians as President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan (whose government is responsible for the policy of genocide in Darfur) and former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger (whose policies in Vietnam, Cambodia, Chile, and Angola, to name a few, led to suffering and human rights violations on a massive scale) disparage international criminal law as a violation of national sovereignty, one can’t help but wonder how much more concerned they are about their own locked cabinets of incriminating files.

Accusations that the internationalization of law as propagated by the ICC mandate is just another neo-colonial mechanism that targets the Third World while exempting more powerful nations are not without grounds. The U.S., Russia, China, and Israel have all, for obvious reasons, denied that the Court has jurisdiction over their nationals. So far, all those indicted by the court have been from Africa.

However, that is changing. On Thursday, the United Nations announced that it was backing the findings of the Goldstone Report on war crimes committed by Israel and Hamas during the Gaza invasion and would, if necessary, refer the case to the ICC. The statement remains a gesture, but it still signals that norms are shifting. Even Israel, an ostensibly democratic U.S. ally, is not going to escape international legal scrutiny. Getting the U.S. government to submit to the Court will be another feat entirely, but very slowly the playing field is levelling.

Canada is already playing a leadership role in this process, and it is in a special position to be able to do so. As a first-world nation with a relatively unblemished humanitarian reputation, Canada is unlikely to be accused of hypocrisy or double standards in pursuing the prosecution of foreign war criminals. Our persistence lends legitimacy to the complex enterprise of eradicating international impunity.

Before we go patting ourselves on the back too heartily for the success of the Munyaneza case, we should remember that we too sat back along with the rest of the world and left Romeo Dallaire, commander of the UN peacekeeping forces in Rwanda and one of our own nationals, to helplessly bear witness to “the preventable genocide.” We did not strengthen his mandate. We did not send more troops.

Never again. We have said it too many times, only to necessitate its repetition. In the wake of what has passed, however, we can only offer justice as a small token for all that has already been lost.

Adrienne Klasa is a U3 Honours Political Science and Philosophy student, as well as the editor of the McGill Foreign Affairs Review. Extend your jurisdiction to her at mcgillfar.editor@gmail.com.

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Outside, protesters had gathered waving signs that read “Fuck (my) Bush,” “George Bush=War Criminal,” and “Don’t Duck.” Riot police arrested five people.

I was offered a free ticket. Here was my opportunity to see the man who symbolized everything my political education had taught me to despise. I can hear it all – the lies, the proselytizing, the mispronunciations – from the horse’s mouth.

Yet the question remained in the back of my mind: was I in some way corroborating his legacy by sitting calmly in his presence?
Some would argue yes. There was no yelling or shoe-throwing. Most people laughed at his jokes. There was no uproar when he shat all over democratic accountability: “I didn’t care about the polls; they didn’t matter a damn bit.” If there was adversity in the room, he was only made to feel it minimally. And now, he is laughing all the way to the bank.

Outside, crowds were cheering as his effigy burned. The protestors could not be accused on any level of “participating.”

This divide in action is emblematic of a larger debate that our generation is grappling with: what is the best route for effecting political action? Mobilizing in the street might seem like the most obvious answer – it is visible, it is democratic, and it doesn’t compromise those involved.

Nevertheless, people our age are largely disenchanted with grassroots politics. The protest era faded along with our parents’ ideological aspirations into the rampant materialism of the eighties. The formative years of our understandings of global politics were dominated by the paradigms of the Bush administration – which overtly lied to its own people, capitalized on fear-mongering, and steamrolled the demands of the millions worldwide who protested the Iraq invasion. We are identified as apathetic and careerist; and frankly, given the precedents, these tendencies are understandable, if not acceptable.

Was I rationalizing self-promotion in the name of intellectual interest while indulging in some kind of morbid curiosity?
All of this was on my mind during the speech. By the end of Bush’s presentation, though most of the information wasn’t new, my appreciation for the man’s significance was.

People go on about how Bush was a bobble-head mouthpiece for the powerful hawks in his cabinet. Perhaps, but in the space of those few hours I understood that he is not stupid. He is well-spoken, if familiar, and funny, fielding awkward questions with certainty. Those of us who disagree with him have tended to underestimate him in order to avoid facing the uncomfortable realization that Bush is a daunting opponent. His success was not pure fluke (though the Supreme Court helped). I can appreciate now how he managed to polarize American society. If I had forgotten for a moment what he represented and the discrepancies between what he was saying and the facts, I could almost have liked the guy. This explains how he captured the vote of the vast number of Americans who do not devote much time to politics and so choose based on personal rapport with the candidate. Bush is personable, charismatic, and magnetic. This realization was frightening and, I hope, useful, an insight that I could only have gained by accepting to be on the “inside” for a time.

I’m still unsure how to distinguish “gaining knowledge” from “participating.” What I do know is that the two approaches, protesting and working from the inside out, need to stop being perceived as antithetical. It fractures those who are working toward common ends by different means. Sellout, conspirator, hippy, daydreamer: these words all have their application, yet the lines we draw too often lack nuance.

We need both approaches to work effectively and cooperatively. I resent the assertion in the ad hoc George W. Bush Welcoming Committee’s press release that the only people in attendance at the event would be “other crooks.” This is not a mechanism for mobilizing people effectively; it creates an entity of “others” that is easy to use as leverage but is ultimately too simplistic. Never assume you can encapsulate everyone’s motives in a catchphrase. Should there have been a protest? Absolutely. But that doesn’t negate the contribution that dissenters who choose to get an inside look can also provide.

The constructs of our globalized society are monolithic. As the experience of the Bush administration clearly demonstrates, we will need every means possible if we wish to have an impact.

Adrienne Klasa is a U3 Honours student in political science and philosophy, as well as the editor of the McGill Foreign Affairs Review. Write her at mcgillfar.editor@gmail.com.

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Of late, the club scene has been particularly noxious, as electronic club music has moved from underground innovation to an Urban Outfitters cult with a marketed lifestyle to match. Since the boys of Justice enjoyed their meteoric rise to the mainstream, every 14-year-old girl with an AA headband and fake ID is now joining in the fray, praying for the day when she too will be able to pronounce that she is “with the DJ.”

That’s not to gloss over the good stuff out there – check out Booka Shade, the Bug, and Flying Lotus. However, true to the laws of supply-and-demand, as the market for the scenester club music has expanded, so has the volume of club-geared groups. In the realm of artistic production, mass demand inevitably leads to an exponential increase in the volume of uninspired, unoriginal, and superficial crap – Uffie or CSS anyone?

Enter Keys N Krates, a Toronto-based outfit that is currently taking on the North American club scene, proclaiming to have “reinvented the remix.” The group, formed about a year ago, comprises three members: DJ Jr. Flo (turntables), Matisse (vocals/keys), and Adam Tune (drums). All three were working on different projects in the Toronto area before uniting based on their mutual desire to bring something new to the realm of nightclub music by fusing a live band with a DJ.

“The idea was to create a group that was more of a band, with the DJ as the lead singer,” Matisse explained in an interview with The Daily. “We rehearse live for hours, like a band would, and then we perform the mixes we work out on the spot as part of a set.”

So far, the group has released a number of remixes that are available for download online. Their process of creating a track begins with a sample, usually taken from hip hop or RnB, that the group then remixes, retools, layers with instrumentation, and records live in a studio. Artists used for sampling have included Jay-Z, Aaliyah, Janet Jackson, and Lionel Ritchie.

“We like to call them ‘live remix demos,’ because they are jammed out live and recorded in the same way things were done during the Motown era,” said Matisse. “We were basically just in a room with a lot of seventies vintage amps.”

The tracks themselves are catchy, danceable, and solidly woven together, both technically and musically. They avoid being overly repetitious by constantly evolving and building on the main sequence through subtle variations to create a fugue-like structure. However, the sound in itself as a concept, though enjoyable, is not the main innovation. Rather, it’s all about the “vibe.”

There is something intangibly different about the energy that comes from live instruments as opposed to pre-recorded or electronically generated ones. While quality of sound is definitely part of it, it is also about the connection between performer and audience – the knowledge that the experience is unique in time and space, never identical to another performance. Keys N Krates is bringing this versatility back into the nightclub, one that has long been missing as laptops and digital programming have all but replaced even records and tapes.

“Live musicianship in a nightclub is a totally different experience,” Matisse commented enthusiastically. “You have real instruments with moving parts in there, and because we are actually ‘performing’ a set live it brings energy like what you would get with a band in a live concert.”

About a month ago, Keys N Krates played their most recent show in Montreal, and a high-energy, rollicking good time it most certainly was. The group’s music is by no means experimental; instead, they are taking a solid model that has morphed into something mechanical and giving it back a little soul.

Keys N Krates will be playing a show at Academy Club on Saturday, March 14.

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“Professors will be more focused on supervising Honours theses so that these students can graduate than on overseeing independent studies,” said Professor Andre Costopoulous, one of the two Archeology professors who will continue to teach at McGill next year.

There are currently five archeology professors employed at McGill, one of which is presently on leave. Come September, two more professors will be released from their teaching duties in order to concentrate on their research.

Sabbatical leave is part of the normal cycle of academic life: after six years of teaching, professors are released from their other obligations in order to be able to devote their time to their research and extended field work.

“This time is essential because academics need time to write up and publish their work,” said Costopoulous.

The fact that these leave periods coincide is the result of a fluke, explained Diane Mann, an undergraduate advisor in the Anthropology department.

“The situation is not usual. The sabbatical only happens once every seven years, and generally it doesn’t happen at the same time,” she said.

Nevertheless, the department has been aware of the problem for some time, and has been marshalling resources to deal with it.

“At first we were afraid we would only be operating at 50 per cent capacity, but now I think we will be able to provide students with 75 per cent of course offerings,” said Costopoulous.

Post doctoral students in the department will pick up some of the slack by taking on teaching responsibilities. The department is also looking to bring in sessional lecturers to give some of the courses that would otherwise not be available.

Studying with post docs offers students an opportunity to hear new ideas and perspectives, Costopoulous pointed out. However, they often have less time for students because they are busy trying to complete their own research.

Mann said that students have all been forewarned of the situation and instructed to plan their course selections accordingly.

“We are working with the ASA [Anthropology Students Association] to communicate with students. We are encouraging students to take as many [archeology] courses as possible next term,” she said.

The minor in Archeology was removed as a study option in 2004. Students now only study archeology as a subsection of an Anthropology degree.

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McGill redrafted its contract proposal following last Thursday’s GA – when a fire alarm prevented MUNACA from voting on a strike motion. The motion would have officially mandated a rotating or full-scale strike if an alternative agreement with the University was not reached by Labour Day.

MUNACA has softened its intentions to apply pressure tactics in light of the revised contract, according to MUNACA President Maria Ruocco, who asserted that MUNACA will not immediately resort to drastic action when negotiating with the University.

“While we might have to go there, for the moment we are asking for meetings and waiting to see what happens,” Ruocco said.

The vote was clear – with 62 per cent of the 800 union-members in attendance voting to reject the contract – but Ruocco thought the University’s revised proposal was fair.

“The top quarter of the pay scale would suffer, but for the benefit of the collective. [The Executive] thought it was a good deal,” Ruocco said

McGill offered employees in the top quarter of the pay scale a $300 signing bonus and the rest of MUNACA’s members a 12 per cent pay increase. Union workers would also be granted weekend and night shift premiums for the first time.

Ruocco said that the union rejected the proposal because of the sharp disparity in the wage increases offered to MUNACA members. She cited the University’s willingness increase teaching assistants’ (TAs’) and professors’ wages by increments that outweigh the 12 per cent on the table for MUNACA workers as another possible explanation for the outcome.

According to SSMU VP External Devin Alfaro, McGill’s precarious financial situation may explain why the Administration offers wage increases in small increments to its unions. The University is severely underfunded and is currently $58-million in debt, he added.

“This is Neo-liberalism on the ground,” Alfaro said. “Here we are seeing the result of 20 years of bad public policy. McGill has calculated to transfer underfunding as low down as possible. They are penny-pinching.”

Negotiations with McGill began last December, after MUNACA’s contract expired at the end of the previous month. The union is the largest at McGill with 1,800 members, representing all non-academic support staff, including nurses, technicians, librarians, and clerical workers.

According to Alfaro, the media coverage of the recent TA strike landed the administration knee-deep in bad press for its union-busting tactics. He suspected McGill would try to avoid a similar situation with MUNACA negotiations.

Alfaro said that SSMU will maintain distance in its support for MUNACA’s struggle with McGill and will continue to do so should they decide to strike.

“This is their struggle, and they need to lead,” he said of MUNACA.

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The new location – underneath the Victoria Bridge highway overpass – is not serviced by public transportation and is difficult to access even with a car, according to Karine Triollet, spokesperson for local community organization Action-Guardien.

“For people without their own means of transportation, this is a difficult situation,” Triollet said in French.

Since September, neighbourhood residents have mobilized through Action-Guardien and the Canadian Union of Postal Workers to protest what they see as the beginning of a larger trend of privatization, closures, and deregulation of postal services.

“We have received a lot of support for our campaign from other communities and groups. The post is a public service, and Canada Post has a mandate to keep it that way,” Troillet said.

Canada Post did not inform residents of the scheduled move, leaving them to discover the plans by word-of-mouth last May, according to Triollet.

Christiane Villmet, a Canada Post spokesperson, emphasized that the post office will still service residents in Pointe St. Charles, and is merely relocating since the lease on the current location has expired.

“I understand that people might be attached because it is such a part of the community,” Villmet said in French.

“The new location is still in the neighbourhood, just a little bit further out,” she added.

Villmet also noted the six other postal service locations within a three-kilometre radius.

But Triollet emphasized that those six other locations are franchised outlets that do not offer the same standardized services as an official Canada Post site.

Canada Post has argued that the Pointe St. Charles location has been under-utilized by the area’s 30,000 residents.

However, Triollet said that the office’s current location is essential to the community both for its basic postal services and because it acts as a financial outlet for many of the areas residents who do not have bank accounts. About half its residents still live below the poverty line.

Pointe St. Charles is located in Southwest Montreal between the Lachine Canal and the St. Lawrence River, and is one of Canada’s oldest working class communities.

While its original inhabitants were immigrant laborers from Scotland and Ireland, the neighborhood is now home to one of the most ethnically diverse communities in Canada.

In protest of the move, the Canadian Union of Postal Workers and Action-Gardien encouraged supporters to sign and mail a letter posted on cupw.ca.

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SSMU VP University Affairs Adrian Angus explained that since being appointed Principal, Heather Munroe-Blum has assembled a team of Vice-Pincipals around her – known as the P7 or the Principal’s Seven – who act as her close advisors. Two of the VPs appointed in 2007 have come from corporate backgrounds outside McGill.

VP Public Affairs Michael Goldbloom is a McGill alumnus and former publisher of both The Toronto Star and The Montreal Gazette, and VP Administration & Finance François Roy, formerly a financial manager at Quebecor, Avenor, and Telemedia, was hired to dig McGill out of its $58-million deficit. Roy is the first VP Finance at McGill to have been appointed from outside the university community.

In an interview with The Daily earlier this month, Munroe-Blum defended the choices.

“I think it is fantastic that we have someone with business experience who is working with me and [Provost] Tony Masi on running an over a billion-dollar-a-year organization,” she said.

If students or faculty are concerned with hiring trends, they have little sway over decision-making. According to SSMU President Jake Itzkowitz, the administration hires a recruitment firm to compile lists of potential candidates from both inside and outside academia. An advisory committee then examines the candidates and makes a recommendation to the Principal – who is in no way bound by this advice.

If Munroe-Blum approves, the candidate is presented to the Board of Governors (BoG), the University’s highest governing body, which can then accept or reject the candidate. Senate, the highest academic governing body, has no control over the decision – and according to Angus, BoG rarely rejects the Principal’s choice.

“Essentially the Board just rubber stamps,” he said. “Theoretically, they can reject the Principal’s recommendation, but that hasn’t happened in the past 10 years.”

When Munroe-Blum described the hiring process to The Daily, she emphasized the “advisories and searches” that occur before hiring a new VP or Dean. She said that half of McGill’s VPs and Deans come from outside the University, and that most Deputy Provosts come from inside McGill.

“Far and away it’s balanced in academics – half from within and half from outside – both within James [Administration] and across the Deans,” she said. “I think it’s very healthy.”

Further, in a break from the past, no university administrators currently teach classes, and there has been less fluidity concerning university administrators returning to the faculty ranks.

Angus said that administrators often refer to a push to “professionalize” its directors.

Hire away

McGill’s system for appointing VPs in a closed process fits in with trends across Canada, where universities are turning to more corporate managerial models for their high-level administrations as opposed to the traditional collegiate model of shared governance.

While many see the streamlined process of the corporate model as essential for universities competing in the global marketplace, Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) Executive Director James Turk expressed reservations.

“Other than the Catholic Church, no other institution has survived as well as universities,” Turk said. “This shows that there is something of value in the structure of shared governance.”

The old model of hiring, in which administrators, deans, and principals are appointed from within the university through a democratic process that involved the entire professional community of the university, is fast disappearing.

Turk said the process is being sacrificed in the name of expediency.

“Notions of efficiency often exclude student and faculty participation. Especially in university settings, efficiency is not the only value,” Turk added.

While in North America corporate management models can be found in nearly every major university, Oxford and Cambridge have fought to preserve a shared governance model, and, despite government pressures and financial difficulties, they have won. In 2006, Oxford’s governing body defeated a proposal that proposed modernizing reforms that would have completely changed the governance structure of the 800-year old institution.

The Guardian reported that the proposed changes would have ended self-governance and brought the university under the centralized control of business leaders and politicians outside the university community. Each college at Oxford is still governed independently today.

The management report

In September 2007, a report released by the Institute for Governance of Private and Public Organizations (IGOPP) – an elite task force of university administrators, of which Munroe-Blum is a member – argued for smaller, more centralized, and more exclusive governance.

The report calls for a new approach to selecting the top executive of a university, including “ensuring that both internal and external candidates are considered and that the search process is equally open to both,” and calls for a fully confidential hiring process.

The IGOPP report also calls for smaller boards, of which two-thirds of the membership is composed of “independents” sourced from outside the university community.

Turk noted that nation-wide, BoGs tend to be very strongly corporate.

“We need to remember that universities are governed, not managed,” he said. “Faculty aren’t employees and students are not customers.”

– with files from Kelly Ebbels and Jennifer Markowitz

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