services to transfer money to Syria – for instance, to family members living in Syria. The impact of sanctions, while always painful, is particularly deadly during the pandemic, when even advanced nations have struggled to obtain lifesaving equipment. While Canada’s sanctions mostly date back to the Harper era or earlier, the Trudeau government has generally maintained them and even added new ones against Venezuela. Ottawa’s sanctions appear primarily aimed at appeasing the US, which ruthlessly enforces sanctions against regimes it wishes to destabilise or overthrow. Washington also punishes countries and companies that don’t co-operate with its sanctions. Ottawa’s willingness to fall in
line behind Washington is reflected in the fact it doesn’t impose sanctions against US allies Saudi Arabia or Israel, despite Saudi Arabia’s brutal murder of dissident Jamal Khashoggi and Israel’s illegal occupation of the West Bank. Even Israel’s announcement that it plans to annex the West Bank in July has produced no sanctions or criticism from Canada.
T
rudeau’s decision to continue sanctioning 20 nations seems quite out of sync with the spirit of the times, when it’s hard to find a TV commercial that doesn’t proclaim the sentiment that “we’re all in this together.” That spirit of international togetherness has been amply demonstrated by Cuba, which sent Cuban doctors to Italy to
help its overwhelmed health care system and has offered similar medical help to First Nations in Canada. When 36 Cuban doctors arrived in Milan last month, a grateful Italy thanked them and Italians at the airport cheered. Meanwhile, Canada, in the spirit of the international togetherness, rebuffs Cuban doctors, ignores the UN and imposes sanctions on some of the world’s poorest nations CT Linda McQuaig is an author, journalist, and former NDP candidate for Toronto Centre in the Canadian federal election. She is also the author (with Neil Brooks) of Billionaires’ Ball: Gluttony and Hubris in an Age of Epic Inequality, published by Beacon Press. This article first appeared in the Toronto Star.
n DAVID SCHULTZ
The anatomy of a failing university
A
merican universities are failing. They are private or public schools. They could be religiously-affiliated or not. They could be in the east, west, north, or south of the United States. They traditionally emphasised liberal arts. They are facing an enrollment and budget crunch for several years, seeing that the declining number of 18-year-olds in the coming years poses an existential threat. It has a modest endowment. It is not an elite
school. It is a school like the one that many professors teach at. It was failing before Covid-19. It may not be around in five years. With Covid-19, it may be around even less than that. Years ago, I argued that higher education had a failed business plan, one that planted the seeds of its own destruction. It was a plan following the failures of K-12. Now the reality of the failed business plan is imminent. There are many reasons for this failing: l For years it relied on the
10 ColdType | Mid-May 2020 | www.coldtype.net
same demographic of white students to recruit, except that demographic is disappearing. l For years it raised tuition at percentages that far outstripped the cost of living and increases in median household incomes, and now many students cannot afford to go to college. l For years it raised tuition to convince people that the more expensive it was the better a school it was. Except the school did not invest the money in academic programmes.
