A psychology professor at Mount Allison is getting called out for a personal blog in which she denies the existence of racism in Canada and New Brunswick, and takes issue with movements like Black Lives Matter.

On Monday morning, after a tweet featuring screen-capped highlights from Professor Rima Azar’s blog started circulating online, Mount Allison students started alerting groups on campus, including the Mount Allison Students’ Union.

Union president Jonathan Ferguson says the group received several complaints from students. “We know that there are absolutely more that reached out to the administration directly,” says Ferguson. Ferguson estimates that dozens of Mount Allison students have expressed disappointment with the content of Azar’s blog.

The university administration responded quickly on Monday afternoon, when two Mount Allison vice-presidents wrote to staff and students to acknowledge the complaints received about the blog, and to say that, “internal review processes,” at the university had been initiated.

Acting Vice-President of Student Affairs Anne Comfort, and Vice-President Academic Jeff Hennessy said they would be, “actively looking into this situation to determine next steps.”

Without actually naming either the professor or the blog, the two administrators said that, “serious concerns have been expressed about posts related to systemic racism, sexual violence, gender, and colonization.”

Comfort and Hennessy go on to say that they “neither support nor agree with the inappropriate comments” that have been posted to the blog.

President of the Mount Allison Faculty Association, Matt Litvak, said the union is “aware of and concerned about” the situation, and will be looking into it.

Dr. Azar is an associate professor of health psychology at Mount Allison, and also an adjunct professor at Dalhousie Medicine New Brunswick and at the Université de Moncton school of psychology. She started her blog, called Bambi’s Afkar, in July 2019. Azar is a prolific poster, with 758 posts as of Tuesday, often railing against “wokeism”, “anti-racism”, and “diversity, inclusion and equity”, which she refers to with the acronym DIE. Azar describes what she sees as “destructive forces” in Canadian society, such as the choice of personal pronouns, affirmative action policies, and anti-racism movements. She also criticizes the term BIPOC, which means Black, Indigenous and/or People of Colour, calling it a “stupid acronym” that she herself is “supposed to fit in.”

Azar is originally from Lebanon, and immigrated to Canada decades ago.

Jon Ferguson says the students’ union is concerned about the effect the opinions expressed could have in the classroom.

“While these comments may have been on a blog, they’re still public,” says Ferguson. “And this is a tight knit learning community where students interact closely with their professors. This is something that we’re worried might affect their comfort in the classroom and their comfort even just interacting with this professor. So that’s part of why we’re dedicated to taking this seriously.”

Ferguson says he knows the incident has prompted discussion about the role of academic freedom and freedom of speech. He says academic freedom, “doesn’t necessarily give you the right to say anything you want in a classroom.”

“We realize this is a blog. This is something that’s happening outside of the classroom. But when it comes to freedom of speech overall, that doesn’t mean amnesty from consequence,” says Ferguson. “This professor is free to say what she feels, but students are free to express how upset they are with comments like this.”

Mount Allison is asking that any students with complaints or concerns contact the school’s Anti-Racism Education and Response Team.

CHMA will bring you more on this story as it develops.