With some consternation it was announced that an alleged Canadian academic showed up in Teheran for the world celebrations of hatred against Israel. It has forced the university to distance itself from antisemitism:

“anti-Semitism in particular is so abhorrent to what the university stands for.”

At best, this is a big deal in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, where Shiraz Dossa, the supposed professor, is said to work: St. Francis Xavier University. No ties to Gritzbollah have been announced but Dossa is a self-proclaimed Chomski fan.

Dossa got a free trip to Tehran. Why? Nobodies are always trying catch some attention, whether in or outside the academy. The more people in Canada talk about the trip, the more the Iranians and the bonehead political scientist from UT get their kicks. Before this week, no one in political science circles had heard of this guy.

To give him the benefit of the doubt, one would have to conclude that Dossa is just a judgement-impaired useful idiot.

In an interview with the Globe and Mail published Wednesday, Dossa said he did not realize beforehand he would be part of an exercise in anti-Semitism, and repeatedly stated his belief that the genocide of six million Jews during the Second World War is a historical fact. Dossa called anyone who disputes the slaughter of Jews during the Second World War a “lunatic.”

Anne Applebaum has it right. Writing about the long string of notorious prophets of hate who congregated in Tehran, she says:

The guest list was selective: No one with any academic eminence, or indeed any scholarly credentials, was invited.

The alleged professor is no professor at all. Shiraz Dossa is likely an affirmative action graduate of the University of Toronto. Lending credence to a “lecturer” is a little too much. As a lecturer, the coward who hides behind his child daughter has less permanence in the university where he works than the mold found in the residences bathrooms.