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University of Toronto Alumni Demand Ex-Rebel Media Host Be Stripped of Prestigious Leadership Award

Disgraced Rebel Media host's white nationalist views and neo-Nazi ties condemned by award-winning University of Toronto alumni

A letter signed by more than 70 recipients of a prestigious University of Toronto student leadership award is demanding the University “rescind” an award granted to disgraced ex-Rebel Media host Faith Goldy due to her role within the alt-right “white nationalist movement.”

The letter obtained by PressProgress is addressed to the University’s Alumni Association and demands they immediately “rescind Ms. Goldy-Bazos’ Gordon Cressy Award.”

“We are grateful to have been recognized by the Alumni Association and are proud to be among such a distinguished group of people,” the letter states, but adds Goldy’s views are “antithetical to the University of Toronto” because they “sow racial division and stoke hatred.”

The Gordan Cressy Student Leadership Award recognizes “outstanding volunteer contributions made to the University and wider community.”

In a statement to PressProgress, a spokesperson said the University of Toronto had not yet received the letter but would give it “thoughtful consideration.”

Goldy, an alt-right activist with well-documented ties to neo-Nazi groups, was awarded U of T’s prestigious Gordon Cressy Award in 2012 for her volunteer work on “social justice causes.”

University of Toronto

After graduating from U of T’s Trinity College, Goldy (who went by “Goldy-Bazos” during her college years) went on to become a far-right media personality, first as a news presenter on the failed Sun TV channel and later joining Ezra Levant’s alt-right Rebel Media website.

Last year, Goldy’s sympathetic coverage of a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia generated national headlines after she praised an anti-Semitic manifesto that calls for America to become a whites-only homeland for the “Aryan” race and made a guest appearance on a neo-Nazi website that has run targeted harassment campaigns against Jews.

That incident saw Rebel Media condemned as anti-Semitic and white supremacist by a sitting Conservative MP, led several Rebel Media contributors quit their jobs and saw Levant finally fire Goldy over her ties with neo-Nazis.

Even Havergal College, a private Christian girls school Goldy once attended, issued a public statement distancing themselves from their former student:

The open letter from U of T’s distinguished alumni states that since receiving a Cressy Award, Goldy’s activities have only “stained” the University’s reputation:

“Ms. Goldy-Bazos has become a prominent writer and commentator in the white nationalist movement in North America. She has openly expressed support and advocated for the goals of the white nationalist movement, and has appeared as a supportive guest on white supremacist media. Though she may equivocate on whether she identifies as an outright white supremacist, it is a distinction without a difference, as her writing and media appearances lay clear where her views lie.”

The letter comes days ahead of Goldy’s speech at Wilfrid Laurier University this week titled “Ethnocide: Multiculturalism and European Canadian Identity,” suggesting immigrants threaten the racial purity of white Canada.

The anti-immigration event is organized by Laurier teaching assistant Lindsay Shepherd, who became a minor celebrity among the far-right after she showed controversial political videos of Professor Jordan Peterson in a first-year class on writing skills.

Yet even Peterson, a self-styled “free speech advocate” who flirts with the alt-right, has distanced himself from Goldy, saying she is too extreme – Peterson ironically had Goldy removed from his “Stifling of Free Speech on University Campuses” event last November.

“She became too hot of a property for us,” Peterson explained at the time.

But nothing is “too hot” for Wilfrid Laurier University – not even Goldy’s racist ramblings on topics like “white genocide” or the “Jewish Question,” apparently.

The University has stated the event will go ahead as planned because Laurier is a school that welcomes “unpopular ideas,” even as faculty have publicly accused the University of creating “an opening for hate to spill onto campuses.”

UPDATE: On March 26, the University of Toronto’s Alumni Association released a response to the open letter stating candidates for Cressy Awards are “judged according to what they have contributed at the time of the award” and “accordingly, it would be inappropriate to rescind the award granted to Ms. Goldy-Bazos in 2012.”

The response goes on to state “unequivocally” that “bigotry, hate, intolerance and violence have no place on our campuses,” but nonetheless, U of T welcomes the “broadest range of people and free expression of their diverse perspectives.”

Meanwhile, over the weekend Faith Goldy defended herself for reciting a white supremacist creed penned by a violent neo-Nazi terrorist.

 

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