Julie Vig

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE (FREDERICTON, August 18th, 2025) A group of 413 Canadian and Canadian-based scholars, athletes, sports journalists, and sports officials have signed a public letter calling on Tennis Canada to cancel the Davis Cup tournament with Israel this September in Halifax. Signatories include three United Nations Special Rapporteurs, four-time Olympian distance runner Mohammed Ahmed, two members of the Palestinian women’s soccer team who compete for York University, a former Canadian Olympic beach volleyball coach, sports journalists Shireen Ahmed and Ian Kennedy, public intellectuals and activists Naomi Klein and Avi Lewis and some of Canada’s most distinguished and internationally-recognized scholars. The letter is signed by prominent individuals from 46 different academic institutions in Canada, as well as by Canadians at prominent global institutions. One hundred and six of the signatories are based in Atlantic Canada, where the event is slated to occur. The call to cancel the Davis Cup event comes amidst rising condemnation of Israeli conduct in Gaza and the West Bank, which leading legal scholars, activists and human rights groups have described as a genocide. Given the ongoing genocide in Gaza, the letter says that allowing the competition to go ahead is “unconscionable” and calls on the Canadian government to prevent Canadian athletes from competing against Israeli athletes in all international sporting competitions. Despite Tennis Canada’s claims that the event isn’t political and is just about playing tennis, the letter states in part that Canada should follow the lead of other nations who “refuse to legitimize Israel’s crimes” by withdrawing from international sporting competition. “This includes Jordanian tennis player Abdellah Shelbayh, who recently withdrew from a tennis competition in Greece after being slated to play an Israeli athlete,” the letter says. The letter points to the use of sporting sanctions in South Africa as a meaningful …

“Given the ongoing genocide in Gaza…we call on Sport Canada and Tennis Canada to forbid Canadian athletes to compete against Israeli athletes at the Davis Cup and all other international events.”

- 413 🇨🇦 academics, athletes + sports journalists, inc 3 former UN special rapporteurs + an Olympic 🥈ist

18.08.2025 14:09 — 👍 657    🔁 228    💬 11    📌 27

The logics that made transatlantic slavery last for over 400 years remain a steady underpinning for how people understand in everyday ways who deserves to live and who deserves to die. Free Palestine. Let my people go.

26.07.2025 20:53 — 👍 145    🔁 31    💬 4    📌 2

I don’t think anyone is prepared for what they just did w/ ICE.

This is not a simple budget increase. It is an explosion - making ICE bigger than the FBI, US Bureau of Prisons, DEA,& others combined.

It is setting up to make what’s happening now look like child’s play. And people are disappearing.

03.07.2025 18:58 — 👍 97804    🔁 38058    💬 4495    📌 2678

Cover art for Francesca Albanese's report From Economy of Occupation to Economy of Genocide

In her unparalleled new report, Francesca Albanese comprehensively indicts economic complicities with "the Israeli illegal settler-colonial enterprise in the occupied Palestinian territory, which now functions as
a genocidal machine."

You must read the whole report.

www.ohchr.org/sites/defaul...

02.07.2025 02:33 — 👍 232    🔁 140    💬 5    📌 15

call me crazy but I don't think we should.

19.06.2025 23:35 — 👍 2633    🔁 757    💬 33    📌 11

We did the math on AI’s energy footprint. Here’s the story you haven’t heard. The emissions from individual AI text, image, and video queries seem small—until you add up what the industry isn’t tracking and consider where it’s heading next.

Yes, it's long. Yes, it's complex. Yes, it's detailed. And yes, it will make you sad unto nihilistic depression. But it's also necessary to read because AI is going to fuck the planet beyond expression. www.technologyreview.com/2025/05/20/1...

31.05.2025 12:37 — 👍 635    🔁 405    💬 12    📌 38

Protest in New York City on 26th Street.

New York Fucking City. A full mile of people filled to the brim. Fascism is going to lose.

05.04.2025 19:12 — 👍 32653    🔁 5080    💬 496    📌 303

Who actually runs Columbia University? | Arjun Appadurai and Sheldon Pollock Trustees aren’t academics – and they’re often political wolves in sheep’s clothing. We need reform to save the American university as we know it

02.04.2025 00:22 — 👍 1    🔁 1    💬 0    📌 0

Do we have until the end of the day on April 1 to submit a proposal? Thanks!

29.03.2025 18:24 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

Disgruntled that admissions into gender studies & in indigenous studies (to name a few) is suspended at York. How easily we turn our backs on the first EVER program in gender studies in Canada! Also, we only abide by TRC commitments to "indigenize" our programs when it's trendy?

20.02.2025 01:09 — 👍 13    🔁 6    💬 1    📌 1

Friends and colleagues: Please share widely within your circles and write to York administration to protest this devastating decision.

23.02.2025 14:49 — 👍 3    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0