Mick Hartley

From the Toronto Star:

Dr. Daniel Drucker may one day win the Nobel Prize for his research paving the way for diabetes wonder drugs such as Ozempic.

Unsurprisingly the University of Ottawa invited him to deliver a lecture on his scientific work last February.

Imagine Drucker’s surprise when the university suddenly disinvited him a week before his scheduled talk.

I think we can guess why. Hint: he's Jewish.

“I was invited to give a ‘named’ (formal) lecture at the University of Ottawa and abruptly, one week before I was supposed to go, that invitation was cancelled,” Drucker told me this week.

“Some pro-Palestinian students had protested that inviting ‘Drucker, a Zionist professor,’ would make them feel unsafe … would be threatening.”

After the fact, the best brains at U of O had second thoughts about their first impulses. Upon reflection, “they admitted that they made a hasty decision” and tried to make it up to him, according to Drucker.

Four months after students dissed him and organizers disinvited him, he was invited back to give the prestigious Morris Kates Lecture at U of O. Drucker was not exactly made to feel welcome.

“My lecture, for the very first time in my life, was interrupted by two pro-Palestinian students holding signs talking about how the U of O invites ‘genocide supporters’ to their campus,” Drucker recalled.

“This is the world that we live in. I was profoundly disappointed.”