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I try not to think too much about the current president of the United States — it’s just too depressing — but it’s been hard to look away as he tries to wriggle his way out of the war he started in Iran.

Donald Trump, the U.S. commander-in-chief and leader of the free world, has other things he’d rather be doing, mostly to do with the real estate world he appears to miss badly.

He’s dug up the backyard at the White House and has a ballroom half built but has once again been ordered to halt by a judge. He’s got a new helipad underway a few steps away but is demanding changes because the lawn evidently slopes in a displeasing manner. He’s mad at D.C. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro for admitting his reflecting pool project wasn’t sabotaged by Olympic canoeist David Hearn but was bungled by his own administration, and he’s determined to push ahead with renovations to a local public golf course despite pushback from locals concerned about the destruction of biking and hiking trails and a grove of cherry trees.

With all this important business at hand — fussing about endlessly over building projects he can mostly see from his window — the war he launched keeps getting in the way. He’s retreated on pretty much every aim he set when he engineered the conflict, yet the remnants of the regime he pledged to obliterate won’t let him quit and go home to play with his bulldozers.

The latest we’ve heard is that he’s willing to call it quits in return for a few token concessions. He wants Iran’s leaders to promise they’ll let ships pass through the Strait of Hormuz more or less unmolested, and without charging any fees. That’s how it worked before he started blowing up their country, and most likely still would work if he’d keep the missiles in check, so it’s not a lot to ask. Given the carnage, the deaths, the destruction and the disruption the war caused you could say it’s the absolute minimum they could do. Trump could pretend he’d won the dispute, wipe his hands of the mess he made and get back to things he understands.

But the regime won’t co-operate.

It’s impossible to admire Iran’s leadership, brutal murderers that they are, but it has to be admitted they’ve taken the measure of Donald Trump and are employing that understanding with consummate skill.

America’s first president would have understood Tehran’s thinking when the U.S. attacks began in February. George Washington knew, 250 years ago, that the way to defeat the British was simply to outlast them. Survival was victory. Like those revolutionaries, Iran’s task was to avoid a direct confrontation with the much stronger enemy, enduring the onslaught until U.S. authorities tired of the battle and began seeking an exit.

It took eight years to wear down the British in an age when transport and communications took much longer; today’s administration lacks that level of wisdom and grit. The Trump White House is ready to call it quits after less than six months.

The lack of resolve was foreseeable from the start. Recent U.S. history is littered with examples of presidents ordering up conflicts with no apparent idea of how to eventually get out. The last time the U.S. exited a major military confrontation with a well thought-out and effective plan for the aftermath was three-quarters of a century ago when it helped rebuild Europe on a democratic basis out of the ashes of the Second World War.

Since then, presidents have sent off troops to a hodgepodge of conflicts from Korea to Vietnam to Iraq to Afghanistan — and now to Iran — only to depart years later after catastrophic loss of life and little gain to show for it.

Again and again, the United States set off with no real understanding of the country, the people or the culture it was attacking. Until the very end it failed to understand North Vietnam’s willingness to sacrifice lives to whatever extent required. It entered Iraq expecting to be hailed as liberators, with a vague plan to somehow Americanize a country with 6,000 years of non-democratic rule. It spent 20 years seeking to rebuild Afghanistan after 9/11, only to have the Taliban return just two weeks after its chaotic departure.

In all those cases, their opponents were happy just to see U.S. forces leave. No one thought of asking concessions: just go, and take your western ideas with you. In Iran things look different: the surviving powers want America to pay a price for the turmoil it set loose.

There’s no more talk in Washington of Iran’s leadership being eliminated, its people freed from the yoke of repression or an end brought to decades of support for regional terrorist groups. The latest plan would see Oman and Iran sharing management of the strait, enabling ships to pass as long as they stuck to fixed routes. No tolls would be charged, but the two countries would share revenue from a “service fee” that amounts to the same thing.

If accepted, it would represent a clear defeat for the U.S., handing Iran a degree of control over a crucial waterway previously open to all, while allowing it to make a profit to boot. That might be humiliation enough, but with agreement supposedly near, Tehran upped the ante with a list of new demands seemingly designed to ensure that if Washington wants out it must be humbled in the process.

A statement issued Saturday by the leader of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard proclaimed the strait won’t open until the U.S. “corrects its behaviour,” ceases issuing threats, stops blocking Iranian ports, lifts all sanctions, unfreezes Iranian assets and agrees to pay for the vast war damage it caused.

No doubt, there will be some fiery words posted on Truth Social, which now charges US$100,000 (C$139,000) a month for wealthy investors to get preferred access to the president’s thoughts. Iran seems unmoved by such outbursts, however, even when all the letters are capitalized.

It understands the U.S. better than anyone in the administration guessed, and seems particularly attuned to the weaknesses and character flaws of this particular president. It’s using his lack of focus and discipline against him, weaponizing his impatience and meagre attention span. It’s looking ever-more likely that when Trump leaves the scene, the despots he sought to oust will still be around to bid him adieu.

National Post

• Conrad Black: Iran stands no chance against Donald Trump
• Opinion: The logic of Iran’s brinkmanship

There is clear and convincing evidence of declining trust in western universities, and restoring it requires that their leaders ask a fundamental question: what does trust require of us? In administration, teaching and research, recruitment and retention, protecting our campuses and all who come lawfully to them — what does trust require? As places of free inquiry, are they built on trust?

Trust is the confidence that policies and practices reflect reasons why universities exist and receive wide public support. It does not end precipitously; it erodes over time because of repeated failures to earn and maintain this confidence. There are many examples of where this has happened in the modern era.

The latest example is that of Cambridge professor Jason Arday, a Black professor of the sociology of education. With a PhD from Liverpool’s John Moores University, he made claims about his history, mental and physical struggles, athleticism and philanthropy that have been widely celebrated in the media and at Cambridge. They have also been contested, and have been joined by an accusation of plagiarism in his PhD thesis.

The divides are predictable. Arday’s supporters see the questions and criticisms as the playing out of racism; his critics see his supporters as avoiding unsettling questions that bear on his employment and reputation.

The question here is not whether the claims about Arday are true. The question is whether there is sufficient reason to enquire further and to determine whether or not they are accurate. With respect to plagiarism, the basic rule in the academic world is that you must not pass on another’s work as your own. The case against Arday does not rest on rumour or innuendo; it rests on a comparison between his PhD thesis and the work of other scholars. Cambridge’s initial claim that Arday’s thesis was at another university (John Moores) and that the issue was for that university to determine, was not convincing.

Allegations of plagiarism must be carefully investigated but the evidence is available and, if the allegation against Arday is confirmed, it affects his credibility and place of employment, as well as that of the university that awarded his PhD.

The claims about history, mental and physical struggles, athleticism and philanthropy are of a different order. They may be material to his employability though their immediate impacts are on character and reputation, and, if proven, on his credibility and stature as a Cambridge professor.

On Aug. 5 Cambridge reversed its initial position that Arday was “the victim of a vile campaign” and announced that it “had begun an investigation following new information about Prof. Arday’s academic qualifications and honorary appointments.” Following the announcement, Arday resigned from the university.

When we ask the question that opens this column (what does trust require from the University) this is the answer, and better late than never. Universities cannot remain silent and walk away from problems they encounter; the restoration of trust requires that they act.

National Post

Peter MacKinnon has served as the president of three universities and is a senior fellow of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute and the Aristotle Foundation.

• Peter MacKinnon: Yale report on declining trust in higher education should be read
• Michael Higgins: Lessons for Canada from the U.K.’s DEI plagiarism scandal

Civilizations die from suicide, not murder, as a famous historian once said. And Canada is in the process of administering MAID to itself, says author and professor Gad Saad. He discusses his new bestselling book, “Suicidal Empathy: Dying to Be Kind,” with Brian Lilley. And he explains the fatal flaw of excessive empathy — and how Canada is rapidly succumbing to it. Radical values imposed by our institutions, embodied in the extreme by the last prime minister, frame our history as shameful. They have led us to embrace immigrants who reject us. And they have made us tolerate the intolerant. It’s why Saad says he’s moving out of Canada, although he explains how our government isn’t making it easy for him to leave. (Originally recorded for a Toronto Sun video, June 26, 2026.)

• FIRST READING: He’s Canada’s number one author, and he’s leaving Canada for safety reasons
• Gad Saad: The Cult of diversity, inclusion, and equity destroys science

On Oct. 17, 2023, immediately following a deadly explosion in the parking lot at Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) posted a statement on X unequivocally blaming Israel for a “massacre.”

Satellite imagery, intelligence assessments and forensic evidence and media investigations swiftly pointed to strong evidence that an errant Hamas or Islamic Jihad rocket was the cause. Yet nearly three years later, MSF’s accusation remains online.

In July, a National Post article by Dave Gordon gave MSF an opportunity to explain that X post — and the organization’s broader conduct — in response to a new report published by EiGHT, an initiative established by professionals from leading international NGOs to strengthen accountability across the human rights and humanitarian sectors.

Based on testimony from more than 70 current and former staff across nine organizations, including MSF, the report contains evidence of flawed research, retaliation against staff who filed complaints and persistent failures to address antisemitism.

As a former long-time MSF-USA employee, and a co-founder of EiGHT, I believe MSF squandered an opportunity to demonstrate accountability.

Responding to Gordon, MSF acknowledged that it “is not an investigative body and cannot determine responsibility” for the Al-Ahli explosion. So why did the organization categorically accuse Israel before evidence emerged? And why won’t it remove the post?

MSF’s public voice is ostensibly guided by its principles of independence, neutrality and impartiality, as well as its commitment to témoignage — bearing direct witness to human suffering and speaking hard truths.

Israel is certainly not beyond reproach, and MSF has appropriately documented the devastating humanitarian consequences of its military campaign. It has legitimacy to cite violations of international humanitarian law. But only if it tells the full truth.

While MSF met the low bar of condemning the October 7 attacks in an online FAQ , I am not aware of statements where it has forcefully called on Hamas to cease deliberately endangering civilians by militarizing hospitals or using private homes as firing positions, among myriad other violations. Indeed, I am not aware of any statements where it has called Hamas to account in even the mildest terms.

More alarming is MSF’s treatment of Jewish staff members.

I witnessed — and was the target of — antisemitic remarks, tropes and insinuations at headquarter offices and in the field. Colleagues who knew I’m Jewish told me to my face that Israel had no right to exist. As at many NGOs referenced in the EiGHT report, denial of millennia of Jewish history and Israel’s legitimacy appears prevalent with some within those organizations.

Since the Hamas massacres on Oct. 7, 2023, criticism of Israel within MSF has transcended necessary and legitimate political discourse to open expressions of unhinged anti-Zionism indistinguishable from antisemitism.

As the EiGHT report documents, MSF’s internal communications — including posts on its “Souk” portal — often feature anti-Israel and anti-Jewish invective.

After I called out antisemitism on the platform, one respondent warned me not to play the “Jewish card.” Another described Israel as “a racist, Nazi and genocidal state.” Others questioned my humanity and my legitimacy as a humanitarian. One declared that the world must be liberated “from the grip of Zionism.”

Despite these violations of the Souk’s terms of use, which prohibit bigotry, hate speech and personal attacks, Souk administrators let the remarks stand. Notably, I have not seen a single MSF leader condemn them.

Indeed, leadership has contributed to the vitriol, deepening a permissive environment for the open expression of anti-Jewish sentiment. The immediate past president of the MSF-USA board of directors wrote on the Souk that Israel is an imperialist state that follows “white supremacist logic,” and that we must all “decolonize our minds.”

Much of it is unabashedly public.

Social media posts by current and former MSF officials traffic in anti-Jewish hate, including age-old blood libel tropes . A former international president declared that “Zionists” share the blame for the Tree of Life Synagogue massacre in Pittsburgh in October 2018.

In May 2025, in a since-deleted X post, the general director of MSF-UK expressed gratitude for a donation from the Irish rap group Kneecap. Months earlier, the band waved Hezbollah’s flag onstage and chanted, “Up Hamas, up Hezbollah” — two designated terrorist groups sworn to Israel’s annihilation and soaked in both Jewish and Palestinian blood. The widely publicized stunts led to a (since dropped) terrorism charge. MSF-UK defends accepting the donation, saying that Kneecap claimed it “did not support Hamas or Hezbollah.”

Still, quite the company for a humanitarian organization to keep.

Perhaps nothing better illustrates MSF’s betrayal of Jewish colleagues than the typical double standard.

After a spate of brutal attacks on Asian-Americans in New York City during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, MSF-USA leadership appropriately circulated an internal message of solidarity, emphasizing emotional support services available to staff affected by the violence.

Not long after, during the May 2021 conflict between Israel and Hamas, antisemites beat Jews in the streets, including not far from MSF’s Manhattan office. A fellow Jewish colleague and I requested that a supportive message be sent to the staff. Request denied.

Solidarity, it seems, depends on the victims’ identity. Perhaps because the Jews, after all, had it coming thanks to the actions of a state thousands of miles away. Needless to say, No humanitarian organization committed to impartiality should adopt such reasoning, much less normalize it.

MSF’s response to EiGHT’s report reveals that the organization has learned little, if anything. Rather than addressing documented examples of ideological capture, it offered stock assurances.

In its statement to the Post, MSF said it “understands how dangerous antisemitism is” and is “committed to taking it seriously.” It added that antisemitism expressed by staff is “unacceptable and fundamentally incompatible with our humanitarian principles.”

Please. That’s just gaslighting.

While MSF commands enormous respect for its humanitarian work, moral authority is not self-sustaining. It’s predicated on genuine introspection, with the honesty and rigour it demands of others. It also requires confronting, accepting and rectifying uncomfortable truths.

The Al-Ahli post was neither a mere communications failure, nor — as the EiGHT report shows — were my experiences isolated incidents.

Together, they force a fundamental question: is MSF willing, or even able, to confront its own blind spots? Or will they ultimately have to be held to account by others?

National Post

Michael Goldfarb is the founder and principal of Tailwind Communications LLC, a strategic and crisis communications consulting boutique. He worked in communications at Doctors Without Borders-USA from 2005 to 2021 and is a co-founder of EiGHT.

Thinking back to the summer of 1976 elicits a wave of memories that have nothing at all to do with reaching the adolescent milestone of making out with my first boyfriend. Rather, what I remember so nostalgically about that summer is the feeling of excitement as Montreal — my city! — hosted the Olympic Games.

Throughout the previous school year, lessons had been crafted around Olympics content. I still remember learning the Games’ motto, “Citius, Altius, Fortius.” which remains the extent of my knowledge of Latin. Fifty years later, I still have my official Olympic photo albums, in which I carefully arranged programs, ticket stubs and blurry Kodak Instamatic photos of the events I attended.

It’s these memories that led me online to view the McCord Stewart Museum’s virtual exhibition commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Montreal Olympics, “ Beyond the Games: Montreal’s Olympic Story .” Funded by Digital Museums Canada, which is managed by the Canadian Museum of History, a federal Crown corporation, this virtual exhibition is “designed for youth aged 12 to 17” and “offers a unique opportunity to pass down memories, stories and knowledge from one generation to the next.”

The exhibition is a delightful trip down memory lane. For me, the highlight was an interview with a jovial senior, seated next to his oh-so-’70s polyester Olympics uniform on a mannequin, reminiscing about his unforgettable teenage experience working as a stadium host.

The exhibition tells the Montreal Olympics story, warts and all, including the rampant corruption, skyrocketing costs, construction strikes and the mayor’s “Olympic clean-up campaign” that saw the arrest of some 200 gay Montrealers.

Nor does it shy away from controversies related to foreign conflicts. Over a full page, it describes in intricate detail two political issues at the Games: that 32 countries, mostly African states, boycotted the Games due to the presence of New Zealand, whose rugby team had toured South Africa, which had been banned from the Olympics since 1964 because of apartheid; and that Canada, because it had officially recognized the People’s Republic of China, refused to allow Taiwan to compete under its usual name, Republic of China.

But that degree of detail abruptly disappeared several pages later, when it came to the subject of security at the Games. The entire security operation was distilled into one vague sentence: “The tragedy that had occurred at the preceding 1972 Games in Munich led Montreal to implement extensive security measures; as a result, there were no incidents of violence.”

No explanation of what that tragedy was: a Palestinian terrorist group called Black September murdered 11 members of the Israeli Olympic team.

The online exhibition is an abridged version of the McCord’s onsite exhibition called, “Montreal 1976: An Olympic Feat,” which has been running since late March. In the museum version, the panel about security defines “the tragedy” to which the virtual version refers: “Munich 1972 marked Olympic history because of the terrorist attack that claimed the lives of 17 people and led to a 36-hour suspension of the Games.”

No mention that 11 of those “people” were not random victims from random countries, but all Israelis, and that the only non-Israeli victim was a West German police officer. No specification that the remaining five people whose lives “were claimed” were not victims, but the terrorists themselves. This basic information appears in the first sentences of a Google search overview.

In both the online and onsite exhibitions, given the intricate details about virtually all aspects of the Games, including the foreign politics, omitting the most essential facts of the 1972 Munich Massacre could not possibly have been an oversight. At best, it was incompetent curation. At worst, the museum was trying to pre-empt a backlash from anti-Israel activists, should it dare identify the perpetrators and the victims, lest Jewish victimhood undermine Palestinian victimhood, the cause du jour. Either way, it was a gold-medal performance in Jewish history erasure.

Erasing modern Jewish history seems to be a trend of Olympic proportions these days. Even erasing ancient Jewish history. In his June article in the Free Press, Roy K. Altman — a U.S. federal judge, author and ancient history buff — provided several examples of artifacts at the British Museum whose descriptions strangely neglect to mention their major significance in connection with documenting the ancient Jewish presence in the Levant. Given that the anti-Israel propaganda machine has been cranking out the false narrative that Jews are not indigenous to the region, this matters.

Closer to home, there is the “Palestine Uprooted: Nakba Past and Present” exhibit at the federally funded Canadian Museum for Human Rights. In an appalling example of activist-hijacked content, it presents a one-sided, it’s-all-the-Jews’-fault story of an unprovoked expulsion of 750,000 Palestinian Arabs in 1948 from the newly established State of Israel.

The narrative on display is devoid of critical historical context, such as the fact that this displacement occurred as a direct result of a war started by the Arab countries that invaded Israel after rejecting the two-state solution proposed by the United Nations, which — also not mentioned — the Jewish leadership had accepted. Conveniently absent, also, is the fact that Jewish leaders publicly implored Palestinian Arabs to remain in Israel, promising them safety and full civil rights, as declared in the state’s Declaration of Independence, and which the Arab-Israeli population exercises to this day.

My written complaint to the McCord two weeks ago went unanswered, so I tipped off a reporter and he emailed questions to museum administrators. Two days later, they finally replied to him, stating that they had just rectified the issue on the online exhibition. They said nothing about revising the panel at the onsite exhibition. Nor did they provide any explanation as to how and why this tragic event in Olympic and Jewish history had been whitewashed by the historians and curators behind these exhibitions in the first place.

National Post

• Terry Newman: Consultants for human rights museum’s ‘Nakba’ exhibit are hardened anti-Israel activists
• Barbara Kay: The Olympic stadium is a disaster, not ‘Quebec culture’

By Geoff Russ and Warren Mirko

In British Columbia’s northwest, the constitutional trappings of Canadian governance are being replaced and the public is not having a say.

Across the province, more and more First Nations governments are making claims to vast swatches of land. Some of the most consequential claims are those of the Tahltan Nation, which has identified 95,933 square kilometres of land as its own territory. That’s about 11 per cent of the entire province. The consequences will be much greater than mere land transfers.

B.C. is negotiating what it calls a “comprehensive reconciliation agreement” or “foundation agreement” with the Tahltan and other groups, which is structured around recognition of Aboriginal title. The deal is slated to give enhanced control over boundaries and the local economy to the Tahltan, while still providing government cheques to the group.

The province has already begun delegating authority to the Tahltan through new agreements under Section 7 of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act (DRIPA). These agreements give the Tahltan new authority over the proposed Eskay Creek Mine Revitalization project and the existing mine, which has been in operation since the 1970s. Under the new scheme, these projects cannot go ahead without Tahltan consent. In effect, the provincial government, accountable to all British Columbians, has become a desk clerk that issues paperwork, for which it does not possess the final sign-off.

Many will find it difficult to come up with a label for this sort of agreement, but luckily one already exists: sovereignty-association.

During Quebec’s 1980 referendum on independence, Quebec’s sovereigntists desired an arrangement of exclusive authority for lawmaking, setting tax rates and conducting foreign relations while preserving economic links and a common currency with Canada; in other words, they wanted sovereignty-association. After that referendum failed, the sovereigntists envisioned a vaguely similar arrangement with Canada in the event of a victory in the 1995 referendum, which also failed.

At the time, Canada’s federal government was opposed to sovereignty-association, and was prepared to reject any proposals by Quebec that backed it. Luckily for Ottawa, the sovereignties fell short in the second referendum, meaning no arrangement was ever contemplated. That is not the case in B.C., where Indigenous sovereignty-association is being actively endorsed and facilitated by the province.

B.C. is not in the business of creating independent countries with First Nations, but the operational logic runs parallel to the plan for sovereignty association with Quebec. The Tahltan will exercise territorial authority with their government while Canada holds the bag that makes financial, economic and service integration possible. In effect, the Tahltan and presumably many more First Nations will have functional sovereignty, and administrative association with Canada.

Legally, Section 7 of DRIPA makes this possible by enabling statutory powers to be exercised jointly with an Indigenous governing body, or made conditional on that body’s consent. It is a provision that goes far beyond the ordinary constitutional duty to consult.

Canada’s Supreme Court has stated that unproven Indigenous land and title claims do not give a veto to unsatisfied claimants where sufficient consultation has occurred. Nevertheless, B.C. has decided to arbitrarily require the consent of these claimants to allow major projects to move forward. That is a much higher bar.

A requirement for the province to consult in the course of making a decision means that it must listen to and accommodate First Nations, while a requirement to obtain First Nations consent means that a First Nations government can prevent the province from making its decision altogether. For the Tahltan, it’s clear they mean consent when they say “mining in Tahltan Territory will either happen the Tahltan way or not at all.” To call that collaboration is like calling a roadblock a highway.

The 2020 Shared Prosperity Agreement with Tahltan, amended in 2021, says the “foundation agreement” negotiations will depend upon recognition of Tahltan Aboriginal title and rights in Tahltan territory. That agreement is exploring land transfers, economic-development funding and a movement toward joint and consent-based decision-making.

Meanwhile, the Eskay Creek and Red Chris project agreements are transforming that into reality, and Ottawa’s July 2026 commitment to determine “mechanisms to participate in and contribute to the Tahltan Foundation Agreement … including through separate agreements or arrangements,” which brings the federal government toward the table. The final “foundation agreement” is still being negotiated, but the fact remains that territorial authority, consent for resource projects and revenue are on the table.

There is already precedent for this. B.C.’s 2024 deal with the Haida Nation granted the group title across Haida Gwaii, and states that the Haida Nation exercises jurisdiction according to Haida title and laws. However, B.C. and local governments on Haida Gwaii will continue delivering essential services relating to health, education and transportation.

Everything has to change, these deals seem to say, apart from that which is costly and inconvenient. The Haida governing body gains its title-based authority, while the province retains its taxpayer-funded obligations, all while non-Haida residents and businesses are left out in the cold to discover who actually controls what.

The primary defect in sovereignty-association by administrative agreement is that it keeps authority and accountability separated. An Indigenous government is accountable only to its own citizens, while the provincial government is accountable to every British Columbian. If the province gives a numerically small, membership-based government decisive territorial power over projects, land or resources affecting non-members, and the wider provincial tax base continues to provide services within the territory in question, then provincial ministers will bear the political blame for all of it. This is how democratic responsibility becomes muddied.

National Post