SUMMER 2018 THE OWL IS AN ANNUAL PUBLICATION BY THE WILLIAM SOUTHAM JOURNALISM FELLOWSHIP PROGAM. Massey’s Warrior Scholar From the Syrian Civil War to the U of T classroom, Noura Al-Jizawi carries on with her fight MAZHAR TAYARA A NON-VIOLENT PROTEST ORGANIZED BY NOURA AL-JIZAWI (WEARING SUNGLASSES) IN SYRIA DURING THE ARAB SPRING, 2012. THE PHOTO WAS TAKEN BY A FRIEND, MAZHAR TAYARA, WHO LATER THAT YEAR WAS KILLED BY THE ASSAD REGIME. BY NAHEED MUSTAFA of emergency for nearly five decades. She was detained multiple times and It is a challenge.” Security forces had vast, sweeping powers. tortured. Two of her siblings — a brother and Noura’s husband, whom she met in Turkey, Noura Al-Jizawi is bundled into an Detention and torture were common. sister — faced a similar fate. In 2012, after was also an activist, and he’s now a researcher overstuffed parka and struggling to get a Syrians had learned well what kind of her 16-year-old sister was arrested and at the Munk School’s Citizen Lab, an stroller through Massey’s main doors. Her behaviour was acceptable. If you were good tortured by the regime, the family fled to interdisciplinary research hub studying nine-month-old daughter smiles as she’s at keeping your head down and keeping your Turkey. But the displacement did not stop information controls that threaten openness, jostled around. She’s wide-eyed and rosy- nose out of trouble, you were free to enjoy Noura from continuing her work. She joined security, and human rights on the Internet. cheeked, decked out in a pink headband what remained. People had jobs, food was the Syrian National Council — the coalition The Syrian conflict has often been referred and tiny jeans. Finally, both mom and stroller plentiful and affordable, and education was of Syrian opposition forces — and in 2014 to as the first fully “digital” war with the make it in and Noura heads for the Junior accessible. became the SNC’s vice-president, and member frontlines drawn not only on the ground but Common Room. Several young women Mostly, these things were enough — until of the the negotiation panel in Geneva. She also in cyberspace. make a beeline for the baby. For Noura one day when they weren’t. surprised even herself with that move. “I Noura is both happy and grateful to be Al-Jizawi, it’s a long way from the frontlines On December 17, 2010, a city employee didn’t plan to join the opposition. From the at the University of Toronto. She’s pursuing of the Syrian uprising to life as a graduate in the small town of Sidi Bouzid, just south beginning of my activities, I thought I could a degree she’d always dreamed of, she has a student at U of T’s Munk School of Global of the city of Tunis in Tunisia, confiscated be a writer or researcher but never a political quiet life with her husband and daughter, Affairs, through the Scholars-at-Risk scholar- a vegetable cart from a young man named player,” she says. Toronto is safe. But the peace of her day-to-day ship program, a partnership between Massey Mohamed Bouazizi. He tried to navigate the life has come at a high price: ”I feel it’s hard College and the School of Graduate Studies. bureaucracy to pay his fine and retrieve his “ to remember my life before the conflict. Noura says she’s still trying to take it all in — cart and produce, but ended up defeated and I didn’t plan to join the Partly because the conflict has been going this new life in a new place with a new baby. humiliated. In the late morning he returned opposition… I thought I could on so long but also because of trauma. I Noura had small ambitions growing up to the municipal offices where he stood feel the same, but sometimes I feel I am in her hometown of Homs in western Syria. outside, doused himself with gasoline, and set be a writer or researcher but a different person.” himself ablaze. The Arab Spring had begun. Looking back on those early days and She wanted to study, to read, to savour never a political player her morning coffee just like she’d seen Over the next several months, protests seeing what’s happened in the intervening her mother do for as long as she could and calls for change would sweep the Arab ” seven years — starvation, torture, displace- remember. Noura and her six siblings world. Governments would topple. Noura ment, up to half a million dead, parts of Syria had a good life in Syria, filled with watched carefully from Homs with growing -Noura Al-Jizawi reduced to rubble — it’s nearly impossible to family and laughter, schoolwork, and picnics excitement: maybe such change could come remember the optimism of those young activists. on the weekend. But Noura had always felt to her country too. In March of 2011, the Her work with the official opposition Noura’s family now lives scattered between something dark lurking beneath the veneer wave crashed its way into the Syrian town lasted until 2016. She resigned because four countries with her father still back in of calm. It was a feeling she’d see manifest of Daraa, and Homs, some three hundred she felt the coalition was giving in to Syria, unable but also unwilling to leave. in adults as a kind of carefulness. There was kilometres north, soon became a key site for international pressure. She felt they were Noura bundles her little girl back into never explicit political talk, no open criticism protests. Noura, by then a graduate student in abandoning Syrians who had fled by not the stroller and encases herself in the giant of the regime. She saw public veneration Arabic literature, jumped in organizing rallies standing up for their right to return to parka. She’s off to meet a friend and for Syria’s leader, Bashar al-Assad and his and connecting with international media. their homeland. But Noura kept going with we decide to walk together for a bit. I father, Hafez al-Assad, insinuate its way into She started a publication called Hurriyat, her advocacy work around psychological ask her if she ever regrets her activism. every aspect of Syrian life. Hafez al-Assad’s meaning “Freedom.” support for Syrian women who had survived She doesn’t hesitate with her answer, despite portraits, large and small, were everywhere Those were heady early days when Syrian detention and torture. everything she’s been through. “In Syria, — even showing up in the thousands on the activists were motivated by the changes they The Scholars-at-Risk program allowed the only way to do politics was to be part cover of Syrian children’s notebooks. Noura were seeing throughout the Arab world. Noura to come to Canada. She’s now pursuing of the regime,” she says. “We youth started learned early that being safe meant being quiet. There was a sense that the future belonged a Master of Global Affairs degree at the this movement. It was a gamble but we took Talk to Syrians about life before the to freedom and young people were going Munk School and trying to figure out her a risk. We didn’t want to give this over to 2011 uprising and they’ll tell you that it was to play a key role in making that future next steps. “It is a struggle for me though old men with white hair and expired ideas.” mostly okay as long as you followed the rules: happen. But the Assad regime responded I have found a lot of support from the She pauses and looks around at the young don’t agitate, don’t protest, assume you’re with a brutality on a scale that few could students,” she says. “I come from a completely students around us, rushing off to class. “It’s being watched, trust no one. By 2011, have imagined. different education system and this is our future. If we want it, we have to fight for Syria had been under a perpetual state Noura’s activism was met with violence. the first time I am studying in English. it. Change will come.” SUMMER 2018 2 • In Defence of Civility, Redux JIM RANKIN BY HUGH SEGAL Restraint, as in the case of civility, can be a virtue. In the academic world, where Some years ago, at the turn of the interaction spans age groups and generations, millennium, I wrote a book titled, civility can be threatened by strong In Defence of Civility. It held a collection disagreement, by perceived entitlement, of my newspaper columns, op-eds, speeches, by radically different life experiences and and some new essays—all, in various ways, worldviews. The challenge is about how offering a defence of civility in our those who do speak — seriously, humorously, politics, in our way of life, and celebrating sarcastically, in advocacy or opposition to any warriors in this cause. The times in which idea or cause — frame their words in a way we now live have prompted me to think a that respects sensitivities and experiences of bit more about the ideas behind that book. their fellow interlocutors. Lately, incivility — in global politics, The magic of the Massey experience is in domestic politics, in social media — sustained and advanced when civility — has emerged as a dynamic in and of itself. between new and experienced, between old Violent political rhetoric — “Lock Her and young, between different disciplines and Up!” — “Build That Wall!” — jagged anti- perspectives — is a two-way street.