The next Avolonto hearing will take place on Thursday, February 29 at 5:00 p.m. EST online, via Zoom.
Please register here to access the Zoom information.
If you have registered for previous hearings, you will automatically be sent the new Zoom link. If this is your first time attending, please be sure to register.
The hearing on February 29 has been scheduled to complete the cross-examination of York University's lead witness, Barry Miller, which began at the previous hearing on February 13.
Please note: In order to be admitted to the hearing, participants must arrive BEFORE 5:00 p.m. EST and display their first and last names on their profile.
Participants may not speak, ask questions, comment, etc. and must remain on mute throughout the hearing. Recording is not permitted, except note-taking.
Anyone who might be called to testify as a witness during any part of the hearings (on February 29 or on other dates to be scheduled) should not attend the hearing.
All others are welcome to attend.
We strongly urge Prof. Avolonto’s supporters, anti-racism campaigners, the York University community, and interested members of the public to attend the hearings.
The Avolonto case highlights how large institutions such as York University have responded to allegations of systemic anti-Black racism in their workplace–to target and blame its victims, leading to their discipline, termination, and removal from campus.
Prof. Avolonto’s experience was documented in the ground-breaking documentary “Black on campus,” produced by the CBC’s Fifth Estate. Watch the documentary here.
Prof. Avolonto’s allegations are detailed in this 2021 press conference, featuring Prof. Avolonto, his legal counsel Ron Franklin, and eyewitnesses and supporters from the York University community.
Background
Prof. Avolonto is a professor of French literature and linguistics at York University’s Glendon College, where he first complained about anti-Black racism in 2016. When he requested an investigation into his experiences, the administration instead compiled complaints against him and has been trying to fire him since 2020.
The administration has claimed that Prof. Avolonto invented all his complaints, that he did not experience a single incident of anti-Black racism, and that his complaints represented harassment of white and non-Black colleagues.
Among other things, the administration claimed that a public speech that Prof. Avolonto delivered in his capacity as a York University Senator, during which he broke down and cried while describing his experiences of anti-Black racism at Glendon College, was an effort to harass and threaten white faculty.
Prof. Avolonto has four active applications at the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario, the first of which was filed in 2018.
You can read Prof. Avolonto’s full account of his experience in his “Letter from a Black Colleague.”
More information about Prof. Avolonto’s case, including media coverage, is available at this website.
For more information, please email againstantiblackracism@gmail.com.
Against Anti-Black Racism is a network of students, faculty, trade unionists, and community members in support of Prof. Aimé Avolonto.