By Louise Brown – An Ontario Human Rights Commission investigation has found that York University’s long-standing practice of cancelling classes on Jewish holidays discriminates against students of other religions.

While the investigator’s report must now go before the commissioners themselves for consideration, her findings are seen as vindication for York history professor David Noble, who has complained for years it is unfair for today’s diverse multi-faith campus to scrap classes for three days and nights each year to honour one group’s religious holy days, but not others.

“This is fantastic. It’s just too bad it took four years to have a third party confirm that this is an illegal practice,” said Noble, who is a non-observant Jew.

The university began cancelling classes 34 years ago for the two days of Rosh Hashanah and one day of Yom Kippur, originally because administrators said many professors and students would miss those classes anyway.

But a recent report prepared by York professor Thomas Klassen paints a highly diverse picture of the 51,000-student campus, with Jewish students estimated to represent about 5.8 per cent of students, Muslim students about 4.8 per cent, Catholic students 34.9 per cent, Protestant 22.1 per cent, other Christian 7.3 per cent, Hindu 3.6 per cent, Buddhist 2.1 per cent and Sikh 2 per cent.

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