B’nai Brith Canada protested the awarding of an honorary degree to the U.N. official who oversaw an anti-Semitic U.N. conference. The former U.N. high commissioner for human rights, Mary Robinson, who received an honorary doctorate from McGill University, presided over the 2001 U.N. World Conference on Racism in Durban, South Africa, which turned into an anti-Semitic and anti-Israel event. B’nai Brith held a demonstration last Friday at the university during the award ceremony. The 2001 conference that Robinson oversaw “gave voice to some of the worst demonstrations of anti-Semitism and attacks against Israel in more than 50 years,” said B’nai Brith Canada’s executive vice president, Frank Dimant. “To date, Mrs. Robinson accepts no responsibility for the conference’s racist stance against Israel and the Jewish people and, in fact, insists that much good came from it.”
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