The World According to Mitch

I read a news article recently that bothered me. It was about a company whose employees unionized in order to pressure the owners to change his (or their) politics in order to align with those of the workers.

It does not matter that in this particular case the owner’s politics align with those I hold. If the roles were reversed, I would feel exactly the same way when I say this: Every single one of those employees should be fired.

There are three topics that should never under any circumstances be brought into the workplace: religion, politics, and sex. If you work in a bakery then for the time that you are at work you should focus on bread, not borders.

As do many people of my background, I am fiercely loyal to the two countries of which I am a citizen, and in both of them I have very strong opinions. I am also a man of faith who does everything in his power to observe my religion while never pushing it on anyone.

When I was living in California I was a member of a cigar lounge in Westlake Village. One evening, after an event that was open to the public, a few of us were sitting around and chatting. I knew two of the owners, but there was a third who I had never met until ten minutes ago. He sat back, took a puff on his cigar, and said ‘I am so glad that everyone else is gone. Now that it’s just us, I know that all of us agree staunchly on guns and abortion.’ I nearly dropped my cigar. Aside from him, I was friends with everyone else in the room and I knew their politics (and we all agreed to disagree on some things)… but how could this guy pretend to know what my position on anything other than Havana cigars was? I held my tongue… but made a mental note to be careful of what I might ever share with him.

That man was a businessman and he made a colossal mistake. He aired his political opinion with customers who might or might not decide to stop doing business with him for them. On the other hand, he was a smart man who might have had the courage of his convictions to not want anyone’s business who did not share his opinion. As the owner of the establishment, that was his right.

Let’s turn the tables in a hypothetical. Imagine a group of his employees came into his establishment and tried to force him to change his politics, or at least to betray them, lest they go on strike and try to force him out of business because of what he believes in. Are they within their rights to do that? Is it ethical? Is it moral? Is it legal?

If you are so opposed to someone’s politics then you are not obligated to work for them. However, if you try to force your views on them – right or wrong – then you should be fired, escorted off the property, and barred from standing within 500 feet of their workplace. Why? Politics have no place in the workplace.

To anyone who knows me, my political viewpoint is clear and steadfast. With that said, I go out of my way to keep it out of my classrooms. I do this for two reasons. First and foremost, it is the right thing to do. Secondly, politics are very divisive, and I want my students to like and to trust me. I also want to make sure that when at the end of the class the students fill out their course evaluations they rate me as an instructor based on my knowledge of the subject matter and my ability to communicate that knowledge in a way that is easy for them to understand… and nothing else.

I do not hide my faith. Not only do I wear a yarmulke/kippah at all times, but I also teach from my desk… behind which is my clearly visible bookshelf that has to complete shelves of religious texts in Hebrew and English. I might mention my religion if it is relevant (it very occasionally is), and I will answer questions (during breaks) about it from the occasional student who asks. That’s it. Why? Because I am a staunch believer that religion does not belong in the classroom.

Because I spend more time teaching cybersecurity than any other subject, I do need to lecture on nation-state cyber threat actors, which includes discussing election tampering by the Russian GRU (Chiefly Unit 26165, referred to in the industry as Fancy Bear), and the massive disinformation campaign that was started by the Soviet KGB in the mid-1960s, and has continued to this day (and expanded to include the social engineering teams from Qatar, Iran, and China to name a few) to make Israel look like the big bad aggressor. With regard to the election tampering, I discuss only the 2016 election so as to try to avoid current politics. For the disinformation campaign, I go to great lengths and take great pains to call out the disinformation campaign without expressing an opinion or taking sides. I let my students know that I am discussing facts on the ground without taking sides.

I know that occasionally the companies for whom I teach will be told that I am discussing my personal political opinions, so I make sure that when discussing these topics I am being recorded so that I can refute that accusation. The one time it happened in the past year, I read it on the student’s class evaluation, and I brought it to the attention of the company. They told me they knew me and trusted me and were not interested in going over the recordings.

When I am not teaching, I almost always wear a flag pin on my clothes that might be considered divisive in this day and age. When I am teaching, I never wear it. Does that mean that I feel any less patriotic to the nation it represents? Absolutely not. I believe that anyone who stands in front of an classroom wearing a Russian Chinese Israeli Palestinian Ukrainian Venezuelan LGBTQ+ Pro-Abortion Anti-Abortion Republican Democrat Liberal Conservative Labour Hamas Hezbollah or Vote for Pedro symbol is inviting divisiveness and discord… and is asking for trouble. I wear my Canadian Maple Leaf pin because even over the last year nobody really dislikes Canada… and until the hostages were released in October I wore a yellow ribbon (which can also mean support for Childhood Cancer Awareness).

When the original blurb I wrote for my high school yearbook was censored, I replaced it with the quote:  “I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” This quote, by Evelyn Beatrice Hall in her 1906 book The Friends of Voltaire, essentially codifies the concept of Freedom of Speech. I graduated high school some thirty-seven years ago, and I wish today that I could go back and amend this quote to find a way of codifying one’s right to speak the truth and not lies and hatred… but that’s the world we live in today.

What people misunderstand about the idea of freedom of speech, especially as codified by law in both Canada and the United States, is that the government shall not infringe on your right to speak. That does not mean that you can say what you want at work… at least not without accepting that there might be consequences. The employer’s obligation is to pay the employees the agreed upon wage for their work. The employee’s obligation is to do the work that they are hired to do. The employee has a right to a fair wage and safe working conditions and nothing more. If they step out of line then the employer has the right to fire them. Any attempt to change the politics or religion of anyone – fellow employee or employer – is exactly as egregious a violation of every workplace norm as would be forcing one to change their sexual preference. In other words… if an employee starts spreading political vitriol in the workplace it is grounds for immediate dismissal.

Of course, in the climate that we are in today, with sixty years of KGB Disinformation spread to foment hatred, even that might be up for debate because too many people fell for it.