Random Access

The decision this week to uphold the 1997 firing of English teacher Paul Fromm by the Peel District School Board brings us a little closer to the end (appeal is still possible) of a dispute that is not nearly as clear-cut as it might first appear.
Fromm taught English for 19 years at Applewood Heights Secondary School and taught it extraordinarily well, according to all accounts.
At the same time, he was pursuing his own right-wing political activities, which as he continually points out, is not a crime.
But what is a school board to do when someone who is a teacher appears on the stage with the Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan and other known white supremacists, founds organizations that actively fight to close the borders to new immigrants, appears publicly at meetings of skinheads and co-sponsors a 1990 meeting which ends with the guest speaker giving a Nazi salute and yelling "White Power" while he applauds?
At a forum in 1991, the Mississauga resident referred to refugee claimants as "hordes of criminals, scam artists and welfare collectors."
Complaints from the B’nai Brith, which supplies video of some of these incidents to the media and the school board, prompted the board to take Fromm out of the high school classroom and put him into the adult education centre on Elm Dr., the former home of Britannia Secondary School.
He was warned in a letter to cease and desist. When Fromm attended a memorial service for renowned American racist Revilo Oliver where he publicly lauded Oliver as a giant in his field, the board did what it had to do and fired him in 1997.
Fromm's case could be described as Malcolm Ross Lite. Unlike Ross, who spouted his bile in class and clearly violated curriculum guidelines, Fromm scrupulously avoided expressing his politics in class. No student ever made a complaint.
The arbitration appeal hearings on his dismissal began in April 1998 and ended in Oct. 2000. The decision was issued 16 months later.
In a 2-1 ruling, Arbitrator Kevin Burkett wrote that the school board’s failure to take action against an employee speaking out against its adopted principles of multiculturalism and racial tolerance would have been, “a betrayal of the community that it is mandated to serve. This is especially so in the case of a teacher who has been warned and put on notice and who, in direct disregard, persists.
Getting to the heart of the matter, the decision said, "It can reasonably be assumed that any student of colour, or of the Jewish faith, who became aware of Mr. Fromm’s views or his involvement in these off-duty events would have difficulty accepting Mr. Fromm as role model, mentor or confidante."
Fromm, who spent much of the past few years helping Holocaust-denier Ernst Zundel's fight his removal to Germany, saw himself then, and still sees himself, as a victim of political fashion.
"The Board's accusation is basically that I hung out with the wrong sort of person," he told me at the time. "If I hung out with homosexuals and Communists, they would have thought I was a fine fellow. They didn’t like my friends. I think this sets some very dangerous precedents."
A more dangerous precedent would have been set had his firing not been upheld.
When Fromm ran against Peel Board Chair Janet McDougald in 1997 in wards 1 and 7 after his firing, he exercised free speech and the public ruled on it. He finished fourth in a four-way race and MacDougald was returned to office.
Teachers, judges, politicians and police officers are held to a higher standard of personal conduct for good reason. They hold positions of trust and we expect more of them. When their conduct flies in the face of the principles the institutions they work for espouse, they must be held to account.
Fromm exercised his right of free speech and his profession ruled on it.
In an interesting switch-about last year, 25 members of the Anti-Racist Action Toronto group showed up outside Fromm’s Mississauga home in Erindale, shouting "Show us your Aryan gonads" and "Nazi, Nazi, Nazi/ out, out out".
Fromm's comment at the time was: "They do have a right to protest. But they don't have the right to protest on private property."
Even he recognizes that, in a democratic society, there are always clear lines defining reasonable conduct.