OTTAWA (Reuters) – A senior official at the University of British Columbia has resigned after he liked a series of Tweets that criticized the Black Lives Matter anti-racism campaign, the university and local media said.
Michael Korenberg, chair of the university’s board of governors, quit after a “deeply hurtful” incident, UBC vice chair Sandra Cawley said in a statement issued late on Saturday.
“His decision comes after information that was publicized last week about his social media interactions that appeared to support regressive voices online and undermine legitimate protest,” she said.
Korenberg resigned after The Ubyssey, UBC’s student newspaper, reported he had liked a series of tweets from U.S. conservative figures disparaging the Black Lives Matter campaign and Antifa, an umbrella term for primarily leftist anti-authoritarians.
Many Canadian cities have been the sites of anti-racism rallies in recent weeks, on the heels of similar protests in the United States. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says Canadians need to do more to address “systemic racism.”
Last week he backed the leader of an opposition party who was ejected from the House of Commons for branding a member of another party a racist. [nL1N2DV17E]
Global News said Korenberg had issued a statement saying that “while I do not support violence of any kind, I understand how my actions created questions about who I am and what I believed in.”
Korenberg, a veteran business executive and lawyer, was appointed to the UBC board in 2016, elected chair in 2018 and was re-appointed in 2019.
(Reporting by David Ljunggren; Editing by Nick Zieminski)
