By GERRY POSNER I ask myself every time I come across yet another Jewish psychiatrist from Winnipeg. Did Winnipeg have a factory that produced Jewish shrinks? Recently I came across yet another name of yet another very accomplished psychiatrist with Winnipeg roots: Ian Shaffer, a former River Heights resident.
Ian and his brother Marvin were the sons of the late Saul and Molly Shaffer. From his beginnings on Queenston Street, Ian has ended up with two residences – one in New York City and the other in Fort Myers, Florida – but with a few stops along the way.
It all began in Winnipeg when Ian graduated from the University of Manitoba in 1968 with a medical degree in psychiatry. Today, in addition to the MD following his name, Shaffer also has an MMM (Masters of Medical Management), CPE (Certified Physician Executive), and LFAPA (Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association). Recite that a hundred times and you still might not get it right.

Shaffer’s career as a psychiatrist didn’t follow the the traditional path of most graduates. Although he did maintain a practice in Child, Adolescent and Adult Psychiatry, focusing on assessment, planning and pharmacotherapy for a period of his career, he veered into what might be called a more managerial mode of medicine. Keep in mind that his work has encompassed medical licenses in four differerent jurisdictions: California, Virginia, New York, and Florida. As well, Ian is board certified with the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology, the American Society of Addiction Medicine, the American Board of Quality Assurance Utilization Review Physicians, (a mouthful at any time of the day), and the American Board of Medical Management.

In 1973 when Shaffer was in private practice in both San Marino and Encino, California. Between 1973-1989 he worked as a practicing psychiatrist. Around 1989, he became affiliated with a group called the Western Health Associated Medical Group in Los Angeles. It was there his career took a different route as he became not only a medical practitioner but, in addition, one of two managing partners in a large psychiatric group that directed care programs providing mental health care to over 70,000 people. That seemed to launch Ian into the role of management in different capacities.
In 1991, he and his wife (the former Reeva Wolk of Winnipeg) moved to the Metro Washington, D.C. area, where Ian assumed the position of Vice President, Medical Affairs/Chief Medical Officer, providing oversight of clinical care management for over 37 million people. He had to manage 30 physicians and other management personnel. I suggest that you have to be able to handle people well in a position like that and clearly, Ian Shaffer had that skill set.
From that time forward, Ian has been involved in significant management and consulting roles for various health care systems. In 2011, right up to the present, among his many responsibilities, Ian was the principal consultant to Behavioral Health Management Solutions – PLLC. Even before establishing himself in that role, as Vice President and Executive Medical Director – the go-to guy responsible for behavioral health program management, he had been actively involved in working on behavioral health issues confronting military and veteran populations, also their families.
Shaffer’s career has also included working closely with several Fortune 100 companies, including IBM, General Motors, Chrysler, Shell Oil, Chevron, and others. On three occasions, he served as chairman of the Association of Behavioral Health and Wellness (ABHW for those familiar with the acronym). He also served on several federal government committees, including a three-year term on the National Advisory Committee for the Center for Mental Health Services. To put it succinctly, Ian has been around the block in terms of his working with large companies and, moreover with government at many levels. He has focussed on redesigning health programmes regarding the delivery of those programmes, also reimbursement for those programmes. What does that mean?

What it means for Ian Shaffer is that he is responsible for the development of various behavioral health programmes to meet New York State requirements for health benefits for indivdiuals with serious mental illness and substance use disorders. That includes large numbers of people with persistent and significant general mental illness. What strikes me immediately is that even though Ian is retired now, living in New York City and Florida, he has still been a regular part of a team assisting the Government of New York State with the purpose of trying to improve the care for residents of the state who suffer from mental illness and substance use disorders. This particular appointment was from the New York senate, no less. I say those are lofty heights for a kid from River Heights in Winnipeg once a long time ago.

Clearly, one of Shaffer’s greatest assets – and a reason why he has been and still is in demand throughout his career, is that he epitomizes what it means to be a strategic thinker, not simply an operator. He sees the big picture and then hires the people to implement his vision. He is also quick to acknowledge the benefits of his growing up in Winnipeg – where he learned to form bonds, relationships, and the importance of commitment and following through with your commitment.
Ian puts it this way: “ Reeva and I lived in Los Angeles for twenty-three years where relationships are a mile wide and an inch deep, but in Winnipeg, my relationships were an inch wide and and a mile deep. “ He also credits the excellent training he received at the Manitoba Medical School (and later at the LA County University of Southern California Medical Centre.)

Reeva and Ian do leave Fort Myers, Florida to get back to Winnipeg (not likely in the winter) for important occasions, such as his medical school reunions. They are the parents of four children, ten grandchildren and , get this – eight great grandchildren. His story is one I hope his grandkids learn and appreciate as it reflects a remarkably satisfying career where Ian Shaffer made a difference to so many others.

By HENRY SREBRNIK I’m not being faux humble when I say I consider Niall Ferguson more erudite and better read than I am. He has taught at Oxford and New York University. As for impact? He reaches millions of people. Me? Probably thousands – I hope.

But in a Sept. 11, 2025, article, “Osama bin Laden’s Posthumous Victory,” published in the Free Press of New York, on the anniversary of 9/11, Ferguson admitted that it took him almost 25 years to finally agree that the late Harvard professor Samuel Huntington’s seminal 1993 masterpiece “The Clash of Civilizations” was indeed the correct way to understand our modern world. Huntington later expanded his thesis in a 1996 book, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. 

I, on the other hand, already agreed with this view — in fact, this was the case even before I read Huntington. I guess it comes down to perspective and “lived experience,” which can trump even sheer intelligence.

Ferguson writes: “Over the past 24 years, I have valiantly tried to see 9/11 differently — not as a civilizational clash between Islam and ‘the West’ but as something that fit better into my own secular frame of reference. Raised an atheist, trained as an economic historian, I felt obliged to look behind what I took to be the facade of religious zealotry.” He goes on: “On reflection, I see that I was overthinking the event. Or perhaps under-thinking it.”

What did Huntington posit, in a nutshell? He suggested that “the fundamental source of conflict” in the world after the Cold War would be “cultural,” and “the principal conflicts of global politics” would be “between nations and groups of different civilizations.” He provided a number of these civilizations: Western, by which he meant Western European Christian and its settler offshoots; East Asian Confucian; Japanese; Islamic; Hindu; Slavic-Orthodox; Latin American; and African. (Some of these categories were admittedly rather vague.) 

Some countries, he contended, had severe internal cultural divisions within them, leading to civil conflict. Lebanon, Sri Lanka, and Yugoslavia, which all dissolved in civil wars, were obvious examples. But Huntington in particular predicted that the “centuries-old military interaction between the West and Islam” would become “more virulent,” since Islam and Western civilization were, in his view, fundamentally incompatible.

Huntington didn’t, for whatever reason, divide Islam into Sunni and Shia branches, considering this is an internal quarrel, unlike his separation of the Christian divisions (Catholic-Protestant, Slavic-Orthodox, and a syncretic Latin American). The “African” civilizational category encompassed everything south of the Islamic north African, east African, and Sahel regions of the continent, and seemed to reflect its myriad indigenous religions. And yes, in his conception, Israel stood alone. In his perspective, Israel was not just a country in dispute but the frontline of a centuries-old religious war. 

There were several adjustments over the years, as a reader will notice when looking at the various world maps illustrating his theory on the internet. 

Huntington also foresaw a “Confucian-Islamic military connection” that would culminate in a conflict between “The West and the Rest.” I however see any such alliance as pure pragmatism and one that wouldn’t last, were the “West” to be defeated. There are no cultural affinities between the Muslim world, on the one hand, and the east and southeast Asian Confucian and Buddhist civilizations on the other. They too would eventually come into conflict. 

Amongst the younger generation of “proto-woke Ivy League professors,” Huntington was widely mocked for his “essentialism,” Ferguson notes. But consider, with Huntington’s argument in mind, all that has happened since September 9, 2001.

The Hamas attack on Israel two years ago was essentially an Israeli 9/11. At the same time, Western civilization today is much more divided than it was 24 years ago. The public response to the Gaza War has illuminated these. Whereas older people generally remain more pro-Israeli than pro-Palestinian, younger ones have swung the other way. 

According to an August 6 study by the Brookings Institute, support for Israel in the United States continues to deteriorate, especially among young people. Among Democrats, there has been an increase of 62 per cent to 71 percent with an unfavourable view of Israel in the 18- to 49-year-old demographic. Only nine per cent of those aged 18 to 34 approve of Israel’s military actions in Gaza. Even young Republicans aged 18-49 have shifted from 35 per cent having an unfavourable view of Israel to 50 per cent unfavourable.

In Britain, the Campaign Against Antisemitism surveyed British adults’ attitudes towards Jews. The findings show that antisemitism has risen to the highest levels on record since they began these. Once again, the swing towards antisemitism is more pronounced amongst the young: 45 per cent of the British public believes that Israel treats the Palestinians like the Nazis treated the Jews, and 60 per cent of young people believe this. Only 31 per cent of young voters agree that Israel has a right to exist as a homeland for the Jewish people, while 26 per cent of the British public believes that Israel can get away with anything because its supporters control the media. As well, 19 per cent of young people believe that the Hamas attack on Israel was justified.

Huntington, and now Ferguson, would tell you this: the “West” is now unsure of itself and is in ideological disarray. If 9/11 didn’t convince you of that, maybe 10/7 will.

Henry Srebrnik is a professor of political science at the University of Prince Edward Island.

“They can starve us, beat us, cage us – but they could never kill our spirit.“ – Joseph Bau
A gripping new movie, titled Bau, Artist at War, scheduled to open in Winnipeg on Sept. 26 at the Grant Park Landmark Theatre, tells the story of Joseph Bau, whose dramatization of his marriage in Plaszow concentration camp to his wife Rebecca was an unforgettable scene in the movie Schindler’s List.

The film is based in large part on Bau’s memoir, Dear God, Have You Ever Gone Hungry? (published in 1998). The film was written by Deborah Smerecnik, Ron Bass, and Sonia Kifferstein, and is directed by Sean McNamara.

Featuring stellar performances by Emile Hirsche (who appeared in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood) as the protagonist, and Inbar Lavi (who appeared in the Israeli television series Fauda and the U.S. television series Imposters) as Rebecca, the movie is a combination love story and espionage tale that deserves attention in an era, as one commentator has said, “where survivors are fading away, and the Holocaust is slipping from memory.”
It’s also a story about resistance during the Holocaust.  

In the movie, during his time in Plaszow Concentration Camp, Bau is a Jewish forger, an artist and a designer. He is employed by the brutal commandant Josef Liepold to draw a newly planned wing in the prison. He is simultaneously forging IDs for Jewish inmates helping them escape the prison. Hirsche as Bau, also draws comics for the prisoners, and his gift of art inspires his future wife with his colorful “lifegiving” creations, to which she responds in the gloomy setting of the death camp. McNamara cleverly intercuts these wonderful artworks within the film’s action.
Joseph Bau was a man who defied the darkness of the Holocaust with art, humor, and an unbreakable spirit. A gifted artist and master forger, Bau risked his life to save others, using his talent to create false documents that helped fellow prisoners escape certain death. But in the depths of despair, he discovered something even more powerful…love.
In the Plaszow concentration camp, amid relentless brutality, Joseph met Rebecca – a woman whose courage matched his own.

Years later, when Joseph is called to testify against the sadistic Nazi officer who tormented him, he is forced to relive the horrors of his past. But through it all, he draws strength from the love that saved him, the art that sustained him, and the unyielding will that kept him alive.
A gripping war drama, a daring espionage thriller, and one of the greatest love stories of our time, Bau, Artist at War is a testament to the power of resilience, the triumph of the human spirit, and the unbreakable bonds that even war could not destroy.