Investigation launched after McGill board vote

Allegations of anti-Semitism

McGill University has launched an investigation and set up a hotline after a Jewish student was voted off the student government’s board of directors Monday, with no debate or argument, after he was identified by BDS supporters as politically active in support of Jewish causes.

Noah Lew was one of three student directors removed from the board.

“Allegations have arisen suggesting that the votes against one or more of those directors were motivated by anti-Semitism,” McGill principal Suzanne Fortier said in a statement.

“We take such matters very seriously, as it is essential for McGill University to maintain an environment where different views and ideas can be expressed and debated with mutual respect.”

The university has launched “an investigation to determine the facts in this specific matter,” and has established a “support line where members of our community can report incidents of intolerance based on religion or ethnic origin occurring on our campuses,” Fortier said in the statement.

In addition, she said, McGill has appointed “a task force to examine more broadly such matters and to make recommendations on how

What they did is accuse (three Jewish students) of exercising undue political power.

to ensure that our values and principles of academic freedom, integrity, responsibility, equity and inclusiveness are respected.”

The latest flashpoint in the turmoil at McGill over the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions protest movement was the vote of a Students’ Society of McGill University general assembly.

Lew, a third-year student who joined the board of the SSMU after being elected as vice-president of finance of the Arts Undergraduate Society, was one of a dozen board members who were up for ratification by a vote open to all students in attendance at Monday’s general assembly.

“I was initially very shaken,” Lew said of the vote that denied him a seat on the board. “It was an extremely tense and emotional room, and more than anything it was overwhelming. I was also very sad.”

He said there was applause from the people who voted against him.

Earlier this year, he had been publicly identified in the protest literature of a group called Democratize SSMU, which aims to thwart the implementation by the current president of a decision made last year that BDS was discriminatory and therefore unconstitutional.

In its writings, Democratize SSMU identified “layers of corruption” within the student government, alleging favouritism in appointing board members, then singled out three Jewish members of the board “who are all either fellows at the Canadian Jewish Political Affairs Committee, an organization whose explicit mandate is to promote pro-Israel discourse in Canadian politics, or primary organizers for the anti-BDS initiative at McGill.”

“Essentially, what they did is accuse (Lew and two other Jewish students) of exercising undue political power, of being corrupt,” said Jonathan Glustein, a fourth-year political science and economics student who was also targeted in the ad. He is an SSMU board member, but his term is about to end.

Democratize SSMU later apologized unreservedly for being “insensitive to anti-Semitic tropes of Jewish people as corrupt and politically powerful.”