Jewish student sues TMU over ‘antisemitic environment’
Anti-zionism ‘discriminatory,’ lawsuit claims
A Jewish student is suing Toronto Metropolitan University, arguing that the university has become a “poisoned antisemitic learning and working environment” in the wake of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel.
Nicole Szweras, a student in the media production program and formerly an employee in the university’s equipment distribution centre, is seeking $1.3 million in damages.
The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in Ontario Superior Court, claims that Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU) has violated several of its own policies, including its discrimination- and harassment-prevention policy and its statement of student rights and responsibilities, its poster policy and its bookable spaces policy.
Those policies, the lawsuit argues, “are mere platitudes” that are not implemented or are inadequate to keep Szweras and other Jewish students safe. The lawsuit says that antisemitism has been on “flagrant display” for the past year, particularly since Oct. 7.
The lawsuit alleges Szweras was wrongfully dismissed from her job at TMU and the university breached its contract with her. Szweras is represented by Toronto lawyer David Rosenfeld, a member of a legal task force established by the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs to represent those who wish to respond via the courts to antisemitism or other various forms of discrimination.
TMU, formerly Ryerson University, has been the site of several protests and anti-israel poster campaigns in recent months.
The lawsuit says students have been “harassed when seeking to express their views,” and faced statements such as “you people control the media. Hitler should’ve finished you off, you dirty Jew” and signs with statements such as “go back to where you came from.” Last month, the lawsuit says, a protester was carrying a sign that read “Zionism off our campus.”
“To Nikki and other Jewish students, staff, and faculty this is a call for Jews to be removed from campus,” the lawsuit says. “This incident deeply affected Nikki, leading her to question her place in the world that tolerates this rhetoric.”
The lawsuit claims that anti-zionism is “inherently discriminatory and antisemitic,” and that comparing Israel to the Nazis or saying it’s inherently racist are forms of antisemitism.
It also alludes to a long history of antisemitism at TMU. In 2010, a task force on anti-racism found there had been a “proliferation of antisemitic incidents such as antisemitic graffiti on campus” and that Jewish students found media coverage of Israel, particularly from the now-defunct Ryerson Free Press student newspaper, “bordered on antisemitic.”
In an email to National Post, TMU declined to comment on the lawsuit.
“TMU is proudly diverse and intentionally inclusive and the university works hard to promote an equitable and inclusive university community, free from discrimination and harassment,” the statement said. “All TMU community members have a shared responsibility for ensuring a culture of respect and inclusion.”
“We encourage community members who are impacted by discrimination and harassment to reach out so we can investigate, and to access available supports, such as counselling, security planning or human rights resources.”
The lawsuit notes that Szweras’s mother was born in Israel and that Szweras herself has Israeli citizenship. Additionally, her brother was in Israel on Oct. 7 and she has family and friends there, including those who are fighting in the Israel Defense Forces in its offensive against the Palestinians.
“The period following Oct. 7, 2023 was a challenging time for Nikki as well as for Jewish students at TMU and Jews around the world,” the lawsuit says. “Shockingly, shortly following the Oct. 7 massacre and in the weeks and months thereafter, numerous TMU community members celebrated, justified, and excused Hamas’s mass rape, murder, and kidnapping.”
In the months since, the lawsuit says, Szweras’s “colleagues and co-students repeatedly posted inflammatory, false, inaccurate, and offensive posts about Israel, Zionism, and the Oct. 7 massacre.”
In particular, the lawsuit notes that Szweras and other Jewish students were exposed to speech they found offensive, such as the chant “From the river to the sea Palestine will be free” and slogans alluding to Intifada — the term given to prior Palestinian uprisings — which have “undertones to the Nazis’ Final Solution during the Holocaust that exacerbates the intergenerational trauma experienced by the families of Holocaust survivors, such as Nikki.”
The lawsuit says that TMU, despite knowing about these slogans and actions, has not done anything to prevent them.
It also notes other instances of what it identifies as offensive or discriminatory conduct, including a letter that circulated through the law school that, according to the lawsuit, defended Hamas’s actions and denied Israel’s right to exist. In response, TMU appointed former chief justice of the Nova Scotia Court of Appeal Michael Macdonald to review the incident.
The lawsuit characterized this as TMU having “outsourced its responsibilities” and, the lawsuit claims, using the review underway by Macdonald to avoid censuring students.
It says several Jewish students left a law school class in tears after a professor “berated the State of Israel.” While students were transferred to different classes, the professor was not disciplined. It also says in an anthropology class in November students were taught “pinkwashing,” a strategy whereby organizations or nations point to their record on LGBT rights as a way to distract from other, less salubrious, conduct. The professor used Israel’s stance on gay rights “as a distraction from Palestinian human rights questions” as an example of pinkwashing, which “Jewish students ... understandably found offensive.”
Szweras, the lawsuit says now feels “dread and panic” when she thinks about going to class and has contemplated transferring to a different university.