MPs to hear from university leaders
Students warn ‘irrational Jew hatred’ spreading on campuses as pressure grows to find solution
Antisemitism at Canadian universities is set to be probed by a committee of MPs on Thursday amid the backdrop of heightened political tensions over the latest round of on-campus protests against Israel’s actions in its war against Hamas.
Jewish university students say they want to make Canadians understand that if the pernicious rise in hate against Jews isn’t denounced as unacceptable, it will become unstoppable.
They detailed Jewish symbols on campuses being defaced, historically antisemitic tropes and slurs appearing on signs or art exhibits, students being assaulted for outward displays of their religion and Jewish cultural events being cancelled because universities said they were too dangerous.
“As a proud Canadian, I’ve always stood by our values of equality, tolerance and respect,” Sydney Greenspoon, a student at the University of Windsor, told a news conference Wednesday. “My fear is that the irrational Jew hatred that is permeating our society, especially within our universities, has began to erode these values and the rule of law.”
The latest flashpoint on campuses is protesters setting up encampments and refusing to leave until and unless universities accede to their demands for the schools to break any financial, legal or academic ties with Israel.
In the U.S., efforts to break up encampments have led to violent clashes involving police and counterprotests, a situation thus far avoided at Canadian schools.
Pressure, however, is growing to find a solution.
The University of Toronto said in a statement Wednesday it has “serious concerns” about the ongoing encampment
there, flagging issues that included firewood inside the area, hateful messages and speech, altercations and “significant population density.” Protesters accuse the university of dodging their demands by focusing only on logistical concerns.
The decision to hold parliamentary hearings in Ottawa flows from the political debate sparked last year by hearings in the U.S. over how universities were responding to growing protests against Israel’s military campaign which it says aims to eradicate Hamas’s control over Gaza.
The campaign was prompted by Hamas militants storming into Israel on Oct. 7. Hamas killed an estimated 1,200 people and took dozens of hostages. In the months since, Israel’s retaliation has killed upwards of 30,000 Palestinians in Gaza.
Criticisms that some of rhetoric embraced by anti-war protesters crossed a line into hate speech set off a fierce political debate over free speech on campus, and saw a trio of elite American university presidents brought before Congress to explain how they were managing it.
When the leaders said whether a call for genocide against the Jewish people would violate their codes of conduct depended
on the context, the political blowback was so fierce two ultimately left their jobs.
In the midst of all that, a group of Canadian MPs decided to put the same question to Canadian university leaders, and then hold a series of hearings on the issue.
The House of Commons justice committee will, in a separate set of hearings, probe Islamophobia on campus. Palestinian students, and some allied to their cause, say that racism targeted at them must also be addressed.
The Jewish students in Ottawa on Wednesday said their schools need to be held accountable for failing to keep Jewish students safe.
This could range anywhere from a review of their federal funding to simply being pressed publicly about why the schools’ own policies — as outlined in their responses to MPs — seemed to be enforced unevenly, if at all, the students said.
Greenspoon said to her, it appears that universities also don’t have the right policies in place, citing an incident where protesters interrupted lectures but the university said there was nothing it could do.
“When me and my fellow Jewish students were harassed on campus and called murderers and forced to flee an event, we filed the complaint the exact way you’re supposed to file the complaint,” she said.
“And we were told that nothing could be done because there’s too many complaints of this type and too little people to deal with it.”
Which Canadian university presidents will appear before the Justice committee has yet to be announced. That particular part of the study is scheduled for the end of the month.
While the hearings in the U.S. have at times descended into highly partisan showcases, Rachel Cook, one of the students expected to testify before MPs on Thursday, told the Star she has faith the political haymaking common to Ottawa committees will take a back seat to the importance of the issue.
She noted that she’s a Conservative, but appeared at Wednesday’s event alongside active Liberals.
“Antisemitism affects Canadians across party lines,” she said.