Reforms needed to address antisemitism at Canadian universities

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 18/07/2024 (429 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Canada’s Jewish community is investing vast resources into defending itself against the anti-Israel “encampment” movement on university campuses from coast to coast, including Winnipeg. But universities have not been listening to our reactive strategies, signalling that it may be time to rethink our approach.

As demonstrated in B’nai Brith Canada’s 2023 Audit of Antisemitic Incidents, there is a link between anti-Israel incitement and antisemitic acts on our streets. Universities ought to take this seriously. Many of the so-called “People’s Universities” (as many of the encampments are styling themselves) are backed by entities who have openly glorified terrorism, celebrated Hamas’ brutal Oct. 7 attacks, and embraced antisemitic tropes.

University administrations are increasingly yielding to radicals who are in open defiance of their institutions’ policies and purported values. Institutions such as McGill University in Montreal are giving members of the encampments priority treatment — for example, by not only providing access to senior administrators but by framing the discussions as “negotiations.”

Some schools have already conceded on various administrative and academic matters in response to such coercion.

What happened to higher education’s commitment to decision-making through orderly and open debate, where everyone has an equal opportunity to make their case through reason rather than by force?

In the short term, instead of responding to anti-Israel stunts such as these encampments in closed-door “negotiations,” universities should publicly, and in specific terms, reject the demands made by groups such as Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights which undermine academic freedom. This includes attempts to use political pressure to dictate who can teach a course and attempts to cancel academic exchanges and programs with institutions of higher learning in Israel.

It is also imperative that universities finally start to enforce their rules and procedures on protests and encampments, and if needed, revise them to ensure they are not employed in a discriminatory manner.

And what, then, should be the pro-active agenda for self-respecting Jewish faculty, students, and community members?

A reasonable program would include the following: revisions and improvements to diversity, equity and inclusion policies that would allow them to recognize antisemitism as a distinct and unacceptable form of bias and hatred. Antisemitism cannot be automatically paired with Islamophobia or any other prejudice.

Instead of endorsing the fashionable antisemitic discourses of our times, diversity, equity and inclusion policies must recognize that Jews are not a dismissible part of any alleged structure of “white privilege.”

To that end, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism must also be implemented as a tool for identifying antisemitism and educating about it. B’nai Brith has been advocating for institutions to take this step for many years. The definition — which has been carefully crafted to protect legitimate forms of free expression — has been adopted by many provinces and countries, including the Canadian government.

Moreover, educational programming on the Middle East should be guided by the quest for genuine learning and understanding. It must not be controlled by the bigoted anti-Zionist ideological project that falsely denies the indigeneity of Jews to Israel, or the reality that a large part of the Jewish population of Israel are refugees from surrounding Arab states and Iran.

These points should, at a minimum, be considered parts of a long-term strategy to combat the scourge of antisemitism in Canada. The problem is no longer localized to one university or another. It has become a systemic issue of national importance, and as a community, we need to think bigger and bolder.

Bryan Schwartz is a law professor at the University of Manitoba and author of Re-Enlightening Canada: A Legislative Program For Promoting Open, Democratic And Rational Policymaking (Winnipeg: Frontier Centre for Public Policy, December 2023). Richard Robertson is B’nai Brith Canada’s director of research and advocacy.