What to Make of the Controversy over the University of Windsor Agreement to End the Encampment
Earlier this month the University of Windsor reached an agreement with the occupants of a pro-Palestinian encampment on the university’s grounds. The agreement brought a peaceful end to the protest.
Several of the leading Jewish organizations in Canada have been harshly critical of the agreement. Their principal complaints (listed 1 to 5) are that:
(1) The encampment was “illegal” (B’nai Brith) or “unlawful” (Hillel Ontario) or “unauthorized” (Simon Wiesenthal Centre - SWC) and that in entering this agreement the university “has capitulated to a set of demands put forth by a fringe group of extremists” (Hillel), a “hateful” group (Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs - CIJA), who “engaged in anti-Semitic rhetoric, glorified terrorist acts against Israel and made Jewish students and faculty feel vulnerable and unsafe” (SWC), and that “these agreements reflect the most radical demands from encampment and pro-Hamas groups” (CIJA).
According to these groups then the encampment was unlawful, and its message was anti-Semitic and hateful.
In a previous blog, I have discussed the right of students to protest on campus and so will say only this: Under the university’s free expression policy (which in full disclosure, I drafted), and possibly now under the Charter of Rights, students have a right to protest. Protests are invariably disruptive. The difficult issue is when is the protest is so disruptive that the university is justified in shutting it down. It is misleading then for these organizations to simply assert that the encampment was unlawful from its beginning.
The claim that the encampment protestors engaged in anti-Semitic speech, or “glorified terrorism”, is made without any evidence or specifics. The same claim was made about the encampment at the University of Toronto, however the judge, who heard the university’s injunction application, found that there was no evidence that any of the protestors at the U of T encampment had engaged in anti-Semitic speech or any other form of hate speech. As the judge in that case said, calls for Palestinian liberation or for the end of the occupation of Palestinian territories are not in themselves anti-Semitic.
(2) The agreement “mandates ‘anti-Palestinian racism’ trainings and education for students, faculty, and staff” but that “the institution does not have a policy on antisemitism and … the Agreement omits any mention of Hamas’ brutal Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks on Israel.” (B’nai Brith).
The objection here seems to be that the university has agreed to recognize and respond to anti-Palestinian racism, without making the same commitment to address anti-Semitism.
In the agreement, the university says that it “is in the process of developing its first-ever anti-racism policy” which will “focus on identity-based oppression, including anti-Arab racism, anti-Palestinian racism and Islamophobia.” The university’s policy will address different forms of racism and will no doubt then address anti-Black racism and anti-Semitism.
The protestors called on the university to address anti-Palestinian racism presumably because they believe that this form of bigotry has not been properly acknowledged and addressed in the past. The recognition of a particular form of racism or oppression does not entail indifference towards other forms of racism. (Indeed, when the leading Jewish organizations pressed public bodies to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Association’s definition of anti-Semitism, I don’t think that they also advocated for the protection of other groups). It is possible, though, that B’nai Brith considers the recognition of anti-Palestinian racism to be anti-Semitic – that to recognize the oppression of the Palestinian people is to deny the right of the Jewish people to a homeland.
(3) According to Hillel, the agreement “singles out Jews and Israelis for collective punishment and endorses the idea of discriminatory academic boycotts based on national origin”.
This is what the agreement says: “The University commits to a comprehensive review process to ensure that all of its academic and research relationships and partnerships comply with [scholarly] principles” including … “[h]uman rights and international law” and that “[p]resent or future institutional relationships or partnerships which do not comply with these principles will be ended or not pursued.” Importantly, the agreement does not preclude individual academics “from working (or collaborating) with academics in Israel” or elsewhere.
The university then has agreed to review all institutional relationships to ensure they conform with “scholarly principles”. Such a review might well lead to the cancellation of any relationships the university has (if it has any) with Chinese universities, for example, given China’s suppression of the democracy movement in Hong Kong and its oppression of the Uyghur and Tibetan minorities.
In the agreement, the university specifically “commits to establishing or reestablishing institutional relationships with Palestinian universities, which will include research partnerships and scholarly exchanges. Within its resources, the University will assist with, and support, the restoration of post-secondary education in Gaza.”
The agreement notes that the University of Windsor “does not hold any active institutional academic partnerships with Israeli institutions” and provides that [b]ecause of the challenging environment for academic collaboration the University agrees to not pursue any institutional academic agreements with Israeli universities until the right of Palestinian self-determination has been realized, as determined by the United Nations, unless supported by [the university] Senate.
Hillel asserts that the agreement “singles out Jews”, yet the agreement does not say anything about Jews and is focussed instead on the actions of the state of Israel. Hillel and other Canadian Jewish organization have often been at pains to emphasize that Jews, as a group, should not be held responsible for the actions of the state of Israel – and that to do so is a form of anti-Semitism. By the same token, holding the state of Israel responsible for its actions should not ordinarily be viewed as anti-Semitic.
CIJA argues that “[b]y aligning with the hateful BDS strategy, which seeks to erase the Jewish connection to the land of Israel, a fundamental component of Jewish identity for the majority of Canadian Jews and Jews worldwide, the university has ignored its Jewish students and faculty”. On this reasoning, it would be objectionable for a Canadian university to cut ties or decline to form relationships with universities in countries such Iran or Syria, because in doing so the university would be ignoring the interests of students and faculty, who may identify with these national communities.
The real issue then is whether it is objectionable for the university to cut or avoid ties with Israeli academic institutions because of the actions of the Israeli government. There is a practical argument that is sometimes made against boycotts – that they are unworkable or counter-productive. However, the objection from Hillel and CIJA is not that but is instead that Israeli universities should not be subject to any form boycott because, in their view, any action against Israeli institutions is anti-Semitic or because they believe that Israel has done no wrong.
(4) CIJA, B’nai Brith, Hillel, and SWC say surprisingly little about the university’s commitment to review its investment policies, other than to repeat the general claim that Israel is being unfairly treated in the agreement.
As noted in the agreement, the university’s “Responsible Investment Policy (RI Policy)” already takes into account “The United Nations Principles on Responsible Investment; The application of the environmental, social and governance factors; and Respect for human rights, including international human rights law and international humanitarian law, with a particular concern for violations and potential violations of these bodies of law in conflict zones and humanitarian crises”. Under the agreement, however, the university administration will propose to the Board [of Governors] investment committee an expansion of its RI Policy to include a new section on Human Rights and International Law. …. The section would include a commitment to review the weapons manufacturing industry, with particular attention on companies involved in manufacturing arms used in conflict zones where UN human rights mechanisms or resolutions have determined that serious violations of international human rights, humanitarian or criminal law have occurred.”
More specifically, however, the agreement provides that “[f]or the purposes of the application of its RI Policy, the University recognizes that the United Nations, through its various bodies – including the Secretary General, the Security Council, the General Assembly, the Human Rights Council, the International Court of Justice and human rights commissions of inquiry – has found Israel, the occupying power, to be in serious violation of international law and human rights in the conduct of its occupation of Palestinian territory. It also recognizes that the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has established an active database of companies whom it has identified are engaged with the illegal Israeli settlement enterprise in the occupied Palestinian territory.”
The decision by a university not to invest in certain industries or countries is a political decision. However, this decision is not simply a declaration by the university on a public issue but is instead a decision not to be complicit in what the institution has judged to be wrongful action.
(5) The SWC objects to the university’s undertaking that it will “advocate politically for an ‘immediate and permanent ceasefire’ in Gaza”. CIJA similarly argues that “Academic institutions should be promoting the exchange of ideas and mutual understanding, not taking positions that exacerbate conflicts” and notes that in agreeing to make a public statement about Israel’s attack on Gaza, the university is reversing its own October 23, 2023, commitment in which they pledged to avoid "adopting institutional stances on intricate political or global issues that fall beyond its immediate purview of education, research, and scholarship."
This is what the university agreed to: “Within 72 hours of the ratification of this agreement, the University will send a letter to the Government of Canada calling for an immediate and permanent ceasefire.” In its letter, the university will also urge the Government of Canada to include anti-Palestinian racism within its Anti-Racism Strategy. Further, it will ask the Government of Canada to be “generous in the humanitarian aid that it delivers to Palestine in order to enable Gaza to engage in reconstruction for its people, and to assist the Palestinians to realize their right to self-determination.” The University will post the letter on its website. The university will also issue a public statement “that it opposes and condemns all violations of fundamental human rights, wherever and whenever they may occur”. Finally, the university “affirms its commitment towards principles of decolonization, human rights, social justice, and anti-racism in the context of the occupation of Palestine and the ongoing destruction in Gaza by Israel”.
There is some merit in the complaint that the university should not be making public statements of this kind. The problem, though, is not the content of the statement but is instead the making of any political statement, regardless of its content. While the members of the university community must be free to express their views on a range subjects, the university itself – the central administration – should not weigh in on public issues, unless they directly relate to the interests of the university – for example, issues such as funding and foreign student visas.
This was the position taken in the Kalven Report (University of Chicago, 1967):
The university is the home and sponsor of critics; it is not itself the critic. It is, to go back once again to the classic phrase, a community of scholars. To perform its mission in the society, a university must sustain an extraordinary environment of freedom of inquiry and maintain an independence from political fashions, passions, and pressures. A university, if it is to be true to its faith in intellectual inquiry, must embrace, be hospitable to, and encourage the widest diversity of views within its own community. It is a community but only for the limited, albeit great, purposes of teaching and research. It is not a club, it is not a trade association, it is not a lobby. Since the university is a community only for these limited and distinctive purposes, it is a community which cannot take collective action on the issues of the day without endangering the conditions for its existence and effectiveness. There is no mechanism by which it can reach a collective position without inhibiting that full freedom of dissent on which it thrives. It cannot insist that all of its members favor a given view of social policy; if it takes collective action, therefore, it does so at the price of censuring any minority who do not agree with the view adopted. In brief, it is a community which cannot resort to majority vote to reach positions on public issues.
On this view, the protection of the academic freedom of the members of the university community, requires that the university take no official position on the political issues of the day. My object here is not to defend this position or to discuss its limits but simply to acknowledge that it is widely held.
There can and should be a serious discussion about the scope of legitimate protest on campus and about whether universities should weigh in on public issues. Instead of engaging in such a discussion, CIJA, B’nai Brith, Hillel, and SWC are content to simply fire off a barrage of unsupported and inflammatory accusations - of anti-Semitism, extremism, hatred and so on. In reading these attacks, one senses the desperation of these organizations as they witness the changing conversation in this country about the rights and interests of Palestinians, which are now considered alongside the rights and interests of Israelis, and the problem of anti-Palestinian racism which is now considered alongside the problem of anti-Semitism.
Richard Moon is a Distinguished University Professor at the University of Windsor. He played no role in the negotiations between the university and the protestors.
