A Look at the Ways Canadian Universities Engage in a Mutually Beneficial, Inherently Violent, Settler-Colonial Relationship with Israel
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Excerpt
Executive Summary
Canadian universities are, and always have been, part of Canada’s settler colonial project. Therefore, Canadian university complicity in Israel’s illegal occupation, apartheid regime, and ongoing genocide — referred to collectively in this report as Israel’s Crimes — should come as no surprise. Since university complicity is not new, neither is student activism. Over the last several decades, students across Canadian campuses have engaged in Palestine solidarity work. Whether during the First Intifada, the building of the Annexation Wall, the blockade of Gaza, or other assaults on Gaza, students have jumped into action.1 Each time, there is a concerted response by pro-Israel groups to shut down Palestinian solidarity actions. There are also often repercussions from university administrations against students, faculty, and staff.
This report builds on existing documentation of ways that Canadian universities materially, politically, and ideologically support Israel’s Crimes, and describes some of the pro-Israel groups that are trying to influence the Canadian post-secondary landscape. We hope to help build awareness of how universities in Canada support Israel’s Crimes.2 We believe Canadian universities can and must become more responsible and accountable. In this report we identify ways they can disentangle themselves from their current complicity.
This builds off our own past work, as well as critical work from others including the York University Race Equity Committee’s report “Surveilled & Silenced: A Report on Palestine Solidarity at York University”;3 Faculty for Palestine Carleton’s report “The Palestine Exception: A Report of Rampant Anti-Palestinian Racism at Carleton University”;4 the UBC Divest! “2023 UBC Apartheid Investment Database”;5 and the expert task-force report, led by Azeezah Kanji, “PALESTINE AT CANADIAN UNIVERSITIES: How Institutional Complicity in Colonial Genocide is Maintained.”6
In this report, we intentionally focus on the dimensions of Canadian institutional complicity in Israel’s Crimes. This includes four distinct themes.
Theme 1: Canadian universities as financiers and profiteers of Israel’s Crimes (Investments)
Canadian universities financially benefit from and financially support Canada as a settler-colonial nation – through their contributions to the settler economy, their physical presence on stolen Indigenous lands, government and private funding derived from exploitation of stolen resources, etc. We sought to identify Canadian universities engaged in economic relationships supportive of Israel’s Crimes and violation of Palestinians’ rights, including investing in, procuring from, exporting to, conducting R&D or commercialization activities with, or otherwise economically partnering with:
- Companies or institutions carrying out activities in Israel
- The Israeli government or its lobby groups, or Israeli state-owned enterprises
- Any entity involved in systematic violence against Palestinians or destruction of Palestinian infrastructure, expansion or entrenchment of complicit Israeli infrastructure, or extraction of Palestinian resources
We found detailed financial statements for 20 universities. All included investments in companies complicit in Israel’s Crimes. The estimated total of these investments is over $1.6 billion.7 The top 5 complicit universities, based on % of total portfolio analyzed, were:
- McMaster University: 20.9%
- Western University: 17.5%
- Queen’s University: 16.8% (pooled investments) and 14.9% (endowment funds)
- University of Waterloo: 13.5% (endowment funds)
- University of Winnipeg Foundation: 13.4%
9 universities reported investments in Israeli companies. For those that provided dollar values, the top 5 Israeli companies universities were invested in are:
- Bank Leumi le Israel: $4,129,705
- Cellebrite Ltd: $1,691,894
- Teva Pharmaceuticals: $1,486,623
- Bank Hapoalim: $774,323
- Phoenix Financial: $284,695
Theme 2: Canadian universities as facilitators of political power through Canadian charities (Charity Donors)
In Canada, funding for post-secondary education comes from three main sources: public funds, user fees, and private funds. Over the past 40 years, the balance between these funding sources has significantly changed with private funds gaining more prominence. With respect to Israel’s Crimes, Canadian universities have accepted funding from organizations that promote Zionism and fundraise for Israeli settler infrastructure and the Israeli military8 and donor families and individuals with ties to Israel’s Crimes.9
We identified $188.8 million worth of funding from 27 pro-Israel donors between 2000 and 2025. The top 5 recipients and donors were:
Recipients
- McGill University: $39,306,285 (+ 7,897,578 to McGill Health Centres)
- University Of Toronto: $34,208,747 (+2,902,200 to Medical School Bursaries)
- University Of Calgary: $12,947,656
- St. Francis Xavier University $9,498,120
- University Of Waterloo $8,746,050
Donors
- United Jewish Appeal Of Greater Toronto: $49,887,721
- Jewish Community Foundation Of Montreal: $41,607,425
- The Gerald Schwartz & Heather Reisman Foundation: $37,127,739
- The Azrieli Foundation: $34,451,111
- Jewish Foundation Of Greater Toronto: $21,996,819
Theme 3: Canadian universities as partners in Israel’s Crimes (Partnerships)
As part of our review, we broadly exploredpartnerships: relationships engaged in by Canadian universities10 with Israeli entities. This includes supporting complicit institutions to build and maintain power, assisting complicit institutions in whitewashing their human-rights violations, engaging in normalization or revisionism regarding Israel’s Crimes, and rewarding representatives of complicit institutions.
We found significant support for institutions through agreements between Canadian and Israeli universities, research and design (R&D) partnerships between institutions, visits by Canadian officials and university administration to Israel, support for representatives of complicit institutions (e.g., awarding honorary degrees, procurement agreements with complicit companies (such as Ex Libris, Sabra, WSP, and Siemens), and travel programs for scholars and students.
In contrast, some universities have refused partnerships. For instance, in 2014 the University of Regina announced it would not be pursuing an academic partnership with the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.11 In another instance, after 11 years of partnership with the Technion-Israeli Institute of Technology, the University of Waterloo stated it was not renewing their partnership with Technion, a massive victory for student organizers from Waterloo.12
Theme 4: Canadian universities as sites of activism and repression (Anti-Palestinian Racism)
While Canadian universities are, like Israeli universities, deeply part of the settler-colonial state, they have also been sites of progressive politicization, multi-movement resistance, and liberation-oriented activism. This includes movements not only for access to education13 but also movements for decolonization, racial justice, feminism, queer and trans liberation, disability justice, economic justice, environmental justice, and peace / anti-militarism.14 Simultaneously, Canadian universities have also been sites of right-wing activism including anti-abortion organizing;15 racist organizing and attempted establishment of white supremacist student groups;16 and claims of political correctness / “woke-ism” and alleged suppression of right-wing scholars’ perspectives at universities, with resulting attacks on EDI initiatives and critical race and gender studies programs.17
This section explores anti-Palestinian racism (APR) as defined by the Arab Canadian Lawyers Association and examined by the Palestinian Canadian Congress. We also discuss pro-Israel groups at Canadian universities that promote zionism, strengthen the Israeli military, enrich Israel’s economy, or promote the ‘whitewashing’ of Israel’s Crimes. We identified 7 on-campus pro-Israel groups, as well as 11 off-campus groups that provide support for students. Finally, we considered 3 faculty pro-Israel groups that either discredit or deny anti-Palestinian racism.
We also analyzed the CRA data for pro-Israel groups where available. This includes, Hillel, Jewish Learning Initiative on Campus (JLIC) Canada, Chabad on Campus, Allied Voices for Israel, and StandWithUs.
Acknowledgements
This work would not be possible without our amazing volunteers, as well as collaboration with faculty and student groups. We want to thank everyone who contributed to this project. We look forward to ongoing collaboration.
Introduction
Canadian university complicity in the occupation of Palestine is not new
Canadian university complicity, and therefore, student activism is not new. Over the last several decades, students across Canadian campuses have engaged in Palestine solidarity work. Whether during the First Intifada, the building of the Annexation Wall, the blockade of Gaza, or other assaults on Gaza, students have jumped into action.18 Each time, there is a concerted response by pro-Israel groups to shut down Palestinian solidarity actions. There are also often repercussions from university administrations against students, faculty, and staff.
This has never been more obvious than since October 7, 2023, when Israel escalated its “chronic, insidious genocide”19 in Palestine. In particular, Canadian universities’ refusal to meet the modest demands by their students, staff, and faculty (to acknowledge Israel’s destruction of Gaza as genocide; disclose their investments; divest from human-rights-violating companies; and defend students, staff, and faculty speaking up in solidarity with Palestinians – and subsequent visible and violent repression of Palestine solidarity encampments on Canadian university campuses in 2024) sparked increased public interest and awareness regarding the multi-faceted links between Canadian universities and Israel’s illegal occupation, apartheid, and genocide — referred to collectively in this report as Israel’s Crimes.
We use the phrase Israel’s Crimes in this report to refer to efforts to Judaize the entire Levant prior to and since the creation of the nation-state of Israel. This includes mass displacement and ethnic cleansing, settler paramilitary violence, destruction of civilian infrastructure, and creation of settler-colonial infrastructure. This also includes actions against Palestinians as well as Syrians in the occupied Syrian Golan and Lebanese communities throughout Lebanon. Since Israel declared itself a nation-state in 1948, Israel’s Crimes have included all of these features as well as mass incarceration, apartheid-level discrimination and control of Palestinian movement, and repeated military assault, all of which not only constitute illegal occupation but also genocide and apartheid.
This report builds on existing documentation of ways that Canadian universities materially, politically, and ideologically support Israel’s Crimes, and describes some of the pro-Israel groups that are trying to influence the Canadian post-secondary landscape. We hope to help build awareness of how universities in Canada support Israel’s Crimes.20 We believe Canadian universities can and must become more responsible and accountable. In this report, we identify ways they can disentangle themselves from their current complicity.
No single report can comprehensively and exhaustively document Canadian universities’ relationships to Israel’s Crimes. Our work is informed by and is intended to complement other work published in the past 20 months, including the following key reports and analyses:
- In October 2024, the York University Race Equity Committee published a report that documented recent repression of Palestine solidarity activism in the context of York University conducting more than 20 years of surveillance and repression of student, staff, and faculty-led Palestine solidarity initiatives. The committee concluded that York’s actions were rooted “in the university’s ideological and material investments in/with the Israeli state”.21
- In November 2024, Just Peace Advocates submitted several reports on Canadian universities to United Nations Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese, in response to her call for global input on non-state actors’ complicity in Israel’s occupation, apartheid, and genocide.22 Canadian Universities’ Contributions to the Violation of International Law, compiled with input from individuals at 20 Canadian post-secondary institutions, summarized connections between Canadian universities and Israel’s Crimes.23 We also submitted separate stand-alone reports on two institutions – the University of Toronto and the University of Alberta. Our report on the University of Toronto’s ties to Israel found that the university contributes to Israel’s Crimes in three primary ways: investment, academic partnerships, and suppression of scholarship and activism.24 Our analysis of the University of Alberta’s disclosed investments in companies known to be violating Palestinians’ rights concluded that universities can’t be relied upon to self-monitor, and we recommended measures to ensure that Canadian universities have a responsible investment policy and process to ensure due diligence around human rights.25
- In March 2025, Briarpatch published an analysis of changes made by 17 Canadian universities to “security” policy and personnel from June to December 2024, in the wake of the Palestine solidarity encampments.26 The report noted changes to policies regarding on-campus protest and events, installation of enhanced surveillance technology and movement-control infrastructure, increased use of private security (including use of a firm owned, managed, and partially staffed by ex-members of the Israeli military), increased use of force by security guards, and use of academic disciplinary measures to punish student organizers.
- In July 2025, Carleton University faculty published a report describing anti-Palestinian racism at Carleton as “rampant and systemic”, with anti-Palestinian racism “embedded in administrative decisions, campus safety protocols, risk management policies, equity frameworks, and institutional norms that shape and govern campus culture”. The Carleton authors traced the escalation since October 2023 to roots in Carleton’s relationships with Israeli institutions as well as with a funder who took part in the Nakba.27
- In August 2025, the University of British Columbia (UBC) Social Justice Centre and UBC Graduate Students for Palestine published analyses of UBC’s 2023 investments. Their report estimated UBC’s endowments were invested in $113,852,076 of shares in 88 known human- rights-violating companies participating in Israeli apartheid, settler-colonialism, and genocide.28 In September 2025, the Association of Administrative and Professional Staff of UBC – which had voted in 2024 to review assets and investments in the Staff Pension Plan (SPP) for companies profiting from human-rights violations and apartheid in Palestine, and to advocate for the immediate divestment from these companies – released a report identifying that as of June 30, 2023, $108,480,000 of the SPP holdings (4.52% of the total portfolio) were invested in 48 companies with ties to Israel.29
- In October 2025, an expert task force of Palestinian, Indigenous, Black, Muslim, and Jewish scholars and lawyers with expertise in racial and colonial violence, led by Azeezah Kanji, published a report chronicling anti-Palestinian racism and repression across Canadian universities over the past two years.30 This report was based on interviews with 140 students, staff, and faculty at 31 universities across Canada; Freedom of Information disclosures; and open-source reports. It identified 21 tactics and 7 tropes used by Canadian universities to repress Palestine solidarity activism, and similar to the earlier York and Carleton reports, concluded that anti-Palestinian racism at Canadian universities manifests not only as repression of activism but also complicity in genocide “via investments in military and other corporations (amounting to just under $1 billion), relationships with implicated Israeli institutions, and other modalities”. As Yousuf Ramahi, a graduate student at the University of Toronto wrote:
“Academic freedom does not exist in a vacuum. Our institutions of knowledge production have never existed as removed from historical or political contexts. This includes the material conditions under which universities were founded: the sources of funding, the land used to construct their buildings, and the public mission that universities champion. Academic institutions have a prerogative to advance society through education, but such social development must not come at the expense of international law which our countries have signed onto, specifically the Genocide Convention.”31
Canadian universities’ censorship and repression of their students, staff, faculty, alumni, and broader community members accessing campus pales in comparison to what has happened and is continuing in occupied Palestine, particularly in Gaza. Since October 2023, Israel – with support from Canada and other global north countries – has systematically destroyed educational infrastructure in Gaza, targeting school buildings and academics to such an extent that the UN termed it “scholasticide”32. Palestinian scholar Ghada Ageel, who teaches at the University of Alberta, describes scholasticide in Gaza as “not only the physical destruction of Palestinian educational institutions but also the war being waged on memory, imagination and the Indigenous intellect itself”.33
Meanwhile, pro-Israel organizations and individuals – including Canadian politicians – have been trying to redirect attention by falsely claiming that Palestine solidarity activism has created an urgent crisis of anti-Jewish hate at Canadian universities. They claim that Jewish students, staff, and faculty are living in terror and are in need of imminent protection.34 This derailing narrative was supported by the new President and CEO of Universities Canada (the national association of Canadian universities), who started comments on supposedly surging anti-Jewish hatred in the post-secondary sector by stating in testimony before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights (JUST) in May 2024, “I can be certain that there will never be another issue more important than the one we’re here to discuss today”.35
In this report, we intentionally focus on the dimensions of Canadian institutional complicity in Israel’s Crimes. As Kanji et al point out, anti-Palestinian repression on campus is a form of institutional derailment that “perpetually serve[s] to defer and deflect calls for accountability and divestment”.36 We should in no way ignore any form of repression of liberation-oriented activism or violations of civil liberties happening at Canadian universities, but we should also remain aware of what this repression is intended to distract from.
Canadian university complicity extends beyond ideological education
Canadian universities not only teach students, they play a massive role in the Canadian economy as well as the research and development (R&D) sector. As UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese commented in her July 2025 report From Economy of Occupation to Economy of Genocide:
“Universities – centre of intellectual growth and power – have sustained the political ideology underpinning the colonization of Palestinian land, developed weaponry and overlooked or even endorsed systemic violence, while global research collaborations have obscured Palestinian erasure behind a veil of academic neutrality…. Universities worldwide, under the guise of research neutrality, continue to profit from an [Israeli] economy now operating in genocidal mode. Indeed, they are structurally dependent on settler-colonial collaborations and funding.”37
Canada’s 228 universities38 are big business – contributing $45.1B annually to the Canadian economy.39 Governmental educational funding per student has declined by over 20% since 2010, creating strains for universities in their operating budgets and increasing emphasis on industry partnerships.40 Yet, the larger universities have significant financial assets and are involved in the Canadian economy far beyond their educational mandates. In addition to their campuses being located on stolen Indigenous lands, some Canadian universities also have additional real estate holdings from endowed stolen lands or endowed cash funds, and play a significant role as real-estate developers.41
In 2023-2024, Canadian universities had a total revenue of $52.4B (an increase of $3.5B over the previous year), with $4.2B of that revenue coming from investment returns.42 In 2024, Canadian universities reported $18.5B expenditures on R&D, 34% of Canada’s total R&D expenditures.43
Given the shared connection with British imperialism and settler-colonialism, it’s unsurprising that Israeli universities have, like Canadian universities, followed a similar colonial trajectory and served a similar function – taking over lands for their campuses and student housing, training settlers in the disciplines needed to propagate settler infrastructure, creating the ideological rationale for mass displacement and genocide (Sbeih Sbeih terms this “colonising reality”44), conducting R&D to create technology that further reshapes Palestine as Israel, and supporting an extractive settler economy.45
“Israeli universities are not just places of knowledge, but active nodes in the military-academic system that supports and optimises colonisation, through cartography, urban planning, intelligence, and behavioural analysis.”46
Maya Wind has extensively documented the role of universities prior to the creation of the state of Israel in creating settler Jewish outposts or anchors in geographically strategic areas with significant Arab Palestinian populations, which then facilitated further expansion of Jewish settler housing, civilian, military, and business infrastructure to gradually take over those areas.47
Canada is not a passive observer in the growth of Israeli universities. In a 2025 report, Just Peace Advocates exposed approximately $100 million dollars of tax-subsidized funding going to nine Israeli universities.48 This is feasible, in part, because many of these post-secondary institutions in Israel are registered as qualified donees with the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA). This means that Israeli universities who are qualified donees can issue official donation tax receipts for gifts they receive from individuals, corporations, and registered charities. Further, many Israeli universities have associated Canadian organizations that are established with the sole focus of supporting the Israeli institution.49 This not only implicates Canadian organizations but all tax-payers.
Canadian universities are part of Canada’s own settler-colonial project
Educational institutions materially, politically, and ideologically shape and are shaped by the societies they exist in. From their inception, Canadian universities reflected the intertwined white supremacist and Christian-supremacist features of European empire building. The earliest settler universities were established prior to Canadian confederation, aiding in theft of Indigenous lands and other resources (which continues today), selling enslaved Africans to raise money for their creation, utilizing slave labour, and advancing Christian-supremacist missionary agendas.50
Canadian universities produce workers with the technical skills to build and operate the colonial infrastructure and economy – including residential school staff, politicians, lawyers, engineers, social workers, etc. – and also the theories, narratives, and research methodologies that rationalize and perpetuate colonial violence (in disciplines such as anthropology, geography, history, law, medicine, etc.).51 Scientific technologies were (and continue to be) developed in Canadian universities to facilitate extracting stolen Indigenous resources and radically reshape Indigenous lands and waters.52
Anti-Black racism has also continued as a structural component of Canadian university development. Multiple Canadian university medical and nursing programs refused to accept Black students well into the 20th century.53 Black people, and particularly Black women, continue to be under-represented in Canadian universities today with structural barriers in hiring, promotion, and retention, as well as differential wages and positional status compared to white peers.54 The disproportionate surveillance, criminalization, and police violence experienced by Black men in Canadian off-campus contexts is also a systemic problem in on-campus spaces.55
The Scarborough Charter on Anti-Black Racism and Black Inclusion in Canadian Higher Education was created in 2021 by Black communities, academic institutions, and institutional partners, and sets out principles, actions, and accountability measures to combat anti-Black racism and foster Black inclusion in higher education.56 Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) programs within Canadian universities have in some instances been actively hostile to adopting the Scarborough Charter, attempting to pit Black academics against Indigenous communities and other colleagues of the Global Majority by saying there aren’t enough resources to address all equity issues.57 Black academics have also been specifically targeted for their support of Palestine. For instance, El Jones, DeRico Symonds, and Benazir Tom Erdimi were disinvited from presenting to law clerks at the Supreme Court of Canada due to pro-Palestinian comments.58 The irony: the presentation was to focus on the 2022 Halifax Declaration for the Eradication of Racial Discrimination and anti-Black racism.
Reliance on anti-Indigenous and anti-Black tropes of ‘sav*g*ry’, police violence, and manipulation of EDI spaces to further racism are also all themes that can be seen in how Canadian universities have related to Israel’s Crimes and to Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim university community members.
EDI initiatives are said to hold the promise of change. But it can be argued that in practice, Canadian university EDI programs – like anti-harassment initiatives or environmental sustainability policies – exist largely to promote a façade. One where universities feign caring about justice and fairness and to derail community criticism, while being resolutely determined to maintain the structural and functional status quo.59 In a settler-colonial context this includes accountability being symbolic, tokenistic, or performative rather than substantive (e.g., land acknowledgements, but no return of stolen lands and wealth). For instance, Samantha Pearson, then Director of the University of Alberta’s Sexual Assault Centre, was fired after signing an open letter. The opposition to Pearson’s alleged signature focused on the fact that the letter stated accusations of Palestinian fighters engaging in sexual violence on October 7 were ‘unverified.’”60 The claims of sexual violence were later debunked as Israeli propaganda.61
Canadian universities and the BDS movement
Canada does not support economic measures in reaction to Israel’s Crimes62 and has pressured Canadian universities not to engage in boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS). For example, when the presidents of McGill University, University of Toronto (U of T), University of British Columbia (UBC), and Concordia University appeared at meetings convened in 2024 by the JUST to discuss allegations of antisemitism on university campuses, self-described zionist MP Anthony Housefather63 asked whether their administrations opposed BDS on their campuses.
“[T]he presidents of U of T, UBC, and Concordia all answered yes. Professor Saini of McGill said that he personally finds it ‘offensive,’ but that it is up to the university’s governing bodies to make policy decisions on the issue”.64
In 2016, the Ontario government attempted to bring forward a bill that would have forbidden colleges and universities from supporting or participating in BDS related to Israel’s Crimes. Though it did not pass, it would have (seemingly without irony) imposed boycott and divestment measures against “any person or entity” that supports or participates in the BDS movement.65
Yet, many students heeded the BDS movement’s call for grassroots mobilization, and advocated for their institutions to adopt BDS measures related to Israel’s Crimes.66 The BDS movement is founded on the call made by more than 170 Palestinian civil society organizations on July 9, 2005, inviting people across the world who support freedom, justice and equality for the people of Palestine to boycott, divest from, and press for sanctions against the State of Israel until it meets its obligations under international law by:67
- Ending its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the Wall;
- Recognizing the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality; and
- Respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN Resolution 194.68
In Canada, the BDS movement was propelled by the establishment of Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW). It was started by the Arab Students Collective at the University of Toronto in 2005, and grew from there.
“IAW organizers sa[id] it’s no surprise the movement started in Canada, pointing to Ottawa’s blatant support for Israel’s apartheid system. On January 12, 2009, at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, Canada was the sole nation to vote against demanding ‘urgent international action’ to halt Israel’s ‘massive violations’ of human rights in Gaza.”69
IAW events were incredibly successful; so much so that “Israel apologists denounced it and actively tried to malign it.”70 IAW, along with groups like Coalition Against Apartheid Israel, Faculty for Palestine, and Students Against Apartheid Israel were key to many of the university resolutions in the mid 2000s to 2010s. Much of this work was shut down by 2015, but it remains a strong framework for Palestine mobilization on campus. The global student-led encampments of 2024 exponentially amplified the call for universities to disclose their investments and to divest from complicit companies, with two additional Canadian student union/association resolutions and 21 Canadian faculty and academic associations supporting BDS.71
Methodology
While, as outlined above, there is already substantial evidence of Canadian universities’ complicity with Israel’s Crimes, as far as we are aware there has been no mechanism to date for systematically tracking each institution’s involvement and identifying cross-institution patterns. We began by constructing a list of 97 Canadian universities (Appendix A) to summarize and compare information across five parameters:
- Investments: institutional investments in corporations with known ties to Israel’s Crimes and violation of Palestinian rights, and institutional position regarding commitment to divest from known human rights violators.
- Partnerships: institutional connections with Israel or complicit institutions (e.g., joint research, study-abroad programs, collaborations with weapons companies that supply Israel’s military, receiving funding from pro-Israel foundations, hosting Israeli officials or individuals who encourage human rights violations, platforming Israeli military representatives or supporting Israel’s military).
- Discrimination: institutional anti-Palestinian racism (e.g., differential responses to Palestine vs. other instances of occupation and human rights violations such as apartheid South Africa, etc; position on the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism;72 refusal to provide support for Palestinian students); recognition of anti-Palestinian racism; measures taken to address anti-Palestinian racism.
- Repression: institutional actions against students, staff, and faculty engaged in Palestine scholarship or activism.
- Activism: faculty, staff, and student initiatives (e.g., resolutions from faculty or student associations, protests, educational endeavours, fundraising, etc).
We collected information by reaching out to on-campus groups, reviewing institutional documents and campus groups’ social media accounts, reviewing media reports, and conducting internet searches to review other public information. To date we have collected partial data on 77 Canadian universities. While it was not viable for our volunteer researchers to exhaustively document all information for each institution, or to assess other relevant parameters, we hope that our findings give examples that are useful in better understanding how Canadian universities are complicit.
Canadian universities are not monolithic in their structure, financing, ideological positions, or political actions. In our research we wanted to get a better sense both of thematic patterns in how Canadian universities are entangled with Israel’s Crimes, and also begin to understand differences between specific institutions. While we are far from exhaustive data collection, even at this early stage we are seeing some consistent thematic patterns. In particular we see Canadian universities supporting and benefiting from Israel’s Crimes in material (financial), ideological, and political ways. We also see the myriad of ways they uphold and perpetuate anti-Palestinian racism. Our discussion below is intended to highlight the ways that these strands weave together, summarize our findings to date, and identify areas where more work is needed to better understand how various pieces fit together.
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Notes
1 Hassan Husseini, Canadian BDS Coalition.
2 Including Israel’s ongoing genocidal assault of Gaza since October 2023. See TWAILR, MSF, ICJ, OHCHR 1, Forensic Architecture, OHCHR 2, HRW, Amnesty, ECCHR, Al Jazeera, Btselem, PHR, AFSC, Genocide Scholars, OHCHR 3, Cooperation Canada. For nation-states’ positions affirming Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, see the chronology at Gaza Genocide Recognition Wiki.
3 York University Race Equity Committee
4 Faculty for Palestine Carleton
6 Palestine at Canadian Universities
7 This is an estimate based on a) the value of investments where provided and b) a calculation of the value based on the percentage of the total portfolio and the total portfolio value. Three disclosures only included names and no values, therefore those are not included.
8 E.g., Jewish Federations and United Jewish Appeal – 1, 2
9 The Conversation, CAUT, CBC News, The Palestine Chronicle
10 Actions taken by the university, its faculties or departments, or by officials tasked with publicly representing the university – university governance / executive, faculty Deans, department Chairs, etc.
14 Roberta Lexier, SUO, CBC Radio, University Affairs, CFS
17 For example, Valer Scatamburlo-D’Annibale, SAFS, Suzan Poyraz, Canadian Dimension, University Affairs
18 Hassan Husseini, Canadian BDS Coalition.
20 Including Israel’s ongoing genocidal assault of Gaza since October 2023. See TWAILR, MSF, ICJ, OHCHR 1, Forensic Architecture, OHCHR 2, HRW, Amnesty, ECCHR, Al Jazeera, Btselem, PHR, AFSC, Genocide Scholars, OHCHR 3, Cooperation Canada. For nation-states’ positions affirming Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, see the chronology at Gaza Genocide Recognition Wiki.
21 York University Race Equity Committee
27 Faculty for Palestine Carleton
30 Palestine at Canadian Universities
34 For example: The Canadian Jewish News, The Globe and Mail, Universities Canada, Our Commons. Just as anti-Black and anti-Indigenous racism leads some white people to misperceive fear as threat to safety, and even claim victimhood while committing violence (e.g., 1, 2, 3), anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab, and anti-Muslim racism can lead some Jewish people to insist that Palestinian existence, cultural symbols such as the keffiyeh, slogans such as “From the river to sea, Palestine will be free”, Palestine solidarity encampments, or calls for decolonization are motivated by anti-Jewish hate and promoting anti-Jewish genocide. This brittleness and paranoia is compounded by overly expansive definitions of hate crime reporting that deem Palestine solidarity activism, criticism of Israel, and opposition to Zionism inherently anti-Jewish – leading to widespread reports of surging anti-Jewish hate that really reflect surging public awareness about the violence of Israel’s Crimes, unreliable data collection processes, or manipulation by supporters of Israel (IJV Canada, Breach Media, The Maple 1, The Maple 2, The Maple 3, Our Commons, Peace House, Al Jazeera).
35 Our Commons. The President and CEO of Universities Canada went on in testimony to say, “The question around IHRA is one of the most important topics” and “we can bring everyone along in the use of this very valuable tool”. The use of the IHRA working definition of antisemitism to guide institutional policy has been opposed by a broad coalition of groups including Palestinian organizations, Jewish organizations, human-rights organizations, and academic faculty/staff/student organizations (1, 2, 3, 4).
36 Palestine at Canadian Universities
40 Universities Canada, EY, CUPE
41 Dr. Tricia Logan, University Affairs, University of Saskatchewan, Valverde et al
45 The Baffler, Mondoweiss, Cultural Anthropology,
50 Canadian Encyclopedia, The Varsity, Indigenous Watchdog, Campus Mental Health, The Coast, Dalhousie, Spheres of Influence
51 Fortier and Hon-Sing Wong, Dr. Tricia Logan, Macleans, Monica Dyer, MSVU, The Conversation. Meanwhile, under Canada’s Indian Act, prior to 1951 any Indigenous person who obtained a university degree was involuntarily stripped of their status as they were considered to have assimilated into Euro-Canadian society (1).
52 Caitlin Harvey, Laurentian, Queens, Istitute for Oil Sands Innovation, Breach Media, Corporate Knights, U Calgary, U of Guelph, Research at U Calgary
53 The Canadian Encyclopedia, Dalhousie, University Affairs. There have also been other discriminatory admission practices, including quotas, limiting Japanese and Jewish people’s access to some Canadian universities. Anti-Black quotas are specified in this report here because of the historical through-line of anti-Black racism from the inception of Canadian universities to present day. For more on other quotas and exclusions see for example 1, 2, 3
54 SSHRC, University Affairs 1, University Affairs 2
56 Scarborough Charter, Universities Canada
59 Henry et al, MacKenzie et al
62 Michael Bueckert. In 2016 the Canadian government passed the following motion in a 229 to 51 vote: “That, given Canada and Israel share a long history of friendship as well as economic and diplomatic relations, the House reject the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which promotes the demonization and delegitimization of the State of Israel, and call upon the government to condemn any and all attempts by Canadian organizations, groups or individuals to promote the BDS movement, both here at home and abroad” (1).
