It’s all about free speech. But for whom?
For those who oppose Israel, yes. For those who support or come from Israel, not so much.
On campus, protesters demand an untrammeled right to trespass, occupy and speechify. But it’s seemingly a right reserved only for them, as pro-Palestinian and anti-Zionist protesters — not their opponents.
Think about that one-sided argument. All along, many protesters have tried to restrict the rights of their opponents — other students and professors — to speak or exchange ideas.
Now, time’s up for the campus occupation. But speech suppression will continue on campus in other ways.
Two months after pitching their tents at the University of Toronto, protesters were ordered to pack up this week by a judge who ruled their occupation illegal. In granting the university’s request for an injunction, the court pointed out a peculiar contradiction plaguing the movement:
While the protesters continually claimed a right to free speech, they adamantly refused any reciprocal right of free assembly — even a right of entry — to anyone opposing their encampment on the university’s main grounds. Free speech for me, no speech for you.
Turns out that the protesters were turning logic and the law upside down — not merely trespassing, but trampling on the rights of others on U of T grounds. That’s why the court cleared the way for police to clear them out if they refused to fold their tents.
Superior Court Justice Markus Koehnen stressed he wasn’t denying their right to assembly. For his ruling drew a distinction between daily protesting (permitted and protected) versus perpetual occupying (trespassing and illegal).
Put another way, Canadians have the right to squawk, not squat. If that sounds like a victory for free speech, don’t be so sure.
Here’s an afterthought in the aftermath of the protest: Long after it’s gone, its legacy will live on — in the worst way.
No, I’m not talking about the crusade against divestment, which gets disproportionate coverage in light of the university’s minimal and indirect investments in Israel (a rounding error). Given the ink devoted to divestment, you’d think the U of T’s endowment was single-handedly bankrolling the Israeli war machine.
Divestment is a distraction that detracts from a more insidious objective that motivates the movement.
Listed among the top demands is an “academic boycott,” which is a polite way of describing the blackballing of the other — the other side, which means the other person.
In his ruling, the judge calls it a demand to “suspend all partnerships with Israeli academic institutions that either: operate in settlements in occupied territories, or; ‘support or sustain the apartheid policies of the state of Israel and its ongoing genocide in Gaza.’”
That may sound principled to some, but it violates and vitiates the protesters’ own stated commitment to free speech, inevitably serving to intimidate and silence scholars by virtue of their national identity and, ultimately, their religious, racial, ethnic identity.
It means banning Israeli students and professors, and slowly silencing many Canadian supporters of Israel’s right to exist — also known as Zionists. Make no mistake, the protest movement on campus is aimed not merely at divesting but disinviting and decoupling from the other.
That’s the perverse paradox that undermines the campus protest movement. For it opposes any opposing voices — not just in encampments but elsewhere on campus.
The movement seeks to constrain the unencumbered right to study, speak or teach by the other by virtue of their national origin (Israel) or religious and political beliefs (Zionism). Whatever the intent, this would amount to fewer Jews admitted to study or invited to speak on campus, just decades after the notorious “Jewish quota” restricted admissions on campus.
To be sure, protesters occasionally (but inconsistently) draw an apparent distinction between universities that operate in the “occupied territories” versus those confined solely to Israel’s internationally recognized borders. In reality, the question of settlement activity is hard to delineate (who decides?); in any case, the protesters lump all universities together when talking about institutions that “sustain the apartheid policies of the state of Israel and its ongoing genocide in Gaza” — which potentially captures all of them.
If someone at some university has tangential ties to some settlement, by what logic must the entire institution be banned? How does any university defend itself against the blanket allegation that it helps to “sustain” a state?
Why should any professor be held accountable for the actions of their fellow professors, let alone the decisions of politicians they may very well oppose (in Israel as in Canada)? Why should Israeli professors be banned, but not academics from other countries accused of genocidal actions, from China to Sudan?
That’s not whataboutism, it’s a glaring contradiction in a protest movement that wraps itself in the flag of free speech. It’s also a double standard — one for Jews, one for everyone else in the world.
U of T president Meric Gertler has rejected the recurring demand to boycott Israeli universities as a non-starter. But long after the fighting stops in Gaza, long after the U of T occupation is forgotten, the academic boycott will have the effect of delegitimizing, demonizing and dehumanizing the other.
The challenge is not merely formal academic bans but the informal — and far more insidious — exclusion of Israelis and “Zionists” that will creep into campus life. Instead of free speech, there will be speech chill.
Professors will be interrupted, lecturers will be disrupted, guest speakers will be disinvited. Sound far-fetched?
More in my next column about free speech — not just for protesters but professors.
