What is the role of universities? To what lengths can they employ regulations, without infringing on freedom of speech? Is it unethical to silence political discussion?
Stacey Kuznetsova, former news editor at Excalibur, wrote an article outlining the ways in which the university’s administration allegedly perpetuates systemic anti-Palestinian racism. The article was posted on Oct. 30, 2024. She wrote this article in an effort to draw attention to potential infractions and injustices performed by the university and its administration, through an opinionated summary of the September 2024 study “Surveilled & Silenced” conducted cooperatively by the Palestinian Solidarity Collective (PSC-York) and the Race Equity Caucus (REC).
Summary of the opposing article
Kuznetsova argued that York has systematically suppressed Palestinian solidarity movements and critics of Israel, undermining academic freedom, community safety, and the ability to discuss Palestinian issues openly. This is demonstrated by how the university has weaponized the rhetoric of “community safety” to justify censoring Palestinian voices.
The “Surveilled & Silenced” report highlights how York punished students for expressing Palestinian support, such as demanding the resignation of student leaders who released a statement titled “Solidarity With Palestine” after the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attack, and labelling Palestinian advocacy as “inflammatory” to maintain a facade of “neutrality.” The article also makes the argument that York is complicit in genocide through its alleged economic and academic relationships with institutions inside Israel insisting “York administration disclose its financial holdings; divest immediately and permanently from all endowments, investments and other financial holdings from Israeli military and security goods; and, boycott all current and future partnerships with Israeli academic institutions that are complicit in the violent occupation of Palestine.”
Kuznetsova also pointed out that York has collaborated with the Toronto Police Service to suppress pro-Palestinian activities on campus, such as calling them to interrupt a lecture titled “The Palestinian Struggle for Liberation: Aspirations for a Decolonial Life” by Muhannad Ayyash in February 2024, and dismantled a student encampment supporting Palestine in June. The report also alleges that York has financial ties to Israeli military companies, which may influence its biased stance. Together, these actions illustrate how York’s censorship, reliance on law enforcement, and alleged ties to the Israeli state create a hostile environment for Palestinian advocates, eroding both academic freedom and a safe, inclusive campus culture.
In response to the article
However, the political climate at York isn’t this simple. The university acts reasonably towards pro-Palestinian protesters. Reactions from the university don’t arise from anti-Palestinian racism under thinly veiled notions of community safety or deep-seeded economic ties with zionist institutions, nor excessive use of Toronto Police Services. This is evident by the complicated and multifaceted political climate surrounding the on-going war in the Levant, the research I share on the financial holdings and academic relationships of the university, and a look at the by-laws of the city of Toronto and the policies of the university.
Firstly, pro-Palestinian protests are a regular occurence on campus. I attended one in early October where the protesters chanted “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” This is dangerous because it explicitly calls for violence against Jewish people situated between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. This rhetoric has its roots in the constitution of Hamas, the democratically-elected government of Palestine: “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.” These are not the chants of a political subculture that has been repressed or silenced on campus.
Secondly, it is reasonable for York to call for the resignation of the leaders of the student unions that released a joint statement titled “Solidarity With Palestine” October 2023. This is because the contents of these statements are in support of, and friendly to, organized violence, with the explicit intention of wide-spread impact. “These events serve as a reminder that resistance against colonial violence is justified and necessary” is a quote from a statement published by the York Federation of Students (YFS). The justified and necessary events in question are the October 7th attacks on Israel by Hamas. Whether or not you think the plight of the Palestinian people is valid, and whether or not Israel’s response to the attacks were proportional, it’s fundamentally irresponsible to “promote or justify violence against unarmed civilians” like the university said in its counter-statement, and it’s completely reasonable that this irresponsibility comes with a request for the resignation of the individuals that issued the statement as a consequence.
Just because the university has friendly relationships with academic institutions in Israel doesn’t mean that it is complicit in genocide. Does York’s global internship program in Argentina make it guilty of aiding and abetting Nazis? Does the same program in Chile make it guilty of aiding the Augusto Pinochet’s regime? The answer is no, of course not. The role of these universities is to inspire education and if that reach can extend globally and foster better relationships aboard then we all gain.
In that same vein, the “Surveilled & Silenced” report also calls for the university to make public their investment holdings, but it already is public — a list of their stock holdings can be found on the University Secretariat section of the university’s website. I took a look through these documents and there does not appear to be an “investment into weapons and arms manufacturers” as claimed in the report. However, even if the university held stock in Lockheed Martin or Amphenol, does this really make it complicit in genocide? Technically yes, but effectively no. Trading Fortune 500 stock would make that trader as guilty as having academic relationships with Argentina or Chile, which is to say it doesn’t.
Additionally, it is both justified and reasonable for the university to call the police on the encampment that took place at Harry W. Arthurs Common, in early June 2024. This is because the campus is private property as cited in the “Trespass to Property Act of 1990,” which states that under the Trespass to Property Act, “property owners have the right to control their property. This includes asking individuals to leave their property and to prevent individuals entering property without permission. Property owners also have the right to use reasonable force to remove individuals if necessary.”
Further, the encampment also broke the university’s policies on protest, which states:“York University may regulate the place and manner of protest to ensure that they do not interfere with York University events.” The university is within their rights to call the police and have the encampment cleared, but is it ethical, or further, reasonable to do so? Yes it is, because historically the protests have obstructed foot traffic on campus and are very politically extreme, as seen in the aforementioned chanting as well as the close association between the PSC-York and those with communist ideologies on campus.
There is also something to be said about the ethics of journalism, and whether or not they were violated by this article and its author, particularly in the sense that radical left-wing groups such as the REC and PSC-York would produce the report since they have political incentive and the willpower to do so. Is it in breach of the ethics of journalism to use only a single, potentially biased source, that employs its research through dubious methodologies at best? I say dubious since the study only consists of a series of surveys of small sample size and a couple before and after images.
The pivotal principles of journalism are public trust, truthfulness, fairness, integrity, independence, and accountability; the author breaches four of these six principles with this article. It’s neither fair to the pro-Israeli side of the discussion to nearly solely cite this study, given the origins of the evidence, nor is it truthful to the readers of Excalibur to do so.
In breaching fairness and truthfulness, the author has damaged the integrity of her article, and its publisher and has thereby degraded public trust. These criticisms would mostly be mitigated if the article in question had been placed into the opinion section, rather than the news section. But even then, the external validity of the article would be questionable and could be aided by bringing in another study for comparative analysis.
Finally, this means that York has acted in a broadly reasonable manner when interacting with pro-Palestinian activism, there is a thriving pro-Palestinian community at the Keele campus which wouldn’t be the case if there was mass repression. The university is not complicit in genocide nor does it have relationships, academic or otherwise, that make it complicit in genocide and in this instance hasn’t employed excessive police force, via the Toronto Police Service.
Etiquette and digression
Before submitting this piece to Excalibur, I reached out to a number of individuals that I have discussed or made reference to in this article including Kuznetsova, the REC and PSC-York, as well as YFS, Barbara Joy, York’s Chief Spokesperson, the staff sergeant of the 31st division of the Toronto Police Service, and Muhannad Ayyash.
Although, I may disagree with the findings of the study, the conclusions it draws and the methodologies it was carried out in as well as the writings of Kuznetsova and the stances of student-led institutions here on campus, I do not support either the IDF or Hamas. My heart goes out to both Palestinian and Israeli victims of violence as a result of actions taken post-British mandate of 1922, in the Levant and globally. I’m also sure that there are instances of racism and unreasonability that the administration is responsible for, but as I’ve shown this is broadly not the case in this situation. Thank you to Kuznetsova for inspiring me to dive into some research of my own.
