Even the Montreal police think the McGill University administration is too extreme in its anti-Palestinianism.
In an embarrassing setback Quebec Superior Court judge Marc St-Pierre recently rejected McGill’s request for an emergency injunction to dismantle the student divestment encampment on its lower field, which is unused, but exceptionally well situated in downtown Montreal. The university sought a court ruling to force the Service de Police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM) to intervene with force against the three-week-old encampment. In their application to the court McGill announced that they had repeatedly requested the police to attack their students, but to no avail. The court application noted: “On May 4, 2024, McGill representatives met with high-ranking representatives of the SPVM at their headquarters on St-Urbain street, to inform the SPVM that it believed the Encampment was illegal, as per comments made by the Court in the judgment rendered on May 1st, 2024, and to reiterate McGill’s concerns regarding the safety, security and public health risks at the Encampment. During this meeting, the SPVM informed McGill that an intervention would not occur in the short term, as their criteria for a police intervention were not met at that time. The SPVM suggested that McGill seek to resolve the situation peacefully over an undefined period of time, principally through dialogue with the Encampment participants.”
The McGill administration is remarkably hostile to Palestine advocacy. They refused to meet student hunger strikers calling for corporate divestment and severing ties to Israeli universities even after two were hospitalized last month. In November the administration announced it would terminate its Memorandum of Agreement with the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU), which regulates fees, use of name and other matters between the university and union after undergraduates voted overwhelmingly for the Policy Against Genocide in Palestine. In the largest referendum turnout in SSMU history, 78.7% of undergraduates called on the administration to sever ties with “any corporations, institutions or individuals complicit in genocide, settler-colonialism, apartheid, or ethnic cleansing against Palestinians.”
Eighteen months earlier they also threatened to terminate their Memorandum of Agreement with SSMU when 71% of undergraduates supported a Palestine Solidarity Policy that called for boycotting “corporations and institutions complicit in settler-colonial apartheid against Palestinians.” In response Rock legend Roger Waters, author Yann Martel, former MP Libby Davies, author Chris Hedges and 200 others signed a public letter criticizing the administration’s threats as anti-democratic and anti-Palestinian. On the eve of his 2022 performance at Montreal’s Bell Centre, Waters participated in a well mediatized online rally critical of McGill’s administration.
Over the past decade the administration has repeatedly intervened to undercut Palestine solidarity. In 2016, for instance, they blitzed students to vote against an online confirmation poll after an in-person SSMU General Assembly supported an Israel divestment motion.
The administration has engaged in other forms of anti-Palestinianism. Its representatives have repeatedly traveled to Israel and participated in events put on by the explicitly racist Jewish National Fund, which systematically discriminates against Palestinian citizens of Israel. In 2018 they gave arch anti-Palestinian activist Hillel Neuer, head of UN Watch, an honorary degree.
The Montréal university has also had a series of accords with Tel Aviv University, which recently signed a $4 million, three-year deal with the military to train hundreds of soldiers, as detailed in an October 972 Magazine article headlined “It’ll turn campus into an army base: Tel Aviv University (TAU) to host soldiers’ program”. McGill also has ties to Technion, which is the Israeli university with the greatest ties to the military. “Technion has all but enlisted itself in the Israeli armed forces”, noted a pamphlet by New Yorkers Against the Cornell-Technion Partnership. Technion, for instance, developed a remote-controlled bulldozer, which the IDF uses to demolish Palestinian homes.
Two days after the court rejected their emergency injunction McGill announced it would seek a new court order to dismantle an encampment with over 100 tents (a previous injunction requested by a Zionist lawyer also failed). Instead of negotiating with protesters whose demands have broad support among the university community, the administration wants to force the police to intervene.
In response, students campers chant “Genocide isn’t funny, students over donor money” and “Disclose, Divest we will not stop we will not rest.”
Perhaps the McGill admin should listen to the cops. Talk to the students. Negotiate. Compromise. Settle peacefully.
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