If more people, especially “liberals”, would have listened to the anti-Zionist appeals of a long ago Concordia Student Union (CSU) perhaps Canada wouldn’t be complicit in a live-streamed holocaust today.
The National Post’s condemnation of the CSU’s 2025-26 handbook brought back memories of my time in student government. In “Concordia’s rabidly anti-Israel student union must be dissolved” National Post genocidaire Leslie Roberts complained the “CSU student handbook doesn’t look like a guide to academic life. It looks like a political manifesto. Plastered with slogans such as ‘Stop Genocide’ and ‘Free Palestine,’ it positions Concordia not as a university for all students, but as a staging ground for militant activism.”
Hopefully, Postmedia’s authoritarian demand is unsuccessful. It would certainly be unpopular because most Canadians support the students and not this media “personality” who has never met an Israeli atrocity he was willing to criticize. A recent Mainstreet poll asking, “Should Canada recognize that Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza?” found that 64% said yes and 36% no. Among students, opposition to genocide is far greater. At a Special General Meeting of the CSU last semester undergraduates voted 15 to 1 to adopt two motions in support of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS). Students voted 885 to 58 to sanction Israel.
The backlash against the CSU’s handbook was a blast from the past. In my second year at Concordia the student union published a pro-Palestinian, pro-queer and anti-capitalist handbook titled Uprising. The 320-page day-planner, which was widely circulated in a time before smart phones, declared, “This is not an agenda called Uprising. It is an agenda for uprising.” Released days before the 9/11 attacks in the US, Zionist and rightist forces exploited it to launch a massive campaign against the leftist CSU. At a press conference a few weeks after the Twin Towers attacks, B’nai Brith Executive Director Frank Dimant asked, “Is this a blueprint for Osama bin Laden’s youth program in North America?” The handbook spurred a media storm that led most of the CSU executive to resign amidst a recall referendum, which sought to end three years of activist, pro-Palestinian and anti-capitalist student government.
The backlash made the right — including mainstream NDPers in the particular context — strong favorites to win the next CSU election. But the executive slate I was part of managed an upset victory (by a decent margin). We then published a socialist, feminist and anti-racist handbook titled “Surprising”, noting the student union was “still uprising”.
The handbook came out days before the Asper Foundation, which was run by the owner of what’s now Postmedia, hosted then former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at Concordia’s main downtown building. A large militant student protest, combined with significant security/policing errors, led the event to be cancelled. The university responded with significant repression, banning discussion of Palestine and student activities. In the aftermath of the Netanyahu protests I was arrested and then suspended for a semester. But I was elected to serve on the student council for the next year and continued to fulfill my duties after my year as CSU vice-president ended. At the first CSU board meeting the next year, the administration called the police to physically remove me from the union’s deliberations (throughout the rest of the year the monthly council meetings had to be held off campus so I could participate.) As I detail in Playing Left Wing: From Rink Rat to Student Radical, the administration then suspended me for another semester and when they claimed I didn’t fulfill my second semester suspension they expelled me from the university.
Despite the opprobrium leveled against us, those who “rioted” against Netanyahu were confronting a vile individual and colonial system. Most would now agree, outside the National Post and some of the extreme right-wing Zionist establishment. History has already judged our actions favorably. Maybe whenever the genocidal apartheid state is dismantled, Concordia will admit their mistake.
Three years ago, the university formally apologized for the 1969 “computer centre riot”. After a judicial board dismissed students charges of anti-Black racism against a university professor, they occupied the university’s computer centre, demanding that disciplinary measures be taken against the professor. After a 13-day occupation by more than 75 students, the confrontation climaxed with students and police clashing. Computers were wrecked and the centre was set on fire, destroying student records. This cost the university an estimated $2.5 million (1969 dollars). Students were rounded up and 97 arrested, several served time in jail. Roosevelt Douglas was singled out as the ringleader. He served two years in prison, was labeled a terrorist threat by the Canadian government and was deported. But Douglas went on to become head of state of the small Caribbean nation of Dominica.
The riots prompted Sir George Williams to establish University Regulations on Rights and Responsibilities in 1971, as well as Concordia’s later establishment of an Ombuds Office. For the first time students won an institutional mechanism to look at their grievances. After the President’s Task Force on Anti-Black Racism in 2022 Concordia formally apologized to the students for the university’s racism.
Hopefully, Leslie Roberts and Concordia will one day apologize for their anti-Palestinian racism. But that’s for tomorrow. Today is for applauding all student unions who oppose their university and government’s complicity in Israel’s genocide.
To assist, donate or learn more about my bid to lead the NDP check out yvesforndpleader.ca
You must be logged in to post a comment.