It's Not Over 'Till It's Over...University of Windsor Capitulation

"Protesters, many of whom were living full-time in tents on university property for two months or longer, have packed it in at the University of British Columbia [both the Okanagan and Point Grey campuses], University of Ottawa, Western University and University of Waterloo." 

"At the University of Guelph, administrators issued a notice of trespass to the campers ... a move that likely signals the school intends to imminently seek a court injunction."

"University of Waterloo President Vivek Goel issued a statement on July 6 that the university would retract its legal proceedings against the protesters once they vacated the private property -- which they did."

"Things have taken a darker turn at McGill, where it has emerged that the urine-drenched, rat-infested encampment consisted of not just students but also -- primarily, even -- of homeless persons. One man was arrested after a campus security guard was ... assaulted by a protester. Multiple instances of vandalism occurred, and two ... drug overdoses occurred inside the encampment since July 6."

Amy Hamm, journalist, National Post

"Windsor has fallen. Hamas rules. Reading this proclamation is surreal. It took me back to 1930s Hungary."

"The first Jewish laws were directed at universities. It's why my mother was not allowed to study medicine."

"It's what my film Sunshine is about."

Robert Lantos, film producer

University of Windsor, Windsor, Ontario by Ken Lund

 

Is it fear, cowardice, a wish to mollify, that leads some university administrators down the path of conciliation over illegal, disruptive and inherently violent demonstrations targeting Israel and Jews?

Or might it be that such arrangements are a reflection of their own biases? We will never quite know since anyone in the position of making such decisions will not willingly out themselves as antisemites, leaving conjecture to rue the day.

The University of Windsor appears to have collaborated with the Windsor Liberation Zone Team over the encampment leadership demands which, when acceded to, would see the anti-Israel tent camp swarming with antisemites finally decamp. Although not one of the more fulsomely crowded and attended of such encampments, those students who did adhere to the hate-Israel message managed to persuade the university to agree with its demands.

And so the 'demonization, defamation and destabilization' of the State of Israel received the university's approval (in the alliteratively descriptive words of Avi Benlolo of the Abraham Global Peace Initiative). An agreement that saw the University of Windsor agree to "not pursue any institutional academic agreements with Israeli universities until the right of Palestinian self-determination has been realized". No acknowledgement, needless to say, that universities in Gaza have been useful to Hamas as weapons storage depots.

 

But the agreement between the university and the pro-Hamas group idolizing a terrorist ensemble on Canada's own proscribed terrorist list, doesn't end there. For the agreement also calls for "establishing or re-establishing institutional relationships with Palestinian universities", while sundering relations with Israeli universities. 

The agreement goes further, to ensure that the school's "responsible investment policy" will take account of a United Nations database of "companies whom it has identified as engaged in illegal Israeli settlement enterprise in the occupied Palestinian territory". A page right out of Nazi Germany's targeting European Jewery in its campaign excluding Jews from academic institutions. 

Nor is that the completion of the agreement which continues on to address "anti-Palestinian racism". A charge of racism against Palestinians which do not represent a race, but rather a political movement. When in reality it is hate crimes that see the Jewish community in the majority of cases, and their persecutors are none other than Palestinians and their supporters who label themselves victims of racism.

Just as other  universities that have been encumbered by encampments leading to unfortunate incidents of verbal and physical violence and certainly disruptions of university scheduling of classes and  commencement ceremonies, the University of Windsor had the freedom to look at a series of measures available to clear the encampment without resorting to accepting terms set by radical students and their non-student leadership. 

York University took a decisive step to dismantle the encampment on their campus. Filing for a court injunction was eminently possible, demonstrated by the actions of the University of Toronto. A lawsuit could suitably have been launched against the protest organizers, taking the example of the University of Waterloo which resulted in the encampment on their campus being removed. Alternately and perhaps as a last step, law enforcement could have been called in to clear the encampment, a model from McGill University's solution.

Pro-Palestinian demonstrators are shown at the University of Windsor on Monday, May 27, 2024, in the "Liberation Zone" set up on campus. Photo by Dan Janisse /Windsor Star