McGill admin battles its pro-Palestinian students

 

The Harvard of the North has been the site of an increasingly intense battle linking Justin Trudeau, Roger Waters, a government handbook marginalizing Palestinians and a historic student strike for Palestine. The alma mater of the prime minister and a disproportionate share of Justin Trudeau’s cabinet is aggressively repressing a movement to divest from apartheid and genocide.

At the start of the month, the McGill administration canceled the room booked for a talk by the UN Special Rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territories Francesca Albanese. It’s remarkable that the prestigious university would suppress a representative of the United Nations but it’s consistent with McGill’s increasingly authoritarian response to those protesting genocide. Days before Albanese’s talk, the university sought to convince a judge to extend a 10 day ban on protests near its many buildings across downtown Montréal. The administration also had Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights (SPHR) banned by threatening the Students’ Society of McGill University’s (SSMU) entire funding structure if it didn’t suspend the longstanding student club.

The administration’s response to an encampment calling for the university to cut ties with Israeli universities and companies assisting the slaughter in Gaza was to repeatedly ask the Montréal police to intervene. They even sought a court ruling to force the police to do so. After that was unsuccessful McGill hired a private security firm to demolish the encampment in July. They then largely shuttered campus for the next six weeks.

The encampment on McGill’s lower field, which is unused but exceptionally well-placed downtown, enraged genocide supporters. They pressed the police and politicians to act and instigated a court case to force the police to dismantle it. Over the past decade the Zionist lobby has become ever more aggressive in seeking to overturn student democracy and undercut opposition to apartheid.  (more...)

McGill admin battles its pro-Palestinian students