Those responsible should be required to apologize and make reparation to all whose freedoms of political expression were denied
If the repression of Palestine solidarity protests on Canadian campuses is permitted to go unchallenged, we risk a serious erosion of Charter-protected rights and freedoms. The cases of the Universities of Calgary and Alberta highlight what is at stake.
In May 2024, the University of Calgary executive called in the police to forcibly remove the Palestine solidarity encampment on that campus within hours of its appearance. The University of Alberta executive quickly followed suit, deploying riot police to drive members of the People’s University for Palestine (PU4P) from the campus. The executives thus revealed the vacuity of their institutional slogans and their unwillingness to defend university autonomy from political direction. University records and media reports show that United Conservative Party government officials were urging the deployment of police against the universities’ students, faculty, staff, alumni, and community supporters.
Since October 2023, university executives have been implementing security regimes that put their students, staff, and faculty under continual surveillance and subject them to policing that not long ago would have been unthinkable. The Kent report confirms that the University of Alberta Protective Services and the Edmonton Police Service collaborate in surveillance of the conversations, social media posts, and activities of students, staff, and faculty on campus (using patrols, video cameras, and facial recognition technology). Police presence on campus has become routine. Operating procedures for protests were amended unilaterally by executives on both campuses in May 2024 in anticipation of the Palestine solidarity encampments. The result is that the environment for freedom of expression on campuses has been significantly degraded. However, the failure of university executives to stand up for constitutional freedoms is a grievous abdication of democratic duty to all citizens. Given what is at stake, it is urgent that court challenges to their actions be initiated, and that those responsible be required to apologize and make reparation to those who were traumatized and whose freedoms of political expression and assembly were unreasonably denied.
The UCalgary’s executive has tried to establish the legality of its actions by commissioning a consultancy report described by legal experts as “superficial.” The UAlberta executive no doubt hopes that the Report on the Encampment they commissioned from retired Alberta Court of King’s Bench Justice, Adèle Kent, will close the book on its decision to deploy police against the PU4P. The Kent report concluded that “the administration’s ability to have the police dismantle the encampment was reasonable and justifiable under the Charter” (78). This opinion—which is not a judicial ruling—is unsubstantiated by evidence and hinges on an incomplete (and often contradictory) review of the legal tests required to arrive at such a conclusion. (more...)
University crackdown on Palestine solidarity encampments a grievous violation of Charter freedoms
No comments:
Post a Comment