Montreal, July 12, 2024 — Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) is condemning attempts by federal officials to intervene and overturn an agreement made in good faith between the University of Windsor (UW) and the student-led Palestinian solidarity encampment (“Palestine Liberation Zone”). Earlier this week, the UW peacefully brought an end to the encampment by committing to act on many of the students’ demands. Yesterday, Anthony Housefather, senior advisor to Prime Minister Trudeau on antisemitism, announced that he was working with Special Envoy Deborah Lyons to put pressure on the university, presumably to cancel the agreement. CJPME urges the University to reject any government interference and uphold its commitments on Palestinian human rights.
“It is entirely inappropriate for Housefather and Lyons to intervene in internal university matters and bully administrators into abandoning their commitments to human rights and to their students,” said Thomas Woodley, President of CJPME. “At a time when other universities across Canada are forcibly refusing to listen to student concerns and shutting down encampments, the University of Windsor and the Palestine Liberation Zone have set a gold standard for how to respond to egregious human rights abuses and resolve disputes. We should be taking inspiration from their leadership, and adopt similar policies elsewhere,” added Woodley.
The agreement signed by the University of Windsor and the Palestine Liberation Zone on July 10, 2024, commits the University to take action on many of the students’ demands. Some of these measures include disclosing and divesting from irresponsible investments (i.e. those that are involved in violating human rights); establishing institutional relationships with Palestinian universities; supporting Palestinian students and scholars; recognizing anti-Palestinian racism; and promising to “not pursue any institutional academic agreements with Israeli universities until the right of Palestinian self-determination has been realized.”
CJPME is incensed that Housefather and Lyons are abusing the mandate of their offices to attack legitimate measures in support of Palestinian human rights, thereby conflating criticism of Israel with antisemitism. This is part of a pattern with Lyon, and CJPME recently published a report, titled “Defaming the Pro-Palestine Movement,” which documents a pattern of malicious and harmful behaviour by her of spreading misinformation against pro-Palestine demonstrators. “What is happening on campuses is fundamentally a political debate over whether universities should be invested in, or partnering with, companies and institutions that are complicit in apartheid and the genocide of Palestinians. Unfortunately, federal officials are wrongly trying to twist this into an issue of antisemitism, and thereby intimidate officials into maintaining their harmful investments. We cannot lose our focus on human rights and our responsibilities to the Palestinian people under attack,” said Woodley.
Divestment is an important economic pressure tactic that has been promoted by many social movements in support of human rights, including the South African anti-apartheid movement in the mid-1980s. In 2005, Palestinian civil society asked the international community to adopt economic tactics such as divestment as a way to pressure Israel to comply with international law. Since the start of this year, at least 14 Canadian faculty associations have voted in support of divestment from complicit companies, joining many other student, labour, and community organizations. CJPME has requested that the federal government similarly recommend an academic boycott of Israel in response to the devastation of Palestinian universities in Gaza, which would be identical to measures imposed by Canada in 2022 in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.