Ontario Tech University, in Oshawa, Ont., has reached an agreement with the pro-Palestinian encampment that was set up on its campus, the first such deal reached in Canada between protesters and academic administration.
The university has agreed to disclose all of its investments and establish a responsible investment working group, while the signatories, who were four leaders of the encampment, agreed it would disband on May 20 and that they would not resume any encampment on the school’s grounds before May 2025.
The encampment was set up on May 6, part of a wave of protests at universities across North America criticizing Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza against Hamas. It was located in Polonsky Commons, a recreational area of the school named for Gary Polonsky, the founding president of Ontario Tech, which opened its doors in September 2003.
The agreement does not require Ontario Tech to divest from any of its current investments. As part of the agreement, the university affirmed that “it is engaged in responsible investment practices,” and that “it is not aware of investments in any companies that are benefitting from the current Palestinian Humanitarian Crisis.”
According to the agreement, the university will disclose an annual report of all investments and holdings beginning in fall 2024, and the report will be available on the school’s website.
Additionally, the school will establish a responsible investment working group, which will review best practices and make recommendations to the Audit and Finance Committee. The group will pay “particular attention to companies involved in arms manufacturing and delivery and/or benefitting from military action in Palestine or elsewhere.”
The agreement then provides some points with further information about this group. It says the committee will be an advisory committee to the president and vice-chancellor, but does not specify how the president will choose which students to include. It also says “divestment will be made for companies that are determined to be in breach of established policy and process,” and similarly does not say how these determinations will be made.
The school gave a few more details in an emailed statement, stating “the terms of reference around this committee… are in the process of being developed and will be shared with the community once established.”
The Network of Engaged Canadian Academics (NECA), a non-partisan group of both Jewish and non-Jewish academics who share worries about rising antisemitism, has some concerns about the agreement.
Cary Kogan, a professor of clinical psychology at the University of Ottawa and a co-founder of NECA, says it is problematic that the university would sit down and make an agreement with a group that violated its rules in setting up the encampment. (The encampment’s Instagram page shared an image of an email from the school informing them that they were trespassing.)
He also said it is problematic that the agreement singles out Israel.
“If you look at it by the letter of the law, they’re not saying that they’re changing their existing policies regarding divestment. So they probably already have some existing policies that guide ethical investment,” he said.
“If you read the language, it specifically says Palestine. So it would be good enough for the university to have said we have general ethical investment policies and we will follow those. And we will make sure that we’re not in any breach of those policies. That makes sense, right?
“But then to have a signed agreement that specifically goes beyond that and holds this particular one conflict… what is relatively a smaller ethnic conflict, if we look at all the global conflicts that’s going on, I think is problematic. It puts Israel under a microscope. It holds it to a standard that no other country is held to, right? So, you know, those ethical policies, if you have them and they applied it to everywhere in the world, that’s fair. That’s equitable. It makes sense. But to then say, okay, well, we’re holding this one conflict and elevating it above all other conflicts, that sets a precedent, I think a very bad precedent.”
Waddah Saleh, a fourth-year software engineering student at Ontario Tech University, was one of the four signatories on the agreement who represented the encampment. For his part, he hopes the agreement leads the school to divest from all investments tied to armed conflict.
“Our tuition shouldn’t be going towards any funding or shouldn’t benefit from anything that has to do with the killing or slaughter of any innocent individual around the world,” said Saleh, who is Canadian-Palestinian. “Now, why are we holding a Palestinian flag? Because that’s obviously what’s happening currently, and that’s kind of the main push. That’s kind of what inspired us to begin this movement. But at the end of the day, if we’re able to fight for humanity through the struggle of Palestinians, absolutely we will do that.”
Kogan, though, believes there are more issues with framing the movement around the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“If we take another step back, there is also the presupposition that Israel is a bad actor… that’s the starting point of this. It’s intended to do reputational harm and demonize Israel above all other states,” he said.
“You could say, from a technical point of view, [the agreement] changes nothing really from the policies of the university. Except I do think that it sets a precedent and I do think that we’re moving towards a normalization… of holding this one single country, the Jewish state, to a harsher standard than any other state.”
Kogan also compared the agreement unfavourably to the offer that the University of Toronto made to its encampment on May 23, which explicitly states it will not cut academic ties with Israeli institutions and did not single out any conflict by name.
The commitments that Ontario Tech University made in its agreement seem to differ from the original demands of the encampment, which included ending all academic partnerships, student exchanges and study abroad programs with Israel, as well as for the school to “call for an immediate and permanent ceasefire, and for an end to Israel’s blockade, apartheid, and occupation against the Palestinian people.” None of these demands made it to the final agreement.
Saleh said that over the course of 14 hours of negotiations with the school, including the final nine-hour-long session on May 19, he and the other leaders of the encampment came to better appreciate the school’s perspective and understand the limits of what it could do.
“Obviously, before, as students, we just see the atrocities happening in Palestine and Gaza. And we see students there being ripped to pieces, refugee camps being blown up, hospitals, every university there being blown up. So we really sympathize with those students and those civilians there,” he said.
“And we were, I guess, pushing at it from our lens, when obviously we should have realized the position the universities are in and what they can and cannot do. It is unfortunate for some of the things that the university is not able to do. Very, very unfortunate.
“But, of course, we come at it now from a more understanding perspective. And we say, how can we have it more directed to everyone, which is understanding from the institution because, you know, it’s not fair for them to pick sides. But, again, from our perspective as students, there is no two sides to a genocide. We just see up front as is, as face value. And we want to take action to try to help in the best way that we can.”
Saleh also said the original demands were meant to be more nuanced than they appeared. “At face value, when people see them, they say, ‘hey, that’s not fair.’ And we’re fully understanding of that.”
According to Saleh, there was not actually a desire to eliminate all exchange programs. He believes all students have the right to education, and in general students coming to Ontario Tech University was never an issue.
“If any student anywhere in the world wanted to come in and study or get an education at Ontario Tech, by all means, that is amazing. That’s going to increase our diversity. That’s going to increase the success of the university. And that’s something as students we love,” he said.
“When we refer to Israel, we’re obviously not referring to civilians. We refer to the state and the things that they’ve done as a government. So obviously, the actions, the atrocities that they’ve caused to civilians, that’s something that we are addressing.”
“And likewise, the other way around. So students want to go from here and want to go to Israel to study, good for them. But (you) also should be mindful that, you know, you will be supporting that economy, you will be further improving and financially supporting that economy to do whatever it is that they’re doing now, which is obviously horrifying.”
Saleh also credits the success of the encampment’s negotiations with the school to its peaceful, non-disruptive nature. He said people who had seen other encampments, including in Toronto and Ottawa, said Ontario Tech’s was the most peaceful. In fact, Saleh says, some people even called the school’s encampment “too peaceful.”
Deidre Butler, an associate professor in religion at Carleton University who specializes in Jewish studies and the other co-founder of NECA, pointed out that there may have been other reasons why the school was able to come to an agreement with the encampment.
“There are very few Jews on campus… an administration, maybe, may feel more comfortable making these kinds of concessions when there isn’t the pushback, when there isn’t a call to accountability from local faculty and local students. And those local faculty and local students may not feel safe to make that call to accountability,” she said.
Saleh said it was important for the encampment to be clear about what it was advocating for, which was severing ties to what it calls a genocide of the people in Gaza. It was not advocating for an attack on Jewish people. He knows that some people see the existence of their encampment as antisemitic, but believes that is an unfair claim.
For chants of slogans like “death to Jews,” or “all Zionists are terrorists,” Saleh said “if an encampment is saying that, then I will understand the threats, the aspect of ‘we don’t feel safe.’”
That being said, the encampment did make use of the slogan “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” the meaning and intention of which has been disputed for many years and which makes many Jewish people feel unsafe, said Butler.
Aside from agreeing to disclose funding and form an investment working group, the school made a number of other commitments, including implementing an admissions process to ensure Palestinian or other similarly displaced students can access education, as well as three funded undergraduate student scholarship opportunities for such students.
The school also agreed that it would protect all members of the school’s community who were involved in the encampment from “Ontario Tech academic and/or employment-based retaliation.”
