McGill University has obtained a 10-day provisional injunction against Students for Palestinian Honour and Resistance (SPHR) to protect its academic activities, university president and vice-chancellor Deep Saini announced April 15.
In his judgement, Quebec Superior Court Justice David Collier noted “McGill has a clear right to an order that allows it to carry out its academic activities without obstruction” and that McGill is entitled to protect its property.
The university applied for the injunction on April 8, following SPHR’s involvement in classroom obstructions and vandalism during a three-day student strike from April 2 to 4, that saw masked protesters block and disrupt classes. The court ruled that SPHR—and any person aware of the judgement—must not block or obstruct entrances to any building where McGill operates; not engage in protests within five metres of any such building and not obstruct delivery or performance of academic activities such as courses or exams.
In his six-page ruling, which also noted past incidents including the Feb. 5 vandalism spree that saw some 40 individuals running through campus—smashing dozens of doors and windows with hammers and bricks while students and staff were in classrooms—Collier recognized the harm done to McGill by protest activities, stating: “Violence, intimidation and the destruction of property cannot be tolerated in this country, least of all at our universities, whose very mission is to foster learning and the expression of opinion through peaceful, respectful dialogue.”
Saini affirmed that the university will vigorously defend everyone’s right to free expression and peaceful assembly, and “considers protest by McGill students and staff, within reasonable limits, to be not only permissible but also important.”
A similar 10-day injunction was issued October 8, 2024, after pro-Palestinian protesters stormed the McGill campus, breaking windows and scrawling graffiti on the first anniversary of the Oct.7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel.
The newest injunction comes on the heels of McGill’s announcement that it will cut ties with the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU), following the student strike. The school and SSMU are undergoing a mediation period as per the current five-year Memorandum of Agreement (MoA) signed in February, which allows each party to terminate the relationship without assigning fault. An official decision will be announced in June.
Interim deputy provost Angela Campbell told the McGill community the university deplored that SSMU leadership “has been neither unanimous nor explicit in dissociating itself from or rejecting groups without recognized status at McGill that endorse or engage in acts of vandalism, intimidation and obstruction as forms of activism. We reject this, unequivocally.” She noted that while peaceful assembly and freedom of expression is part of university life protected by school policies and the law, “vandalism, obstruction, threats and violence do not fall within these protections.”
Campbell stated that dozens of classes were blocked or interrupted, and cited an incident where individuals smashed an office door with a fire extinguisher filled with red paint which was then sprayed throughout the office, hitting a staff member. The three-day strike ostensibly targeted McGill’s investments in companies with links to Israel and was supported by a March referendum that saw 17 percent of students (3,933) vote with 72 percent of them in favour.
On April 8, Hillel Montreal posted that they have for 18 months advocated for McGill to hold the SSMU accountable “for contributing to a toxic environment on campus. Just last week, SSMU endorsed a so-called strike promoted by external groups and individuals which have spread antisemitism and hate speech since Oct. 7, 2023… We hope McGill’s decision to terminate its relationship with the SSMU begins a process of much-needed change on campus. More needs to be done, including banning the wearing of masks during protests and identifying and holding accountable those who committed crimes during the so-called strike.”
The SSMU acknowledged “antagonistic activities occurring on campus,” including classroom disruptions, vandalism, and violent altercations, noting “we have a responsibility to make sure that our campus is a place where we all can feel safe to learn and express our views; however, due to the ongoing actions of this group of actors—it is clear that this responsibility has not been upheld.”
Azrieli Institue attack investigated as hate crime
A few blocks to the west on April 10, less than 48 hours before the onset of Passover, individuals stormed a downtown building housing Concordia’s Azrieli Institute of Israel Studies, breaking a window and painting graffiti on its doors. Police responded to 911 calls in the early hours Friday morning, discovering damage along with graffiti reading “genocide institute.”
Social media posts by SPHR and others lauded “autonomous students” for their actions, denounced institute benefactor David Azrieli as a war criminal, and featured an image of, and rhetoric targeting Institute director Csaba Nikolenyi, who just two weeks prior hosted an international conference on ‘New Languages, New Antisemitism?’ looking at how discourse surrounding Israel and Zionism and regarding Jews and Judaism are at a historical crossroads.
“It’s being investigated as a hate crime,” SPVM Agent Jean-Pierre Brabant confirmed to The CJN, “based on the target and what was written at the scene.”
Brabant said police have surveillance video along with other sources of images that they hope will help identify suspects, although he could not confirm how many people were involved. “For now, we know one individual for sure, but we think it can be more, and we have some other information we hope will help us identify them and confirm that.” If arrested, suspects will certainly be charged with mischief said Brabant, “but it’s up to the crown prosecutor to lay hate crimes charges.”
The following day, Concordia president and vice-chancellor Graham Carr wrote “such violent actions, which are rooted in hate and intended to intimidate, have absolutely no place in our community.” Carr wrote that Concordia officials will work with police to identify anyone who has broken the law or violated the university’s behaviour guidelines.
Nikolenyi told The CJN that Carr’s message was very important. “This is the first time that we have the university openly and publicly calling out vilification and hateful bigotry against Israelis, Israel studies on our campus, as antisemitic. That never happened before, and this time, the statement does not relativize but only talks about hate that we suffered. It doesn’t bring in other moral qualification.”
He says while he usually works late into the evening, on Thursday he left mid-afternoon. “On any given day, I could have run into the people that did this. If I walk out and run into a group smashing down a window and spray painting about genocide, my first reaction is never to engage in physical confrontation but what would be their first reaction when they see me? Now this stuff is all over social media, so is this going to be a magnet to attract more events like this? Even worse?”
Federation CJA branded the perpetrators “pro-Hamas thugs,” noting the attack, “acknowledged by radicals who spend their time on campus celebrating terrorists and trying to intimidate students and faculty instead of studying, is yet another blow to the right of all students, Jews and non-Jews, to study peacefully, without fear of being targeted for who they are and for their views.
The statement called for perpetrators who are identified as students to be expelled. “We are tired of our institutions serving as a refuge for those who want to impose their hateful agenda on everyone. Concrete actions are needed.”
Carr’s note was actually the second robust response this year addressing Israel-Gaza related tensions on campus. In late January, Carr reiterated the school’s traditional stance against BDS, despite the Concordia Student Union’s recent motion supporting it. Carr also called reports from the vote meeting “deeply troubling. They include the presence of heavily masked individuals, complaints of discriminatory behaviour and the use of intimidation tactics… We will examine the behaviour around and at the special meeting,” wrote Carr, “and urge those who have complaints to report them.”
Indeed, students at the vote reported, and video circulating clearly showed, some jubilant pro-BDS voters chanting praise for Yahya Sinwar after the overwhelming vote in favour of BDS. Sinwar was the Hamas leader and mastermind of the Oct. 7, 2023, slaughter of about 1,200 people and kidnapping of 251 more. He was killed by Israeli tank fire in October 2024.
Alerted to the raid on the offices Friday morning by Concordia security, Nikolenyi says “for months there have been professors calling for an academic boycott, singling out the Azrieli Institute, and I have to say that those professors who have been vilifying, publicizing and preaching and marching with students demanding the boycotting and terminating of the institute, they also bear blame here because their words led to these actions.”
He said the climate is such that some of his staff members “have changed their outward Jewish look to make sure when they go to certain university buildings that they will be less identifiable… This is a terrible reality.” Aside from calls for boycott and termination, he says, “this really escalates things to a different level” and that the objection is to any imprint of Israel on campus.
“Any legitimization is therefore creating ‘complicity with genocide’ and that’s why they painted ‘genocide institute.’ They are very dangerous, to actually call us out as a genocidal institution and as genocidal individuals.”
Days after the attack on the Institute, Wendy Sachs, director of the film October 8 about campus antisemitism in the United States came to Concordia, what she calls “Ground Zero for Jew hatred right now,” to talk with students.
While she says antisemitism has festered on campuses for years “it is not just students. A lot of students think they’re on the right side of the issue but what they don’t understand is that there’s a propaganda machine feeding them lies and distorting the truth. They can’t really separate truth from fiction. And again, this idea that somehow Israel is the pariah among all nations, worse than Sudan, worse than China, worse than Iran, you know, makes no sense.
“I think it’s really disappointing what we’ve seen with campus protests around the world and in the streets of London and in New York. I think there’s sometimes a confusion between free speech and hate speech, and that’s what we’re seeing on university campuses in the States.”
“They want us to live in fear, and we’re not going to let that happen” said Concordia student and StartUp Nation founder Anastasia Zorchinsky. “The federal, provincial and municipal governments, must take accountability, must take action, must actually lead this country correctly, because they can’t let a minority live in fear every single day from going to campus.”
Nikolenyi has never had classes physically disturbed, “but there have been difficult, thought-provoking, sometimes provocative questions that students would ask, and we would engage and address and explore together, just as it should be. Never were my classes boycotted, but last year we had events boycotted when we had guest lecturers coming from Israel.”
Founded in 2011 by an endowment from David Azrieli, the Israeli-Canadian architect, real estate developer and philanthropist who died in 2014, the Institute has been a Canadian center for academic study of Israel offering courses within diverse disciplines in the humanities and social sciences and has established an undergraduate minor in Israel Studies.
