How widespread is antisemitism and anti-Zionism on Canadian campuses? A new report, commissioned by the Abraham Global Peace Initiative, found nearly 100 reported instances in 2021. The authors—Neil Orlowsky from York University and Dana Fischman from Carleton University—looked at media articles, social media posts, student unions, faculty associations and hate crime reports from across the country to determine which campus was friendliest—and which were the most uncomfortable—for Jewish students.
The worst offenders: York and the University of Toronto. The report comes out in the wake of a recent UofT student union vote to support boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel—as well as, paradoxically, a pledge by the school’s administration to crack down on systemic antisemitism and anti-Zionism.
Orlowsky calls the UofT’s pledge nothing more than “virtue signalling”. He joins to discuss the report’s findings and what steps universities and colleges should take.
What we talked about:
- Read the report at agpiworld.com/campus
- Watch the video of the goldfish “driving” its tank at bgu.ac.il (and learn about the webinar on Facebook)
- Read “University of Toronto’s plan to tackle antisemitism gets a cool response from Jewish advocacy groups” at thecjn.ca
- Listen to The CJN Daily episode about the birth of the AGPI, “Why Avi Benlolo thinks Canada needs a new organization to fight antisemitism”, at thecjn.ca
Episode Transcript:
Note: Transcripts are generated automatically by a computer. They may contain some errors.
Meric Gertler
The principles of equity, diversity and inclusion are fundamental to the institutional identity and academic mission of the University of Toronto. As an integral part of that commitment, we are profoundly opposed to antisemitism, which remains an unwelcome…
Ellin Bessner:
That’s the sound of a video released by the University of Toronto just a few days ago. And you can hear the President, Meric Gertler, formally accepting a report submitted by a working group of professors about antisemitism at the school. The U of T call this video an entrustment ceremony, and they pledged to act on all eight recommendations, which include providing kosher food on campus. But the school won’t adopt the IHRA definition of antisemitism and won’t step in if anti-Israel events are held.
The timing for the entrustment ceremony couldn’t have been more ironic, because just two days later, the U of T’s Student Council at its main downtown campus voted to adopt a boycott, divestment and sanctions policy against Israel. But the disconnect doesn’t surprise Dr. Neil Orlowsky. His new study on antisemitism at Canadian universities and colleges has just come out. He’s found about 100 cases last year, including at the U of T but also a long list, including Lethbridge and Carleton and UBC and the University of Manitoba and more.
Dr. Neil Orlowsky:
A lot of parents have been emailing us and calling us, saying Maclean’s magazine ideally comes out with what is the best ranking of universities, but it seems that the narrative has changed last couple of years. Where is my child going to be safe?
Ellin Bessner:
I’m Ellin Bessner and this is what Jewish Canada sounds like for Tuesday, February 22, 2022. Welcome to the CJN Daily, sponsored by Metropia.
The new report on Jew hatred on Canadian campuses was done for the Abraham Global Peace Initiative, and it’s the first such report since the organization launched last year and will serve as a benchmark going forward. The authors are Neil Orlowsky of York University and Dana Fischman of Carleton U. Of the 100 incidents, many involved support for BDS and opposing Zionism or Israel. Some involve professors using social media to promote hatred. You can read the full report. It’s only 27 pages long, and we put the link in our show notes. Coming up, we’ll hear more about which schools are the best and the worst for Jews. But first, here’s what’s making use elsewhere in Canada right now.
David Segal:
I’m David Segal in Ottawa. And this is what Jewish Canada sounds like.
Ellin Bessner:
Have you heard about the Israeli scientists who taught some goldfish how to drive? No, I’m not making this up. It’s a true thing. Researchers at Ben Gurion University in Beersheba put a fish tank on wheels, and then they harnessed these large goldfish’s natural navigating abilities in water to actually push the fish tank towards a pink target that they painted on the wall of the lab. So when the fish-operated-vehicle hit the target, the fish got a reward of some food. You can see the video. The link is in our show Notes. And if you want to hear from the professors who did this, they’re giving a talk Wednesday for the Canadian Friends of Ben Gurion University. And the link to register is also in our show Notes.
And joining me now is Dr. Neil Orlowsky, the principal author of the new report. Can you tell us why you were picked to do this study and the motivation behind it?
Dr. Neil Orlowsky:
Well, the Abraham Global Peace Initiative has really sort of come to fruition because we’re noticing not only a rise in antisemitism around Canada as well as the world, but we’re noticing just a rise in overall hate and intolerance on campus. And we know that a lot of the universities really become ground zero when it comes to ideological indoctrination and pursuing campaigns of BDS, Islamophobia, anti-Black racism, and so on. So we took it upon ourselves and to really try to identify what is hate and how it’s manifesting within the academic spheres.
Ellin Bessner:
So unpack that for me a little bit. Why so..
Dr. Neil Orlowsky:
Why? I think a lot of universities want to be more insular when it comes to handling their own issues and housekeeping. They’re not interested in going beyond the university campuses, beyond their Equity, Diversity Inclusivity committees to identify or really to speak to some of the policies and procedures that may themselves be exclusionary. So when other organizations like us come in in hopes to better understand sometimes the motivation of these policies, we’re getting a lot of “Thank you very much for your reply. We will be looking into this or our committee is handling it.”
It’s the same response that when I was a student at York University, I was receiving back in the ’90s. And it sadly seems like almost the exact same carbon copy that we’re getting today in 2022.
Ellin Bessner:
So the 100 cases is not specifically January 2021 to now. Correct me if I’m wrong, right? January 1, 2021 until the end of the year. It’s a little bit wider than that, so it’s a little bit misleading, I would say to say it’s your 2021 report, but it’s not really only that. So can you just explain how we should look at numbers?
Dr. Neil Orlowsky:
Right. So there were actually, according to reports coming out across universities from east to west, there were 100 notable. Now, we didn’t focus on every single manifestation because if we only solely looked at every single Mezuzah being ripped off, if we looked at every single situation when a kid had the hijab or the Kippah ripped off, we would be in the hundreds of hundreds. We also know that hate doesn’t happen in a vacuum, so it doesn’t simply happen that at 12:01 January 1. We start looking and we’ve noticed Hashtag campaigns, for example, the “Punch a Zionist” campaign that took place in Ontario started earlier in 2018, 2019. It was then given new breath back in 2021. So we’re looking also at the trends that take place over time. In terms of the actual 100 we referenced, you’re absolutely right.
Ellin Bessner:
Can you rank the worst university to go to in Canada in terms of how it deals with antisemitism and Jewish students? What’s the worst?
Dr. Neil Orlowsky:
So, this is going to be personal opinion, but in my own personal experience, having experienced it myself, I’m going to say that it would have to be York University. York University would be number one, followed by the University of Toronto for two reasons. One, I’m the recipient both as a student and as faculty at York University of not just antisemitism, but what I would consider is anti-Jewish hate as well as both implicit and explicit intimidation. I believe that they’ve emboldened the student unions with a lot more power than the university is willing to acknowledge. Going so far as when I was a student, they had in the student centre, there’s a very famous poster of the Palestinian. Sorry, I’m making an assumption that it’s a Palestinian, simply depicted in the painting holding a rock that was there in the 1990s when I was a student. We know that’s made the news. But more recently as a faculty, having been on a three years secondment, I’ve been told on numerous occasions by faculty and by staff to tuck my Magen David into my shirt for my own safety. I’ve been witness to numerous campaigns on campus, students and faculty, making claims that antisemitism is not anti-Zionism, but then try to boycott specific Jewish events. I’ve also had a swastika posted on a Post-it note to my office door. And that’s just in the last since the pandemic. When it comes to University of Toronto, we see a lot of things in terms of the boycott, divesting, sanction. We’re going to obviously have it in next year’s report. But even the reports coming out of the Scarborough campus with their BDS, which in last year looked at the trying to distinguish what is and what is not support of Israel. I’m putting that in quotations because how do we draw that line, which then it’s loosely worded so that is kosher food being banned, and if so, does that become a human rights issue when a university is no longer providing dietary restrictions for some students, but they are for others?
Ellin Bessner:
Okay, so bottom line, York is the worst. U of T is pretty bad. Next, Where’s the best place for Jewish students to go? As far as your report?
Dr. Neil Orlowsky:
That’s a tough question because for me, when I had this conversation with my own students, with parents, I say “You have to question number one, academic life. And what’s more important?” so are you going to be program focused because the truth is York and U of T have great programs. I just don’t think that there’s safe spaces for Jewish students. So the question then becomes we know that Western, we know that Laurier have high Jewish populations and therefore they are safer for Jewish students. We saw campaigns come out on TikTok that were not really university focused, and the universities did come out and condemn them, although we do think they could go further. I think that other universities, like I said, Western, Laurier, I would focus on McMaster.
Ellin Bessner:
How about outside Ontario?
Dr. Neil Orlowsky:
Yeah, we’re outside of Ontario. I think UBC is good. I think Royal Roads is great because it’s been hard to find. As well on the East Coast when it comes to Dalhousie, even though there were a couple of social media campaigns, we have to question, are they student union based, are they ignorant student based, or are they professor driven? I think outside of Ontario, you’re pretty good. We did not find a lot of antisemitism when it comes to the Prairies. We did find one-offs in terms of Lethbridge and Calgary and Edmonton and so on. But in terms of that, I would hearken that to feel safe, you may want to move outside of Toronto.
Ellin Bessner:
U of T says it’s committed to race discrimination elimination. It’s committed to helping our Jewish students feel safe. They said so in the videos. What do you make of this disconnect?
Dr. Neil Orlowsky:
So when they say that “We’re going to make claims that are combating antisemitism” and not understanding the connection BDS has on the ground to, not only the state of Israel but the foundation of Israel, we see it in claims that Zionism is Nazism. We see it when people say that anti-Zionism isn’t antisemitism, without understanding that they are, in fact, in this case, one and the same. How can you say that you’re committed to dismantling antisemitism when we are targeting certain parts of the university that are created to protect Jewish students? And so I think that it is extremely contradictory. And I do believe that by accepting a report on the same day that the university student union votes to adopt BDS, I think is nothing short of virtue signalling. And I think that the university is not taking the true steps to, in fact, create safe spaces for their Jewish students.
Ellin Bessner:
There’s also some hopeful things that your study found. What are some of the good examples?
Dr. Neil Orlowsky:
Well, I would say number one of the positive examples is we’re seeing the rise of the upstanding. We’re seeing people rallying behind the Jewish experience and saying that “That’s not okay!” We’re seeing in, for example, a study found in the north, we have one or two instances of a swastika being spray painted since 2017. That’s a positive. We’re seeing a Royal Roads where outside of campus, on the forest surrounding the campus, we see one swastika carved into a tree. I’m also very critical as to whether or not that was antisemitism or was it just ignorance? So what we’re seeing is in large urban centres, we’re seeing a rise of antisemitism. But in some of the more suburban areas from outside of the country’s core, we are actually seeing a decrease. Alberta Hate Crimes Committee has been putting a lot of focus on how we dismantle hate, not only in the police force, but in the community. And we are seeing a rise in people calling out hate. When somebody stands up and says “Israel is committing genocide”, people say “It’s not genocide”. When people come out and say that it’s apartheid, people are questioning, well, what do you mean? And when we find that we’re questioning people, they have a hard time moving beyond the talking points, having a hard time moving beyond the citations at the bottom of the page, which indicates very few of the Social Justice Warriors are, what I would call the woke, really aren’t doing their reading, but rather simply repeating dog whistle claims that Israel is this and that.
Ellin Bessner:
Just recently, Jewish professors have come out saying they don’t support the IHRA definition, because of academic freedom. They want to have the right to criticize. The Canadian Association of University teachers also came out. It was 70,000 of them signed this petition saying that their universities, even though Canada has passed the IHRA definition, they don’t accept it. How do you navigate this as an academic? Because academic freedom is such a big deal on campus.
Dr. Neil Orlowsky:
There’s a fine line between academic freedom and hate speech. IHRA does not say you can’t be critical of the state policies of anything. Right? You’re allowed to be critical of the state of Israel’s policies. You’re allowed to be critical of Canada’s policies. It’s when you begin to tread that line between Israel, the state and Israel, the Jewish state, and question then some of the reasons and some of the policies that you’re being critical. That’s when we border antisemitism or in fact, anti-Zionism. IHRA says that you cannot be critical and single out the State of Israel and hold them to a double standard which we’re seeing on campus. I think what they’re doing is they want to use the IHRA definition to say “You’re limiting my antisemitism” and our country, our province, our universities need to better, I would say, to create an environment where they say this is what I resent. This is what you’re allowed to do, as opposed to allowing ideological indoctrination and people wanting to create a space for hate.
Ellin Bessner:
And that’s what Jewish Canada sounds like. For this episode of the CJN Daily, sponsored by Metropia. Integrity, Community Quality and Customer Care.
Today’s listener shout out goes to George Chajes of North York, Ontario of thetrade-ice-time.com which is an ice hockey rental business.
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Credits
The CJN Daily is written and hosted by Ellin Bessner (@ebessner on Twitter). Victoria Redden is the producer. Michael Fraiman is the executive producer. Our theme music is by Dov Beck-Levine. Our title sponsor is Metropia. We’re a member of The CJN Podcast Network; find more great Jewish podcasts at thecjn.ca.