The University of Toronto (UofT) has warned pro-Palestinian activists that they have 24 hours to accept a proposal to end a three-week protest camp on the schools’ downtown campus – or risk being treated as trespassers and potentially face police action.
In a statement Meric Gertler, the university president, cited harassment, discrimination and lack of inclusion as reasons the encampment needs to be removed.
“From day one, our goal has been to achieve a peaceful and sustainable resolution to the unauthorized encampment … the encampment must end,” said Gertler.
Canadian university gives protesters one day to close up protest camp on downtown campus or potentially face police action
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According to a statement from U of T leadership, saying “glory to all martyrs,” telling Jewish students to “go back to Europe” and that they are Hamas’s “next targets” is a narrative that does not cross their “high threshold for expression,” regardless of if these remarks are “uncomfortable and offensive.”
If glorifying martyrs (i.e. suicide bombers, militant radicals) and telling Jewish students to go back to where the Holocaust unfolded constitutes valid debate, then our institutions have truly lost all sense of ethical integrity and sanity.
The rhetoric spouted at these encampments is not isolated, nor is it harmless
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Every chant for an intifada and every sign equating the Star of David with a swastika is not just distasteful, it’s an incitement to violence. This rhetoric has historical precedents — the gas chambers of Auschwitz and the pogroms of Kishinev began with similar hateful speech. These comparisons are harsh, but history teaches us that harsh realities often start with subtle signs.
Universities, once bastions of intellectual freedom and moral clarity, are now the staging grounds for this toxic revival. Administrators might cloak their inaction in the guise of free speech, but we know the truth: They are either complicit in the spread of this hatred, or they are staggeringly indifferent. Silence and inaction are forms of endorsement. There is no middle ground. You are either against this blatant hatred, or you are on the side of the perpetrators.