Palestine-Solidarity Struggles on University Campuses in Ontario
Thursday 03 April 2008
3:00 p.m. - 6:00 p.m.
Champlain College Senior Common Room, Trent University
Featuring faculty and student speakers from Ryerson, McMaster, Queen's, U of T, York and Trent, including:
- Dr. Margaret Pappano, Queen’s University
- Jamila Ghaddar, Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights, McMaster University
- Heather Kere, Vice-President of Education, Ryerson Student Union
- Golta Vahid-Shahidi, Students Against Israeli Apartheid @ U of T
- Ali Mustafa, Students Against Israeli Apartheid @ York
- Dr. Mary-Jo Nadeau, Peterborough Coalition for Palestinian Solidarity and Trent University Faculty Association
- Sarah Kardash, Peterborough Coalition for Palestinian Solidarity and CUPE Local 3908
Zatoun fair trade olive oil and soap from Palestine will be available for purchase.
This event has been endorsed by: CUPE Local 3908 (academic workers at Trent University), Trent Graduate Students’ Association, Trent Central Student Association, Trent Political Studies Department, Trent Students Interrogating Canada, Trent University Canadian International Mediterranean Association, Trent Women’s Centre, Trent Queer Collective, OPIRG – Peterborough, Peterborough Coalition Against Poverty, Community and Race Relations Committee of Peterborough, Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid, and Zatoun.
For more information and links, see below. Stay tuned for further details or email peterboroughcps@gmail.com with questions.
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“I supported the boycott because I believe that without pressure, Israel will not end the occupation … I believe that things would change only if Israel receives a strong message that as long as the occupation continues it would not be a legitimate member of the international community, and that until then its academics, doctors and authors would not be welcome. A similar boycott was imposed on South Africa. It took 21 years, but it eventually led to the end of Apartheid.”
(Ilan Pappe, Historian, Israeli academic)
On Thursday 03 April 2008 the Peterborough Coalition for Palestinian Solidarity will be hosting an event titled, “The Academic Boycott of Apartheid Israel: Palestine-Solidarity Struggles on University Campuses in Ontario,” from 3:00 – 6:00 p.m. in the Champlain College Senior Common Room. The event will feature faculty and student speakers from Trent, Queen's, Ryerson, McMaster, U of T, and York.
This event is intended to initiate a much-needed dialogue on the Trent campus around issues related to the academic boycott, freedom of speech, academic freedom, and the right to organize against Israeli apartheid. The event will draw connections between how these struggles are playing out at various academic institutions across Ontario. It also provides an opportunity to strengthen ties between activists across university campuses, and to learn from each other's experiences of organizing collectively against Israeli apartheid and in solidarity with Palestine.
We fully concur with the Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid (CAIA) that ‘free and open debate on the issue of Israeli apartheid is more urgently needed now than ever before’.
For sixty years, Israel has denied Palestinians the right to live peacefully in their own homes. Through military occupation, illegal settlements, systematic discrimination, destruction of the infrastructure of Palestinian civil society, ethnic cleansing, and an apartheid system of racial segregation, the majority of Palestinians have been forced to leave their land and become part of one of the world's largest refugee populations. Israeli universities and academics play a key role in supporting these policies, while the educational rights of Palestinians are denied.
The movement against Israeli apartheid is rapidly growing across the world. Hundreds of universities, unions, religious groups and social justice organizations have endorsed a comprehensive campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions initiated (July 9th 2005) by over 100 Palestinian NGOs and trade unions. With the United Kingdom’s University and College Union taking the lead on an academic boycott (May 30th 2007) alongside a burgeoning movement of student activism, universities have emerged as a key site of movement building in this broader struggle. This was made especially evident by the great success of Israeli Apartheid Week 2008 on campuses in 25 cities (including Peterborough). We feel it is crucial to build on this strength and add support to the movement by organizing in solidarity at this critical moment.
For this reason we feel it is urgent to reveal and challenge the response against this movement initiated by university Presidents. In the summer of 2007, presidents from over 20 Canadian universities unilaterally issued statements declaring their opposition to the boycott of Israeli academic institutions. These decisions were undertaken without public debate, as in the instance of Trent University President Bonnie Patterson who issued her statement while most students and faculty were away from campus for summer holidays. It is important to highlight that the academic boycott and academic freedom in relation to Israeli apartheid have been surfacing at Trent for years, and yet there has been no open forum for debate at Trent on university responses to the conflict in Israel-Palestine and neither has any campus organization taken a stance in opposition to the President's statement.
Finally, a public discussion is urgent as the Israeli state is escalating its campaign of deadly attacks on Gaza and the Palestinian people. It is also urgent as attacks on academic freedom, free speech and students’ rights to organize have been occurring at alarmingly increasing rates on university campuses in North America – these have taken the form of (attempted) denials of tenure to Indigenous and Palestinian-American faculty, as well as (Jewish) academics whose scholarship criticizes Israeli state policy; attempts by pro-Israel Jewish advocacy groups to silence critical and politicized faculty for alleged 'pro-Palestinian bias' and 'anti-Israel views'; campus-wide bans on the use of the terms 'Israeli apartheid' by university administrators; and the viscous targeting and racist assaults on politicized black student organizers and student groups that call for social change and political justice.
As a relatively newly formed group with links to Trent University, PCPS draws inspiration from the success of Israeli Apartheid Week and from campus-based groups, which have clearly staked out a position against Israeli apartheid. The student movement has shown enormous strength of leadership in their efforts to condemn racism on university campuses, to build support in the academic community for the growing international BDS campaign and to create much needed spaces for critical engagement and dialogue.
For more information on the academic boycott of apartheid Israel, please visit these links:
Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid (CAIA) Campus Committee
Palestinian Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel
Birzeit University, Palestine: Education Denied
"The Ivory Tower Behind the Apartheid Wall" by Margaret Aziza Pappano
"Towards a viable academic boycott campaign" by Laith Marouf
"The Case for the Academic Boycott Against Israel" by the Alternative Information Center
"The Academic Boycott Debate" by Justin Podur
"Academic Freedom is at Risk in America" by Saree Makdisi
"Ilan Pappe: I'm not a traitor" by Ayelet Negev
"The Case for Boycotting Israel" by Virginia Tilley
"The South African Boycott Experience" by Jonathan Hyslop, Salim Vally, and Shireen Hassim
