The Decibel - The fallout from a law school’s pro-Palestinian letter

Episode Date: June 17, 2024

Canada’s newest law school is in crisis. After an open-letter called for the Lincoln Alexander School of Law at Toronto Metropolitan University to drop its neutral position on the Israel-Hamas war, ...donors pulled funding and law firms withdrew summer internship placements – leaving students feeling ostracized and abandoned. The fallout has left the law school asking questions about who and what they represent and where they go from here.The Globe’s corporate law reporter, Robyn Doolittle, breaks down the rift within the school, what the self-deemed progressive law school is doing to mitigate the damage and the letter’s consequences with the professional legal world.Questions? Comments? Ideas? E-mail us at thedecibel@globeandmail.com

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Starting point is 00:00:00 I don't think it's an overstatement to say that the consequences of this petition have presented an existential threat to this brand new law school. Robin Doolittle is the Globe's corporate law reporter. And she's talking about a letter signed by over 70 students from a Toronto law school during the early days of the Israel-Hamas War. The repercussions that students have faced, students who signed and who didn't sign, have been incredibly severe. They've lost job opportunities and mentors. The law school itself has lost donors. Law firms that partnered with the university to offer students placements have withdrawn from the program. The letter supported what it called the Palestinian resistance.
Starting point is 00:00:55 It was signed by students from the Lincoln Alexander School of Law at Toronto Metropolitan University. This letter came out two weeks after Hamas's surprise attack on Israel, which killed around 1,200 people. Israel had retaliated with airstrikes that had killed roughly 3,700 people in Gaza at that point. The full-scale ground invasion of the territory hadn't yet begun. Over the past month and a half, Robin has interviewed dozens of people connected to the open letter. Today, she tells us about the fallout at TMU's law school and what can happen when academic free speech collides with the professional legal world. I'm Maina Karaman-Wilms, and this is The Decibel from The Globe and Mail. Robin, thank you so much for being here. It's good to be here.
Starting point is 00:01:47 So Robin, tell me about TMU's law school. Like, when did it start and how is it different from other law schools? So TMU opened its doors in September 2020, kind of peak pandemic. It was virtual. But at that first kind of big press conference, the banners read, set a new precedent. This law school was designed to be different than every other law school in Canada. And they did this in kind of two ways. One is it really openly embraced technology. This was going to be very central in the curriculum. And it also tried to fix this longstanding gripe about law schools that students graduate ready to understand legal theory,
Starting point is 00:02:27 but not ready to be working lawyers. And that's why they do an articling year with getting some on the job experience. At Lincoln Alexander, students would get that as part of their regular education, they would do job placements. And in fact, they didn't have to complete an articling year because there was this understanding that they had real world experience. But the kind of, I think, central thing about what TMU's law school was trying to do was be unabashedly progressive. This is prominent in all of its marketing materials. I don't want to be just another lawyer. I want to be a link lawyer. One who advocates for inclusivity.
Starting point is 00:03:10 Amplifies the voices of the unheard. Innovates the legal profession. Breaks down barriers. And expands the reach of justice. It's on the signs when you walk around the law school. It's in its promotional brochure. It is going to use the law to change the status quo. It is named for the first black member of parliament. Its dean, a black woman, is the only black woman leading one of the 24 law schools in Canada. It's hard to overstate just
Starting point is 00:03:38 how much of the school's identity is wrapped in this idea of being a progressive institution. Yeah. So the school positions itself is quite different here. As you say, Robin, is more progressive. So let's look at then what happened after October 7th. How did the school respond? Universities historically, along with many institutions, have taken the position that they need to stay neutral and not weigh into political matters. But students at Lincoln Alexander really felt that because of the ideals and founding principles that the law school had laid out, that the school really needed to weigh into this discussion publicly. Especially since it marketed itself as so progressive, right? So I imagine students may have a slightly different expectation of it than other schools.
Starting point is 00:04:29 Yeah. So the school says, no, we're not going to issue any public statement. What they do do is they issue an internal note to the school community only that expresses kind of pain on both sides and calls for peace and justice. And it's a very middle of the road statement. But for those groups that were really advocating for something more, this was upsetting. So, you know, the days go by and the situation in Gaza is deteriorating. And we are watching this all unfold online. And on campus, students are glued to their phone and they're seeing these images, but they're also seeing what their classmates and what their faculty members and professors are sharing and liking and reposting. And they're taking screenshots of images of students posting, you know, things like, resistance can happen without violence. No, it can't. Or, you know, this is what Zionism does. It villainizes you. And when an associate
Starting point is 00:05:32 dean at TMU was reposting images from the IDF, the Israeli military, and other statements, they found that as very inflammatory. They thought that this was, you know, if an associate dean is reposting images that they find problematic, that the school is taking a stance. You know, the school itself would deny this and would say that the associate dean's comments online are protected under academic free speech, and that she was also posting from her personal account. But I think this just really speaks to how much all of this was boiling over at that time. Yeah. And so this is kind of the context in which this letter then gets written. So, Robin, let's talk about this letter. Who wrote it and what did it say?
Starting point is 00:06:16 At first, they do sort of a letter writing campaign directly to the dean of the law school, Donna Young. This is not hugely widespread, but some letters are sent to her office. But afterwards, a group of students decide that they want to escalate things and do a petition. And this is where a student group called the Abolitionist Organizing Collective, the AOC, decided to put together a petition. And why don't I read from this petition, which I have in front of me, because they use extremely inflammatory language. Please, yeah, please read some.
Starting point is 00:06:50 It starts by expressing unequivocal support for Palestinians. And then it says, quote, Israel is not a country. It is the brand of a settler colony. So-called Israel has been illegally occupying and ethnically cleansing Palestine since 1948, when the British unlawfully conceded Palestine's territory. We, the undersigned, recognize that the apartheid state referred to as Israel is a product of settler colonialism. We stand in solidarity with Palestine and support all forms of Palestinian resistance and efforts toward liberation. The petition goes on to refer to the events of October 7 as a war crime, but it also is very clear that in the letter writer's view,
Starting point is 00:07:35 what happened on October 7 was a direct result of Israel's actions in the last 75 years. So the students go on to call on the administration to drop its neutral position and to publicly call for a ceasefire and to speak out on behalf of Palestinians. And they post the document in a Google document. And there's a public link so anyone can access it, although only those with TMU email addresses are able to sign it. It goes kind of live on October 20th, which is a Friday. And within two days, more than 70 students had signed this petition. About half used their full name and sometimes even year of study. And another half signed anonymously with monikers like in solidarity with Palestine or with initials.
Starting point is 00:08:25 Let me just back up and look at what the purpose of the letter was supposed to be. Like, was this supposed to be a public letter? It's a really interesting question because the majority of students that I spoke with said that their understanding was that the document was going to be internal only and privately sent to the dean. And the signatories really fall into sort of two groups, a group that would sign the letter again tomorrow, and a group that says that if they had written it, it would have been very different, that they didn't actually agree with a lot of the language and wording, but that they in general wanted to
Starting point is 00:09:02 show support for Palestinians. And that because they didn't think the document was going to ever be made public, they weren't concerned about endorsing absolutely everything. One student said that he saw it as a way to, quote, open a conversation with the dean and that it wasn't supposed to be some big official thing. Now, the AOC, which organized the petition, when they sent it to Dean Young, the accompanying email said, this is an open letter. And so this, I think, just speaks to the fact that this petition really wasn't super thought out. So as you can imagine, this quickly leaked online. I mean, this is an open link.
Starting point is 00:09:45 These are students with cell phones. It started spreading through group chats and text messages, but it quickly left the law school. And by Sunday afternoon, it was on Twitter. The organizers had taken down the petition by this point, but, you know, it's the Internet. People took screenshots and were widely reposting it. Students were being called terrorist sympathizers. They're being threatened that they'll never get jobs. The other side of this is there's, you know, Jewish students at Lincoln Alexander who told me that when they saw the petition on the Friday, they're just horrified watching their classmates' names be added to this slowly, one after another. I think something like 74 students
Starting point is 00:10:26 signed this document, and that represents about a sixth of the entire law school. Is there something, I guess, unique about this petition coming from a law school? Like, does it seem, I guess, different than another university petition? Law schools, they straddle these two worlds, right? They straddle the academic world where there's a lot of discussion about the importance of free speech and academic freedom, exploring different ideas, and the professional world. Law firms, the legal community, it's very risk averse. They don't want to do anything that might cost them a client down the road. Other pressures on law school are the fact that, you know, who's teaching their classes? Often it's working lawyers. Lincoln Alexander specifically relies on law firms to give their students placements
Starting point is 00:11:15 so that they can tick that box in their curriculum. If you upset the legal world, nevermind donations, by the way, and scholarships and all those other things that universities rely on, but if you upset the legal world, never mind donations, by the way, and scholarships and all those other things that universities rely on. But if you upset the legal community, Lincoln Alexander is going to have a very hard time functioning. We'll be back in a minute. How did the university respond? How did the law school respond? This letter comes out, gets public. What do they say? The law school got a copy of the petition right away. The student group that organized it sent it to the dean on the Friday.
Starting point is 00:11:53 So students are signing and the law school administration is watching are just furious. They're calling for the students to be immediately expelled. They're calling for immediate action. Donors are withdrawing support. On the Monday, the law school issues a statement condemning the sentiments in the petition and labeling the petition itself as anti-Semitic. And this was a real betrayal for the students who signed it because at the same time, they are being doxxed and harassed and they felt that the law school was kind of putting their finger on the scale and making it worse. And at the same time, there was many in the legal community, he felt that it didn't go far enough. Jonathan Rosenthal, who is a prominent defense attorney in Toronto, he's a member of the Law Society, he's a prophet Osgood, he co-wrote this letter, really sharply criticizing the administration, expressing grave concern. If there was a similar racist letter written about any other group than Jews, there wouldn't have been any discussion. They would have used the process that they had in place to investigate and potentially discipline students. They wouldn't have had to call for an independent investigation. It would
Starting point is 00:13:25 have been action. And particularly that the school didn't mention any consequences that the students were going to face. And this letter was signed by 20 other prominent lawyers in Toronto. So we're starting to see kind of this fallout here that's happening as a result of this. There were more consequences for the students, right, Robin? We talked about the initial, you know, kind of being doxed online, but there were wide-reaching consequences beyond that even. So this petition lands in the middle of the summer job hunt for law students. The petition goes viral on Sunday. This is the week that students are supposed to be notified about summer job interviews, and many had already been told that they would be interviewed. And within days, some of the country's largest, most prominent law firms, you know, Miller
Starting point is 00:14:12 Thompson, Castles Brock, Aird & Burlis, they start sending any TMU student who has been tapped for an interview notices saying, did you sign this letter? And if you did, you should consider withdrawing your application. What was also interesting is Ontario's Ministry of the Attorney General started emailing TMU students, asking them to sign an attestation that they had not been involved in the petition. So students are losing potential job opportunities. They also lost mentors. There was a student who had signed up for a mentorship program with a crown attorney that evaporated. With these students, they have some of the most prominent lawyers in the country telling them that their lives are over. Yeah. Wow. And I understand that these consequences weren't just for the students
Starting point is 00:15:00 who signed the petition, right? Can you tell me about that? Yeah, that is such a good point. Part of the crisis has been that because half of the students that signed this document did so anonymously, the entire school is quote unquote, tainted in the eyes of some. There was a feeling within the firms that we can't hire anyone from TMU because how do we know if they've signed this letter? And within the law firms, there were many, particularly Jewish partners, who were extremely upset about the sentiments expressed in this letter
Starting point is 00:15:34 and very surprised that a law school had this many students who would endorse something like this. And they're saying, we don't want people who feel this way in our office. You know, they don't want to upset potential clients. And it's not everyone, for sure. There was actually a backlash to the backlash, 700 members of the legal community, a lot of academics, lawyers, some other students signed a letter supporting the students and saying what was happening to them and the blacklisting was very unfair and that the whole thing kind of reeked of a quote new McCarthyism. But there's no doubt that in the corporate law firms in particular, and in government, there was a real sense that what do we do with this law school. And so the rest of the school that didn't sign, many students were just
Starting point is 00:16:25 absolutely furious that they're paying $25,000 a year to go to a law school and now their degree is tainted, that their job prospects are going to be impacted. And it just created this intense division within the school community as well. I know you spoke to some of the students who signed the petition. What did they say about why they signed it? Because you spoke to some of the students who signed the petition. What did they say about why they signed it? Because you read out some of the segments before, you know, a lot of people might look at that wording and say, this is pretty extreme. There's a lot of incendiary things here. But what was the thinking behind why they put their name to this? So there's one group that, you know, has no regrets about signing the document. And I asked them about some of the phrases that have
Starting point is 00:17:06 garnered the most attention and the most blowback. So for example, the sentences that question whether Israel is a legitimate country. And to this, students told me, well, Israel isn't a country. And by the way, neither is Canada. These are students who really believe in decolonization. They would say that not critiquing Israel as a colonial state is in fact discriminatory because the only reason you wouldn't critique it is because they are Jewish. As for the line about all forms of resistance, this is something that I think you're hearing at a lot of the student encampments and the pro-Palestinian solidarity movements. The Lincoln Alexander students would say that what that means is that it is not the position of them to tell an oppressed, colonized people how to resist.
Starting point is 00:18:02 And they also say that the letter is very clear that October 7 is a war crime. And some will say that people who are upset about that line are purposely misreading the document. That's their position. And did you speak to any Jewish students, Robin? I'm just curious, like the Jewish community at the school, what did they say about how they felt about what was being said here? So the Jewish students said that the letter is extremely anti-Semitic, that when they read that their classmates were supporting all forms of resistance, the only way to understand that is that it is justifying violence, murder, rape against innocent Israeli civilians. In their mind, when you're questioning the legitimacy of Israel to exist, you're questioning their right to be safe, because the Israeli state is the place where Jews are supposed to be safe. And that when there was no Israel, Jews had nowhere to go.
Starting point is 00:19:06 And Canada turned away Jews around the time of the Second World War. So that there's no way to read this besides it being deeply hateful and sympathizing with terrorism. I can imagine how tense this would get within the school then. So let me ask you, Robin, about the school's further response, because I understand that there's an external review that the school wanted done. So what happened there? So in November, TMU, the university, not the law school, announces that it is bringing in the former Chief Justice of Nova Scotia, Michael McDonald, who most recently led the Mass Casualty Commission to investigate whether the students had violated the code of conduct. So the report is released actually just a few weeks ago. And Justice McDonald concludes that the petition is
Starting point is 00:19:52 not anti-Semitic. He highlights the fact that it is a critique of the state of Israel and not Jews or Judaism. He has a lot of criticism for the way that the students kind of positioned their arguments. And he actually lays out some advice for advocacy in the future. But in general, he says that what they wrote is protected under the university's code of free speech and that students are given a wide latitude to explore different ideas. Perfection is not the standard, he says. So students are entitled to make mistakes. And his conclusion, you know, is met with great relief by many who signed the document and with deep anger in some corners of the legal community who say that this is insane. The letter is,
Starting point is 00:20:40 of course, anti-Semitic. And they say that the fact that there was no consequences for any of the students who signed this is actually going to make moving forward more challenging. This is really at the core of this. What is anti-Semitic? Is anti-Zionism or criticism of the state of Israel anti-Semitic? And I spoke to academics and lawyers and people with opinions on this on all sides, and there is this deep divide of opinion. You know, one of the lawyers that I spoke to, Adam Wegman, who he's been very vocal on this issue, his firm was one of the ones that withdrew a donation to TMU after the letter. he finds it very frustrating that in an era when we've been talking so much about anti-racism
Starting point is 00:21:29 and microaggressions, that other people get to tell him, a Jewish man, what is anti-Semitic. And he says, as many have said, it's also important to contextualize that the Holocaust was not hundreds of years ago. This happened in his parents' lifetime. This is very real.
Starting point is 00:21:49 And that is why critiquing Israel is challenging his right to be safe. I also spoke with an associate law professor from the University of Windsor, who's a member of the Jewish Faculty Network. And she said it's very frustrating when people collapse this idea of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. And that, you know, to her, criticism of Israel, even if it hurts Jewish people who really identify with Israel, is just a difference of political opinion. And that the Israeli government purposely has tried to link anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism as a way to shield themselves from scrutiny. Robin, we started this conversation by talking about TMU's law school, how it wanted to do things differently, how it wanted to be more progressive. And I guess I'm just wondering,
Starting point is 00:22:36 after this situation has played out this year, where does that leave the school and its mission that it wanted to be different? I think the lasting component will be that Lincoln Alexander is not going to be able to kind of position itself in the same way. I think there's real questions of whether a law school can ever be truly different, progressive. I think it's worth noting that while some students were attracted to Lincoln Alexander because they thought it was a place that they could really, you know, learn about and do the work that they wanted in areas like human rights law and immigration, refugees, helping unhoused people. There are people who want to be corporate lawyers. There are people who are interested in commercial law. And as a law school, you want to have that full range open to your
Starting point is 00:23:25 students. So, I mean, where does this all leave the students then? I mean, that's a really good question. I think there is going to be an asterisk beside many of the students who are there right now. I did try to figure out around summer jobs, had things changed for students. I asked Lincoln Alexander for their stats because they do track it. They wouldn't provide it. However, anecdotally, it does seem like a lot of students got summer jobs, but not necessarily in those kind of risk averse corporate firms. I guess it is also worth mentioning, though, that the Jewish students that I've talked to said that they've, you know, had a lot of support within the legal community, particularly senior Jewish members of the bar who have reached out, provided support and help. I think some of them have been able to get jobs for sure as well. I think for some students, what this has presented is a choice that maybe their career path is going to go in a different direction than they might have thought previously. Robin, thank you so much for being here and for taking the time to walk us through all of it. Thank you. That's it for today. I'm Maina Karaman-Wilms.
Starting point is 00:24:40 Our interns are Aja Sauter and Kelsey Arnett. Our producers are Madeline White, Cheryl Sutherland, and Rachel Levy-McLaughlin. David Crosby edits the show. Adrienne Chung is our senior producer, and Matt Frainer is our managing editor. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll talk to you soon.

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