The Decibel - Where do the university campus protests stand now?

Episode Date: June 4, 2024

It’s been more than a month now since the pro-Palestinian protests started up at campuses across Canada, protesting the war in Gaza and calling for the universities to make changes. There’s been a wide range of responses to these protests.So today, The Globe’s postsecondary education reporter Joe Friesen is here to explain where the campus protests are now, what the students are asking for, and how the universities have responded.Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail]

It's been more than a month now since the first pro-Palestinian protests over the war in Gaza started up on Canadian campuses. We want that front! We want that front! Let's go! We want that front! And I'm happy to see the students mobilize for justice, for peace. I'm here to show support to the students who have formed an encampment to build awareness. I think this is an amazing way of protesting, encamping. I mean, this is something new. It's been done for a really long time.

So our fundamental demand is total divestment from all companies supporting or compliciting the current genocide and occupation of Palestine. Walk with shame! Walk with shame! Die! Die! Die! Die! Die! These protests are calling on universities to cut ties with organizations connected to the Israeli military and

with many Israeli academic institutions. Some of the protests are causing friction on campus. Some are facing court injunctions. Some saw police intervention. And some have been peacefully resolved. It's a lot to keep track of.

So today, The Globe's post-secondary education reporter, Joe Friesen, is on the show. He'll tell us where these campus protests are at right now, what the students are asking for, and how the universities are responding. I'm Maina Karaman-Wilms, and this is The Decibel from The Globe and Mail. Joe, thanks for being here today. Thanks for having me. So we're about a month into the protests on campuses across Canada. I guess, how would you just characterize this moment in the protests?

It's a really interesting moment right now because the protests have been going on for a while now. A few have been resolved. Many still remain ongoing, especially some of the big ones, UBC, U of T McGill, for example. And the question is, will they be able to find a resolution? So finding a path forward right now for university administrations is, I think, the main task. And for the students in the encampment, they're still hoping to get many of their demands met. Yeah. I think, at least in my recent memory, this is one of kind of the biggest moments of student activism that I really remember in Canada.

Yeah, I can't remember anything like this. I've been covering universities for about five years, and there have been some big movements around climate and some successful attempts to get universities to divest from fossil fuels. But to see so many campuses go into this encampment phase so quickly is really remarkable. So how many have we seen actually do that? Do we know how many protests are across Canada? I don't have an exact number. There was a while there in mid-May where it seemed there was a new campus every day and I was having a hard time keeping up. But I would think it's definitely over two dozen would be my best estimate. Could be even more than that. And these, of course, are following similar protests that happened at several universities in the U.S. So how does what's happening there compare to what's happening here in Canada?

The U.S. ones, they started a little earlier than the ones in Canada, and they were much more contentious, I think, from the university standpoint. So there were more efforts to crack down on them. And we saw some violence as encampments were cleared from police in some cases, and there were also clashes with counter protesters. So Canada has mostly seen relatively peaceful protests so far. Not many campuses have seen police go in, but there have been a couple examples. And for the most part, universities are pursuing negotiation as the main tactic

and trying to be patient and wait out the protesters, I think. So let's actually get into some of what we see in detail in Canada then. The protests here have similar requests. What are the students calling on universities to do? So the Canadian protests have been pretty focused, and they have three demands, typically. It's not exactly the same at every campus, but it's pretty close. And they're calling for universities to disclose where their money is invested.

Universities all have endowment funds of some kind or pension funds where pools of money are being placed, and they want to know where that is going. The second thing is they're calling on universities to divest from companies connected to the Israeli military or to weapons manufacturers. And the third is to break ties. And this one has been a difficult one for universities to deal with, I think, because the protesters want to see universities cut ties with academic institutions in Israel, if they are connected to the Israeli military in some cases, or if they operate in the occupied settlements in other cases. So universities have responded on that point in particular, that they don't believe in academic boycotts for the most part. So that's been a point of contention. Okay. There's been a lot going on at different campuses, right? And it has been actually kind of hard to keep track of things at times. So I think

it is worth maybe going through some of them in more detail. So let's start with the protests in Toronto here at U of T. You've been to this one a couple of times, I know. What is it like there? So when you get there to King's College Circle, which is sort of the main green at the heart of the U of T St. George campus, usually a very nice place where people are playing frisbee and congregating, the U of T put up a temporary fence a couple days before the protest started. I think having seen what happened in the U.S. and trying to head off a protest getting started on its grounds. The protesters were able to get over that fence, and so they are located inside that fenced-off circle. And around the fence you see all kinds of banners with slogans

related to the Israel-Gaza war, some tarps. And then on the inside of the fence is a fairly large encampment of about 100 to sometimes more, maybe 125 tents. It has grown from the early days when it was about 50 tents. And they are arranged, I was looking at some aerial photos, I was surprised to see they are arranged in rows often. And so there are kind of almost streets that run through this place. It seems fairly well organized.

You know, there's always food, there's a medical tent. In some places at McGill, for example, you know, there's a library. I think there's one at U of T also. So they're finding ways to make this a place where they can live for the long term. And do we know who is at this protest then? Well, when the student leaders are asked if everyone there is a student, they get quite adamant that yes, everyone is sleeping in that encampment is or is connected to U of T. Of course, you can be connected to U of T in many different ways. And we did hear some faculty say that they are staying there.

So it's very hard to know. It's difficult to say. And I've certainly heard people on the counter-protest side saying that these are clearly not U of T students. And when you look at the level of organization and the logistics that they have managed, you do, you know, it does raise questions about how they knew to do all these things so efficiently. But, you know, these are sharp kids. One of the things that struck me about it was they waited until after the exams were over to begin this encampment

of U of T. So their academics are also a priority, I think. Yes, exactly. What kind of response have we seen from the university then? At U of T, they have described their response as being patient. They've been trying to engage in negotiations with the students. And then a little more than a week ago, they said their patience was starting to run out. was being taken over for the exclusive use of the protesters, a place where normally lots of people from the campus gather and from the broader community. And so there is this kind of fight brewing over the issue of free speech and free expression. The protesters are asserting their right to protest and to express themselves, and the university is also asserting a right to open it up

so that everyone can express themselves in that space. So the university has issued a notice of trespass this last Monday that went into effect, and they're now taking their case to the court to try to get an injunction that would force the encampment to be dismantled. And that process is underway, but will take a while even to be heard. I think the hearing date is tentatively June 19th. So it's going to take a while for this all to play out. And of course, this week at U of T is the start of convocation. So I think the school was thinking about that timing as well, because that field, King's College Circle, is right next to convocation hall. That's usually a spot that's kind of prime area for graduates there.

Yeah, exactly. So U of T was hoping this case would be heard before June 3rd, and that wasn't going to be possible because they filed a very voluminous brief with the court, and there were more than 20 groups seeking intervener status in the case. So there's a lot for the court to sort through, and it's going to take a bit of time. Joe, you mentioned that faculty has also gotten involved here. Can you tell me about that? From what I gather, what I've been told, there are about 150 to 180 faculty members who have visited the protest site at some point. And recently, in its trespass notice, the U of T made clear that anyone on the grounds of King's College Circle after 8 a.m. last Monday could be

pursued under either the student code of conduct or faculty who were present could face penalties as severe as termination. And so that really got the faculty's attention because they, according to the Faculty Association, had never faced a threat like that in their history of negotiations and relations with the university before. And so they said afterwards that that actually had spurred more faculty to join the protest because they felt as though their right to express themselves, to teach and to pursue what they call academic freedom had been infringed upon. Now, of course, there's a wide range of feelings about this among faculty and there's many others who oppose and would like to see King's College Circle opened up again.

I believe labor groups have also gotten involved here, isn't that right? That's right. Yeah, the Ontario Federation of Labor issued a call to join a protest at the encampment last week, and there were flags from several unions, QP, OPSU, steel workers were there, and they issued this sort of rallying cry, which is if you're going to come for the students, you're going to have to go through the workers. I guess I want to linger a little bit on the university response here, Joe, because we talked about how they had filed a notice of trespass, an injunction here. What has the university said about why it has taken that approach? its materials for the court that the encampment is an infringement of the free speech and

free expression and association rights of everybody on campus because there is a kind of a screening process in order to enter the circle that has now been occupied by the encampment. And they see that as an imposition that restricts who can say what they want and where on the university campus. You know, there's pressure on the university from all directions too. I'm sure there are many students and donors who are feeling uncomfortable with what's going on. There have been a few dozen incidents, I think, that have been reported to police as potential, you know, moments that have crossed the line. So it's a source of tension for the university. They're always worried about health and safety concerns. You know, if something

goes wrong on their campus, they could be held responsible. And to have people living there overnight is not something that the campus has planned for. Just very lastly on U of T, Joe, what have we seen in terms of negotiations? We talked about the demands of the protesters. Has there been any kind of progress in resolving this? They've been at the negotiating table a few times. And from what I understand, it's student leaders meeting with four members of senior administration, but not with President Merrick Gertler yet. made public what it has offered, which is to create a committee to study the question of divestment, which is what it can do under its policies, and to improve the transparency of its investments. And it has rejected the question of breaking ties with Israeli institutions, because it just, it doesn't believe that would promote dialogue or encourage academics to engage

as freely as they would like. So the students have rejected that at this point, saying what they want are not committees, but commitments. And we'll see how it goes. At other universities, they have been able to reach negotiated solutions. So it may be that they can get there in time. We'll see. We'll be right back. Let's take a look at other universities now. So I want to talk about the first big campus protest that we saw in Canada, which was at McGill University in Montreal. Joe, what's been going on there and what has that protest been like? So McGill's notable because it was the first, and I think it brought together students from a few universities in Montreal.

Montreal has a number of universities in that city. So students from Concordia, Université de Montréal, UCAM might have been there. It was fairly large and drew a lot of attention. And I think its success in terms of getting itself established has been a model for encampments in the rest of the country. But recently, there have been a lot of concerns coming out of there. McGill, President Deep Saini issued a statement last week expressing his discomfort with some of the things he's seeing there. You know, he mentioned that people connected to the protests had gone to the homes of senior administrators, and you know, with megaphones and chanting slogans. In another case, he mentions a senior

administrator was followed by someone in a mask who came out of the encampment. And there was a protest in the streets of Montreal that ended at the encampment at McGill that included what he described as a disturbing image of what appeared to be a Jewish politician being hanged in effigy. And he described that as really troubling. And McGill has tried to get the police to come in and break up the encampment. They've pursued it in court. They've been unsuccessful so far. So the encampment there remains in place too. Okay, so a few different things that are happening there.

And we should say the Montreal police have confirmed that protesters did go to a residence chanting. They said it was peacefully resolved. There have been a couple of attempts to get an injunction from a judge here. So this would be a court order basically forcing the protesters to stop what they're doing. What's happened there, Joe? So there were two injunction requests at McGill. The first one was brought by students who were seeking to have the encampment removed. And their argument was that the encampment presented a threat to their safety, to their physical well-being.

And the judge ruled that that was not proved. They hadn't proved their case. And they had been seeking an injunction that would have protected a huge area of downtown Montreal. It was like within 100 meters of buildings. So that's pretty wide. And when you consider the scale of the McGill campus, that would be a large chunk of downtown Montreal. The second instance was brought by McGill seeking an injunction on an emergency basis

to have the encampment dismantled and to authorize police to do so. And in that case, McGill lost the ruling on the basis that the judge did not agree that it was necessarily something that needed to be heard on an emergency basis. For example, McGill was saying

that the encampment was going to interfere with its convocation plans, which were coming up in June. And the judge heard evidence that McGill had already found another location, an alternate location for their convocations. And McGill argued that the encampment presented

a health and safety risk. After hearing the arguments, the judge ruled that was not the case, that there had not been any health and safety incidents that would merit an emergency injunction. And so the injunction was not granted. Negotiations, of course, must be ongoing here as well. What have we seen between McGill officials and the student protesters? Well, the last update we had was from McGill last week. And they seemed to be saying they had offered to improve their transparency. They already disclosed their investments over $500,000. And they said they could disclose their investments over $500,000.

And they said they could make their investments under $500,000 also more transparent. So, you know, students could then see where the money was, whether it's invested in arms manufacturers or companies they think have a connection to Israel. And they said they would be willing to study the question of divestment and again rejected the call to break ties with Israeli academic institutions. Now, McGill says that the students basically got up from the table in those negotiations and stopped engaging. So that offer did not satisfy them. Jo, there have been a few examples in Canada of police getting involved in dismantling the protests.

Let's talk about this. Where have we seen this happen and what's happened? So the prominent ones are Alberta, the University of Calgary, and then a couple of days later at the University of Alberta, police went in and cleared encampments at both of those campuses.

They were not scenes of sort of ongoing violence in the way that we saw in the United States, but there were definitely scenes captured on social media of police wielding batons. They used flashbang explosives in some cases to sort of get people's attention. I'm sure it was very frightening to be in. And so for many people, that constitutes the use of violence against students, which for people at a university,

it can be quite a shocking thing to contemplate. So it's caused a lot of upset in those places. And I know at the University of Alberta, the president has been meeting with faculty and faculty have called for an investigation into the decision making behind the moment when police were called, and I think that has been agreed to. So there's going to be more investigation along those lines at Alberta. And these protests at University of Calgary and University of Alberta, they were not going for too long before police were called in, right? No, they were really very recently established. Certainly there was more time

to pursue negotiations in those cases. But in Alberta's case, I know the president has argued that there were reasons to act expeditiously. He talked about some of the tools they had in the encampment being concerning, axes, et cetera, that some people have said are just part of camping equipment. But he was worried about the potential for harm. People staying outside at night in a place not designed for them to camp can be inherently a bit of a safety risk. And I think universities were concerned about that.

And there's always the risk that counter protesters might target the encampment. And then you have two groups clashing. And if the university hasn't created a way to prevent that from happening, they could be held responsible. So I think that was part of the concern. Just in our last few minutes, Joe, you mentioned a little bit earlier that we have seen some protests resolved in Canada. Let's talk about that. Where has this happened? So Ontario Tech and McMaster have resolved, and UCAM in Montreal recently resolved its encampment. So at McMaster, they published a nine-point document

that described sort of the points of agreement, and it addressed many of the issues that have been the sticking points everywhere in Canada. So disclosure, divestment, and the breaking of ties. On the breaking of ties, I don't think the protesters got what they wanted, but on disclosure, I think they got improved disclosure and a place on a university website where

investments would be listed. And then they got a clarification on how they could bring a claim or a request to divest to the university's governing board. Yeah. And when we say resolved, then the protesters have packed up? Protesters seem to have packed up. Yeah, that's my understanding. And one of the schools you mentioned was UCAM, University of Quebec at Montreal. And this is interesting. What did they agree to there? So they were able to reach a deal with protesters where they agreed for its foundation to no longer hold direct investments in weapons companies. I think they said they would be in favor of a ceasefire in Gaza.

And there was also some question about what they've agreed to around their ties with Israeli universities, which is a question for many campuses as well. There's some language there that the students are claiming victory over, that they would be implicitly breaking ties with Israeli universities that operate in occupied territories. And the university has said it would be not willing to enter into new agreements with organizations that are not in compliance with international law. So how that actually plays out in practice, we will have to see. And so, you know, as part of this deal, the students have agreed to pack up their encampment, which I gather is happening over the next few days. I think they didn't take it down immediately,

but they're waiting to see that all this goes through the university's various boards, meetings, approvals, etc. before they completely leave the camp. that all this goes through the universities, various boards, meetings, approvals, et cetera, before they completely leave the camp. So just lastly here, Joe, what does it say that we're seeing more and more agreements come through between the protesters and the universities? Well, the encampments have been going on for a long time now. So I think the fact that a few universities have been able to reach agreements is a sign that there is a path for all universities here to be able to reach some kind of settlement with the

students. I think that it's also worth considering that for the students engaged in these protests, the attention that they're getting and the media focus that they're drawing onto the issues that they care about is a significant victory in itself. So they may not be in a hurry to, to come to an agreement, but, but we will see they've said they've cleared their calendars for the summer and cleared their calendars for the fall. And they're in it for the long haul. We'll see, you know, it's not easy to stay camping for months and months and for the universities.

I think there will be more pressure as time goes on to, to clear these up. Joe, thank you so much for being here today. Thanks for having me. That's it for today. I'm Maina Karaman-Wilms. Our interns are Aja Sauter and Kelsey Arnett.

Our associate producer is Manjot Singh. Our producers are Madeline White, Cheryl Sutherland, and Rachel Levy-McLaughlin. David Crosby edits the show. Adrian Chung is our senior producer, and Matt Frainer is our managing editor. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll talk to you soon.