The Jew-Baiting Islamists at Canadian Universities

"[University campuses] are the places where there's been an ideological picture that incorporates anti-Zionism into the fold, so it emerges from -- I think it's driven by -- a lot of faculty who have very strong ideological positions on this stuff."

"We're [Network of Engaged Canadian Academics [NECA] 400 members across 53 campuses concerned about the safety of Jewish faculty and students and staff and combating antisemitism."

"[What's going on in campuses across the country is] really taking us away from the things that a university is supposed to be about."

"Basically, what we find is there are two groups of faculty; those who have experienced no antisemitism or very low, and those who have experienced really high levels."

"It seems to work through feeling that you have to support yourself, your Jewish identity; that you're vulnerable, and that you're  betrayed by your institutions, and your colleagues."

"In a very strategic and intentional way our universities are being used as a source of ideological propaganda. And there are bad actors who we know are doing that. [It makes sense if you are trying to get some] intellectual ideological capture; [ focus on university campuses -- where you have the most academic freedom]."

Carey Kogan, psychology professor, University of Ottawa

B'nai Brith

 

Professor Kogan co-founded the Network of Engaged Canadian Academics in 2022. He did so because even before the atrocity of Palestinian terrorists led by Hamas slaughtering 1,200 Israelis and taking another 240 as captives for barter back to Gaza, unleashing a storm of antisemitic vitriol against Jews in Canada by a number of Palestinian student 'activist' groups, the Jew-hating atmosphere in  Canadian universities was beginning to sear the lives of Jewish students and academics.

 

Following the barbarism of 7 October 2023, incitements to discrimination against Jews took to the streets of Canadian cities and on university campuses where tent cities sprang up with students as well as outsiders garbed in keffiyehs and masks harassing Jewish students, barring entry to their classes, chorusing epithets against Zionism, and chanting 'from the river to the sea Palestine will be free!' ad nauseum, while demanding that university administrations boycott Israeli academics and divest university investments from any links with Israel.

 

Jews, points out Professor Kogan, represent a mere one percent of the Canadian population yet 70 percent of religious-motivated hate crimes target Jews in Canada. Jews are 25 times likelier to experience a hate crime than anyone from within the general population. "We need to move to action, where people are taking a stand, being vocal about this. We can have people talking about, even protesting war. That's fine. We can have people asking for rights for Palestinians. Absolutely fine. But we can't have this kind of identity-based hate movement being taught in classrooms, being propagated through motions at university, faculty unions, student unions and all of that".

 

The Network of Engaged Canadian Academics Dr. Kogan is part of represents a defence against campaigns that target Canadian universities "with a high proportion of Jewish students and faculty, like the University of Toronto" or campuses where media attention is likely to be drawn for publicity. Canada has more than adequate laws to deal with these situations, but has yet to enforce those laws and rules. There is insufficient transparency on foreign donations to universities, there needs to be an improved collaboration with federal intelligence agencies in an era when leadership is wanting, not leading. 

Anti-Israel protesters march at McGill University on Oct. 7, 2025. Photo by Allen McInnis/Postmedia/File

 

"I mean, faculty were helping students with these encampments, helping students write these reports, make these statements, and I think there are unions, both student and faculty unions, supporting this ideological position. It became harder for certain leaders to actually make clear statements, and there was a double standard in terms of implementing policies, more than in any other minority group experience.The biggest or the most painful thing for Jewish students is the double standard. 

 

"They're avoiding campus, taking courses online, they're hiding their Jewish identity.  Their behaviour is changing as a function of the hostility. They won't talk about their opinions on things They're put on the spot asked to speak for the Israeli government, like absurd, absurd kinds of things that we would never see other minority groups be subjeted to."

 

Matters may yet escalate with ongoing negotiations with Hamas, and journalists reporting on the level of destruction in Gaza. Dr. Kogan points out that the entire area of Gaza was honeycombed with tunnels where underground military bunkers housed and protected Hamas operatives and weaponry. In bombing the tunnels and targeting Hamas terrorists, the Israel Defence Forces had little option, after instructing civilians to leave the areas before assaulting the structures, but to destroy the tunnels. 

 

Between January 1944 and 1945 the Royal Air Force and the U.S. air force conducted air raids over Germany where American planes alone made 744,000 sorties and dropped 1.4 million tons of bombs with inaccurate aerial bombing, dropping loads indiscriminately in and around major German cities. The result was Allied bombing that killed up to five hundred thousand German civilians. Allied raids destroyed between 4.5 and 5 million homes. How's that for perspective?

 

As for the level of institutionalized and casual Jew-hate, the former the result of an enormous intake of Muslims into Canada in the past several decades, the latter the always-present but generally underground antisemitism that always hovered in the air among the general Canadian population: "It's deep, it's structural, it's embedded, it's years old, it's informed by religion, it's informed by culture. And so it's not going away any time soon. But I think we can bring the temperature down, if we have strong leadership", ventured Professor Kogan. 

 

2024.0720 DC Street, Washington, DC USA 202 74155 by Ted Eytan https://flic.kr/p/

 

What's Happened at Canadian Universities Where Canadian Jews are Threatened?

"I have students who are coming into my classes already with a very deep belief in antisemitic lies."

"It's worse where there is very strong activism against what's happening in the Middle East. And it's most painful where you have a lot of Jewish students."

"[Attempts  were made to restrain Jewish students from access to kosher food on campus. A] safe space [needed to be made available in the boardroom for Jewish students in early October] because students didn't feel safe on campus, and faculty didn't either."

"[Posters of Israeli hostages were torn down at a] terrifying rate."

"[Jewish students were being followed and filmed on camera.] In classrooms, professors were just riffing on what was happening and often presenting Oct7 as legitimate resistance. ... To hear the rapes and brutality being celebrated as legitimate resistance was just terrifying and deeply wounding [for students with family and friends in Israel]."

"This is a national problem -- it's happening at University of British Columbia, Concordia and across Canadian universities. Where we don't have reports of antisemitism on campus, we have to ask the question, are the Jews feeling safe to report? Is there a history of reporting not being counted or dismissed?"

"And that activism against the state of Israel is being weaponized against the Jews on campus [students, but also staff and faculty]. The criticism of the state is slipping into 'all Zionists' or 'all Jews'."

"It's really hard to walk through a campus when you see posters or people calling for intifada. And that's the reality."

Deidre Butler, director, Max and Tessie Zelikovitz Centre for Jewish Studies, Carleton University; co-chair, Network of Engaged Canadian Academics

Cary Kogan and Deidre Butler, co-chairs of the Network of Engaged Canadian Academics, which is combatting antisemitism on campuses. Photo by National Post

The issue of antisemitism looming large on the campuses of Canadian Universities, targeting Jewish-Canadian students did not just suddenly manifest after October 7 when Hamas terrorists flooded across the border from Gaza into southern Israel -- on a planned, orchestrated, and committed one-day campaign to rape, murder, torture, torment, and take Israeli civilians hostages whether they were infants, teens, families, the elderly, foreign farm workers -- in a day of unheralded mayhem and slaughter. On a somewhat lesser plateau the threats that erupted did so for decades, intensifying in nature and number after October 7.

Before that fateful day, antisemitic attacks against Jews on university campuses spiked any time conflict between Israel and the many and varied Palestinian terror groups ignited new episodes of hate speech and threats manifesting in Canada where Jewish students have been the target of violent messages. The students have been mercilessly harassed, cornered in public spaces, spat upon. A number of prominent Canadian universities and several student unions are now facing class-action lawsuits launched by students with the claim those half-dozen universities permitted a hostile environment against Jews to flourish on their campuses.

 

Which has also led to the creation of the non-partisan Network of Engaged Canadian Academics, inspired by a network of similar purpose that arose in the United States, whose mission is to protect academic freedom and to ensure a "robust and fair dialogue relating to Jewish identity and Israel" is respected. At the same time, the group is engaged in countering a rising tide of antisemitism. Some two hundred faculty members across 27 campuses signed on, many who were witness to "troubling anti-Jewish rhetoric and actions", according to the organizers.

 

According to Dr. Kogan of the University of Ottawa, "there was really no organization in Canada that was helping faculty manage these issues", despite the presence of some organizations representing the interests of Jewish students. As an example of the worst-case scenario confronting Jewish students, a union-issued 'toolkit' encouraged teaching assistants to divert tutorials to teaching on Palestinian liberation and condemnations of the "Zionist Israeli state", irrespective of the course under discussion, at York University. Jewish student organizations like Hillel have see bans issued. 

Some university professors, pointed out Professor Butler, not themselves teaching about the conflict, nonetheless "are bringing the conflict into every discipline. It's not that we want to censor people; we absolutely don't. We want to strengthen academic freedom through viewpoint diversity, from having more perspectives taught." Rather than the one overwhelming narrative "that leaves no place for Jewish identity. It leaves no place to be critical or thoughtful about the history of Israel or Zionism. And it's really a problem. We all need to be worried."

At McGill University in Montreal, a group called Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights celebrated the Hamas attacks on Israel as 'heroic.'   Ryan Remiorz/The Canadian Press

"People are entitled to discuss their points of view, but here we're talking about things that cross the line into hate speech, things that cross the line into incitement of violence and into harassment of Jewish students, regardless of their position vis-a-vis Israel."

"We had people who were not experts on the conflict in the Middle East regurgitating a lot of problematic and inaccurate information, using their classroom as a pulpit to express their opinions outside their areas of expertise."

"[After the Israel-Hamas conflict in 2021], there was a noticeable, what felt like an organized approach trying to de-legitimize Israel and trying to undermine discourse that could allow for multiple perspectives and fruitful dialogue, which is what the academy is about."

Cary Kogan, clinical psychology professor, University of Ottawa, co-founder, Network of Engaged Canadian Academics