Ontario government's campus 'free speech' policy exposed for what it is after student groups' ugly statement on Israel attack

Ontario’s Minister for Colleges and Universities, Jill Dunlop, has demanded universities take action to sanction student groups after a number of them voiced support for the attack by Hamas on Israeli civilians. A statement signed by the York Federation of Students, the York University Graduate Students’ Association, and the Glendon College Student Union praised the “strong act of resistance” by “the Palestinian people” (they make no specific mention of the terrorist group Hamas) and “stand in solidarity with those resisting [Israel’s] oppression.” Most of the rest of the statement is replete with criticism of Israel’s policies, occupation of land/settlements, and “genocide” against Palestinians.

I want to make clear that I think support for the form of “resistance” at issue - Hamas’s brutal attack featured the mass murder and kidnapping of civilians - is morally reprehensible. There is absolutely nothing wrong with anyone, including politicians, criticizing it. York University itself immediately responded by condemning the statement as inflammatory and for justifying violence against civilians. It is not common to see a university administration unequivocally denounce speech by its own students in this manner.

What is notable, however, is the call by Dunlop for the university to hold the students “accountable” if the associations did not retract their statement and apologize (see the bottom of this news story here).

This demand is particularly interesting in light of the government’s own “campus free speech” policy, predicated upon the University of Chicago Statement on Principles of Free Expression. That policy effectively requires universities to “not attempt to shield students from ideas or opinions that they disagree with or find offensive.” The policy also notes that “speech that violates the law is not allowed.”

The implication here seems to be that Dunlop thinks the statement by the student associations is literally unlawful. Otherwise, by calling for York to hold these students “accountable,” she is flouting her government’s own policy. But it’s far from clear that anything in the statement, however ugly or even hateful we might think it is, constitutes unlawful hate speech or anything like incitement to violence. Indeed, the statement’s clear focus on the state of Israel (as opposed to lauding attacks on Jewish people as a group) is precisely why there are such fierce debates over the IHRA definition of antisemitism. As someone who studies the law of free expression, I would find it quite surprising if a court of law found the statement to be unlawful hate speech, however morally reprehensible it might be to defend attacks on civilians in the name of “resistance”.

Dunlop took things even further on Tuesday, explicitly naming and shaming specific students and professors for their wrongspeak on the floor of the provincial assembly. (One law colleague refers to this as literal McCarthyism). That she did this in speaking to the safety of Jewish students, without any consideration that her own comments and naming of individuals might risk their safety in turn, speaks perhaps to just how principled she is in fact being. It shouldn’t be hard to recognize that both Jewish and Muslim or Arab students face an incredible amount of hate today, and the tendency of ideologues to only pay heed to the suffering of one side in this conflict is a big part of the problem.

What this all shows is just how vacuous and unprincipled the so-called “campus speech policy” was from the beginning. It’s perfectly good to demand universities be ‘free speech zones,’ that is, right up until someone says something unpopular or ugly enough to make one call for censorship or punishment. If the boundary is meant to be ‘the law’, then let it be the law. Dunlop has not made any legal argument of which I’m aware. She is free to criticize these statements all she wants; but to demand, as a Minister of the Crown, that universities punish their students for lawful speech is contrary to the very principle this government claims to defend.