Vive Le Canada - Liplocked

by Paul Harris

Carrying on its fine tradition of open dialogue and freedom of speech, Concordia University has demonstrated again that it is operated by cowards: another former Israeli prime minister is coming, and he won’t get to speak in those hallowed halls.

A judge in Montréal struck a blow for silence back in 2002 when he granted an injunction to Concordia to prevent a group, which included two of Canada’s Members of Parliament, from speaking at the university on November 15, 2002. The reason? They wanted to talk about peace and justice in the Middle East. No doubt it was mere coincidence that these two parliamentarians and a third speaker were well known critics of Israeli actions in the Palestinian Occupied Territories.

The mess actually started earlier that year, in September, when former Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu was scheduled to speak at the same venue: it never happened. It was believed that Mr. Netanyahu was intending to speak in favour of the hard line Israeli posture in regard to Palestine and to urge for even tougher and more brutal crackdowns in the Occupied Territories. A large body of protesters showed up at Concordia Hall to object to Mr. Netanyahu’s presence and the police services of Montréal panicked. They called out a riot-control unit and, with batons a-flailing, they surged into the crowd who, quite naturally, surged back. In the end, twelve protestors were arrested and the speech was cancelled.

Mr. Netanyahu continued on to Winnipeg where he spoke a couple of days later in front of a largely Jewish audience and was roundly congratulated on his heroism in Montréal.

Now the university is preventing another former Israeli prime minister from speaking on campus. This time, however, they are getting a little braver by at least offering to co-sponsor an off-campus speech by Ehud Barak at an undetermined location where his safety can be guaranteed. Mr. Barak is reputed to be Israel’s most decorated soldier so one could safely presume, perhaps, that he is not pro-Palestinian.

It is a damn shame that Mr. Netanyahu did not speak in Montréal two years ago and it is a shame that Mr. Barak has to slink off somewhere this year because the university has no tradition of defending free speech. Both men should be given the opportunity to state their views and then face praise or condemnation, as the case might be. Concordia claims it did a risk assessment in conjunction with the RCMP, the Montréal police and campus security and they concluded that Mr. Barak’s safety could not be guaranteed. It is not clear if Mr. Barak asked for such guarantees.

So the pro-Palestinian group at Concordia who don’t want Mr. Barak even allowed into Canada, because they believe he is a war criminal, and a Jewish student group who wants to have him speak, will both stage protests to support their positions. But students are unlikely to actually hear Mr. Barak.

The university’s reaction to the events in 2002 was to issue a moratorium on any campus event that addresses any aspect of the conflict in the Middle East. You could even find yourself in trouble for saying out loud things like: “Gee, I wish there was peace in the Middle East.”

Although Concordia students, the university’s staff, faculty and administration voted to lift the moratorium, the Board of Governors, all corporate appointees dancing the jig of corporate donors, overruled. For several weeks, all was quiet on campus. This university, which is reputed to have the most militant student body in Canada, was cowed by fear of reprisals for anything they might do, even inadvertently, that would violate this moratorium. The repercussions could include expulsion from the university.

Still, the issue is one of free speech which is usually thought to be our most basic democratic right. Sometimes that causes discomfort and conflict but there is never a reason to suppress it. A university in Canada is a public institution and it is supposed to encourage the dissemination of ideas, of thoughts, of knowledge. While the desire of the school to keep the peace is understandable and admirable, their 2002 moratorium was asinine. If you are a Tamil student, it is perfectly acceptable for you to advocate loudly and often for the overthrow of the Sri Lankan government but no one is allowed to advocate for a peaceful resolution to the Middle East conflict.

In 2002, our three speakers managed to get themselves heard. They simply convened on the street in front of the University, on public property, and told the university to pound salt. Unfortunately, the message they had wanted to convey in the first place, peace in the Middle East and that kind of stuff, got lost because most of the sidewalk event was taken up with protesting the moratorium and the injunction.

In 2004, Ehud Barak may get to state his views in some corner where he won’t bother anyone and where he won’t be available for praise and blame for his words. But he won’t get to do it in this institution of higher learning. Thank God they know how to deal with tolerance and freedom of speech at Concordia.