Thus, the Superior Court this week rejected a request for an injunction presented by McGill University aimed at ordering the dismantling of the pro-Palestinian encampment installed on its land since the end of April. For almost a month now, remember, students have been carrying out a peaceful occupation to demand that the University cut off its academic and financial ties with Israel. The action is part of the international movement of occupation on university campuses, in solidarity with Palestine.
The rejection of McGill’s request follows the rejection, two weeks ago, of another request for an injunction, presented by two students who alleged that the encampment and demonstrations in support of Palestine created a hostile climate on the campus. The Superior Court concluded that the evidence presented did not demonstrate that the demonstrations had created such a climate nor that the students at the origin of the request had personally been targeted by gestures and words that could make them fear for their safety.
This time, therefore, it was the University itself which was growing impatient, annoyed by the persistence of a peaceful occupation on a small portion of its land, facing Sherbrooke Street. This is because the cluster of tents, you see, occupies the space normally used for convocation and end-of-school-year ceremonies. Annoying not to be able to use this land to rejoice and celebrate quietly — while, for seven months, bombs have been raining down on Gaza.
In a message sent on May 10 to the alumni community and “friends” of the institution, McGill President Deep Saini announced that the University had gone to court to obtain an order that would force the dismantling of the camp.
The text, a meticulously prepared public relations exercise, began by mentioning “the events” of May 2 on campus. Events “having required the mobilization of police forces, which defused the tension which remained on either side of the Roddick portal due to the gathering of a large number of demonstrators and counter-protesters”, it was underlined .
We understand the need to emphasize the charged, frightening nature of the situation, but these famous demonstrations of May 2, this face-to-face between the occupiers and pro-Israeli demonstrators gathered in front of the Roddick gate, were actually took place peacefully. The police officers deployed on the scene simply formed a line between the occupiers and the counter-protesters and made no arrests.
The moment was certainly tense, charged, but at no time did the participants in the camp let themselves be carried away by what had all the makings of a provocation. No offense to McGill, who is splitting hairs to find signs of imminent slippage: the exercise of the right to freedom of expression and assembly includes unpleasant, tense moments. Political friction is normal and desirable in a democratic society.
Furthermore, there are great lessons to be learned from the calm and self-control demonstrated by pro-Palestinian occupiers on campuses around the world. Their activist know-how is remarkable. Despite the provocations, the threats, the violent police repression observed in certain camps, notably at Columbia and UCLA, the occupants do not flinch, do not change their attitude. They stick to the message (immediate divestment) and the code of conduct (peacefully occupy).
The Superior Court was not convinced by the arguments presented by McGill to classify the occupations as illegal and to create the impression of an imminent threat to security on campus. Judge Marc St-Pierre stuck to the facts: no serious incident has been reported at the occupation site since the installation of the first tents on April 27. He concludes, in a tone that one can guess is irritated, that even if the University insists on the security risks, the court does not issue an injunction order “as a preventive measure, in case something purely hypothetical happens in the future “.
If this decision is reassuring for the state of freedom of expression and the right to demonstrate, the University’s conduct in this matter is much less so. It tells us something very ugly about the state of university establishments, which do not hesitate to take legal action and deliver their own students to police repression.
We saw it in the United States, but in Canada too: we think of the implacable attitude of the University of Alberta towards its own camps, which were violently dispersed by the police even though it was not There was not a shadow of a slippage on the horizon. Here, McGill beats around the bush, does not make an immediate physical threat, but still turns to the courts and casts pleading looks at the SPVM. The police themselves said it in Superior Court this week during the hearing on the injunction order: they will only intervene if they deem it necessary. It is not up to the University, nor the Prime Minister for that matter, to dictate police conduct.
This says everything we need to know about the neoliberal university: it focuses on its “outreach” while despising the members of its community, it boasts everywhere of its “excellence” by repressing peaceful demonstrations on its grounds. Even the most careful public relations exercises will not succeed in hiding the face that is being revealed these days.