McGill president smears students while ignoring genocide

Wealthy donors, a well-organized outside lobby and an empowered victimhood narrative ensures McGill’s president promotes genocide. With students expressing their overwhelming support for divestment through referendums, rallies, petitions, a hunger strike and 75-day encampment Deep Saini recently claimed those opposing Israel’s holocaust in Gaza are “a small group” causing difficulty for “the majority”.

In a highly provocative move for a university president presenting himself as neutral, President Saini participated in a recent town hall with the most vocal advocate of Israeli violence in the House of Commons. A Canadian Jewish News report on an event Liberal MP Anthony Housefather billed as a discussion about Jewish students and faculty’s “safe return to campus”, quoted Saini smearing McGill students. “It’s very hard to tell whether the antisemitism went up or it became more overt,” Saini told the pro-genocide event. “Did we actually see a rise in antisemitism? Or did we see people using this moment, forum these circumstances, to give themselves a license to express antisemitism?”

The head of the prestigious university also labeled those opposed to the genocide as a small minority. “It was a stark example of how a small group of determined people can create an extremely difficult situation for the majority that remains relatively quiet and ends up becoming a victim,” Saini said.

President Saini threatened professors over any “abuse of podium.” “Nobody would be allowed to abuse their position to make a (political or hateful) statement”, Saini declared. He even asked Jewish Zionist students to spy on professors, reportedly “calling on Jewish students to be the ears on the ground and report any breaches of conduct.”

Keen to dispatch police against student protesters, Saini doesn’t believe those promoting a holocaust should feel uncomfortable. “Nobody is going to be now excluded from or made to feel uncomfortable in class because they are a Zionist and support Israel,” concluded Saini.

Days before Saini’s provocative comments to ‘Holocaust Housefather’ he physically confronted a student challenging him over employing police and private security to repress students opposing Israel’s holocaust in Gaza. In a video posted online a visibly agitated Saini grabs at a student and is physically restrained by one of his people. In its post of the video Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights McGill notes, “instead of listening to his student’s concerns, Saini decided to do what he does best: forcefully silence the student.”

The McGill administration’s response to the student encampment on campus was to repeatedly ask the Montréal police to intervene even seeking a court ruling to force the police to do so. After the court rejected their bid for an emergency injunction the McGill administration hired private security firm SIRCO to dismantle an encampment calling for the university to cut ties with Israeli universities and companies assisting the slaughter in Gaza. In a bit of a legalistic dance, hundreds of police, including the provincial Sûreté du Québec, assisted the operation to remove the encampment on its lower field, which is unused, but well situated in downtown Montréal.

A few weeks after the July 10 dismantlement of the encampment, Saini published a Montreal Gazette op-ed headlined “As McGill’s president, I have a duty to all students, no matter their views”. In it, Saini rejects call for divesting since all students don’t agree on the matter. That’s true, of course. Left unstated, however, is how lopsided opinion is. In the largest referendum turnout in the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) history, 78.7% of undergraduates called on the administration to sever ties with “any corporations, institutions or individuals complicit in genocide, settler-colonialism, apartheid, or ethnic cleansing against Palestinians.” The November vote followed a March 2022 vote that supported boycotting “corporations and institutions complicit in settler-colonial apartheid against Palestinians.” Seventy-one percent of undergraduate voters backed that motion.

As Israeli violence has grown since November, opinion has likely strengthened in favor of lessening McGill’s complicity in genocide and apartheid. But, if Saini believes the anti-holocaust forces are just “a small group”, there’s a simple way to settle the matter: Organize a referendum in which every McGill undergraduate, graduate, faculty and staff can vote. Saini could even require a super majority — say 55%, 60%, or two thirds — for a divestment motion to take effect. But Saini won’t organize such a vote because he knows students support divestment and he’s actually fronting for a “small group.”

There are important geopolitical and cultural factors that influence Canadian support for Israel and help explain Saini’s hostility to divesting, as the university recently did with fossil fuels and Russia. But the most pressing element is a remarkably empowered victim narrative. 

“Jews at McGill: ‘We feel alone’”, blared the cover of Saturday’s National Post, linking to a two-page spread that included the spurious claim students organized a “Kristallnacht-themed rally” in November. (73 Postmedia outlets reportedly ran the story). The New York based Jewish Forward published a similar commentary headlined “For Jewish students at McGill like me, our return to campus is filled with dread”.

But structurally speaking Jewish (Zionist) students may be the most ‘un-alone’ group at the university. Jews are far overrepresented as students and faculty at Canada’s most internationally acclaimed university and are well represented throughout McGill. . There is a well-financed Hillel and Chabad as well as McGill Jewish Law Students’ Association, Medicine and Dentistry Jewish Association, and Jewish Frosh. Zionist-aligned Jewish students are assisted by international campus organizations such as CAMERA, Hasbara Fellowship Canada, and StandWithUs Canada. They are also supported financially and otherwise by powerful outside lobby groups such as B’nai Brith, Friends of Simon Wiesenthal, Montreal’s Federation CJA and the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs. A slew of outside media outlets such as Algemeiner, Suburban, Times of Israel, National Post, Montreal Gazette, Forward, and others regularly publish commentaries from McGill students who complain about the university and support genocide. In addtion, the university has a Department of Jewish Studies and Jewish Teacher Training Program. McGill also has multiple exchanges with Israeli institutions, which were mostly instigated by Jewish Zionist donors.

Still, the victimhood narrative is overwhelming. So even if Saini didn’t support a global power structure that cares little for Palestinian life he’d be loath to face the wrath of Zionist donors, outside Israeli lobby groups, and the prevailing victim narrative.

What will it take for the majority to break this stranglehold? Certainly, the North America wide day of student action like the one planned for September 12 won’t hurt. But something bigger like the Quebec-wide student strike that’s been discussed, is more likely to turn the tide.

On Friday McGill students organized a walkout and some ripped up the grass where the encampment was demolished. Those who see little problem with destroying everything in Gaza were outraged grass had been damaged.

If you refuse to respond to all democratic and pacifistic means of political expression you have to expect escalation, notably while Palestinians continue to be slaughtered. Saini is setting the stage for an explosion and it’s on him and his enablers if things deteriorate.