McGill University in Montreal said on Thursday that an escalation of security issues and violence left it with no choice but to order the dismantlement of the pro-Palestinian Arab encampment that had been on its downtown campus for two and a half months, The Montreal Gazette reported.
Any future encampments will be dealt with “swiftly,” and McGill students who participated in the encampment will face penalties that could include expulsion, it said.
On Wednesday, Montreal police descended in large numbers to help clear the pro-Palestinian Arab encampment.
The police officers were aiding a private security firm hired by McGill which moved in during the pre-dawn hours on Wednesday with excavators, dump trucks and security personnel to tear down the encampment.
One protester was arrested and charged with assaulting a security guard during the dismantling operation, according to The Montreal Gazette.
McGill president Deep Saini called the encampment “a heavily fortified focal point for intimidation and violence, organized largely by individuals who are not part of our university community.”
“There were acts of intimidation, harassment, damage to property, occupations of university buildings, clashes with the police and an assault on one of our security guards,” Fabrice Labeau, vice-president of administration and finance for McGill University, told The Montreal Gazette.
Labeau said McGill had tried all possible options, including asking Montreal police to remove the protesters, which they refused to do; filing for an emergency legal injunction to have the protesters removed, which was rejected by a Quebec Superior Court judge; and negotiating with the protesters, which Labeau said went nowhere because they refused “to move an inch.”
Ultimately, the university imposed its legal right “for the owner of a private property to require individuals who set up camp on their private property to leave,” Labeau said.
Demonstrators on Wednesday denied McGill’s claims the camp was infested with rats and had visible unsanitary conditions, calling them “baseless” and part of McGill’s “smear campaign.” They added that the university never negotiated in good faith.
Similar anti-Israel encampments have been set up on campuses across the US and Canada.
Last week, pro-Palestinian Arab protesters who had been occupying King's College Circle on the University of Toronto (U of T) campus for more than 60 days cleared the encampment.
On Wednesday, the University of Windsor, in southwestern Ontario, reached an agreement with anti-Israel protesters on campus, raising the ire of Canadian Jewish groups who said the agreement capitulated to the demands of the protesters.
McGill University has been in the headlines in the past due to antisemitism. In 2017, the then-director of the Student Society at McGill (SSMU), Igor Sadikov, tweeted the words “punch a Zionist today”.
Sadikov later resigned from his post as director of the Students' Society of McGill University, even after the Arts Undergraduate Society at McGill had voted by a majority of 22-16 not to impeach him.
In 2019, the SSMU Legislative Council voted to remove a Jewish student from the SSMU Board of Directors simply because she was planning on participating on a Hillel Montreal trip to Israel.
McGill’s administration later sided with the Jewish student, saying that the SSMU's decision fostered “a culture of ostracization” and that it is “contrary to the university's values of inclusion, diversity and respect.”