The Jew-Baiting Islamists at Canadian Universities

"[University campuses] are the places where there's been an ideological picture that incorporates anti-Zionism into the fold, so it emerges from -- I think it's driven by -- a lot of faculty who have very strong ideological positions on this stuff."

"We're [Network of Engaged Canadian Academics [NECA] 400 members across 53 campuses concerned about the safety of Jewish faculty and students and staff and combating antisemitism."

"[What's going on in campuses across the country is] really taking us away from the things that a university is supposed to be about."

"Basically, what we find is there are two groups of faculty; those who have experienced no antisemitism or very low, and those who have experienced really high levels."

"It seems to work through feeling that you have to support yourself, your Jewish identity; that you're vulnerable, and that you're  betrayed by your institutions, and your colleagues."

"In a very strategic and intentional way our universities are being used as a source of ideological propaganda. And there are bad actors who we know are doing that. [It makes sense if you are trying to get some] intellectual ideological capture; [ focus on university campuses -- where you have the most academic freedom]."

Carey Kogan, psychology professor, University of Ottawa

B'nai Brith

 

Professor Kogan co-founded the Network of Engaged Canadian Academics in 2022. He did so because even before the atrocity of Palestinian terrorists led by Hamas slaughtering 1,200 Israelis and taking another 240 as captives for barter back to Gaza, unleashing a storm of antisemitic vitriol against Jews in Canada by a number of Palestinian student 'activist' groups, the Jew-hating atmosphere in  Canadian universities was beginning to sear the lives of Jewish students and academics.

 

Following the barbarism of 7 October 2023, incitements to discrimination against Jews took to the streets of Canadian cities and on university campuses where tent cities sprang up with students as well as outsiders garbed in keffiyehs and masks harassing Jewish students, barring entry to their classes, chorusing epithets against Zionism, and chanting 'from the river to the sea Palestine will be free!' ad nauseum, while demanding that university administrations boycott Israeli academics and divest university investments from any links with Israel.

 

Jews, points out Professor Kogan, represent a mere one percent of the Canadian population yet 70 percent of religious-motivated hate crimes target Jews in Canada. Jews are 25 times likelier to experience a hate crime than anyone from within the general population. "We need to move to action, where people are taking a stand, being vocal about this. We can have people talking about, even protesting war. That's fine. We can have people asking for rights for Palestinians. Absolutely fine. But we can't have this kind of identity-based hate movement being taught in classrooms, being propagated through motions at university, faculty unions, student unions and all of that".

 

The Network of Engaged Canadian Academics Dr. Kogan is part of represents a defence against campaigns that target Canadian universities "with a high proportion of Jewish students and faculty, like the University of Toronto" or campuses where media attention is likely to be drawn for publicity. Canada has more than adequate laws to deal with these situations, but has yet to enforce those laws and rules. There is insufficient transparency on foreign donations to universities, there needs to be an improved collaboration with federal intelligence agencies in an era when leadership is wanting, not leading. 

Anti-Israel protesters march at McGill University on Oct. 7, 2025. Photo by Allen McInnis/Postmedia/File

 

"I mean, faculty were helping students with these encampments, helping students write these reports, make these statements, and I think there are unions, both student and faculty unions, supporting this ideological position. It became harder for certain leaders to actually make clear statements, and there was a double standard in terms of implementing policies, more than in any other minority group experience.The biggest or the most painful thing for Jewish students is the double standard. 

 

"They're avoiding campus, taking courses online, they're hiding their Jewish identity.  Their behaviour is changing as a function of the hostility. They won't talk about their opinions on things They're put on the spot asked to speak for the Israeli government, like absurd, absurd kinds of things that we would never see other minority groups be subjeted to."

 

Matters may yet escalate with ongoing negotiations with Hamas, and journalists reporting on the level of destruction in Gaza. Dr. Kogan points out that the entire area of Gaza was honeycombed with tunnels where underground military bunkers housed and protected Hamas operatives and weaponry. In bombing the tunnels and targeting Hamas terrorists, the Israel Defence Forces had little option, after instructing civilians to leave the areas before assaulting the structures, but to destroy the tunnels. 

 

Between January 1944 and 1945 the Royal Air Force and the U.S. air force conducted air raids over Germany where American planes alone made 744,000 sorties and dropped 1.4 million tons of bombs with inaccurate aerial bombing, dropping loads indiscriminately in and around major German cities. The result was Allied bombing that killed up to five hundred thousand German civilians. Allied raids destroyed between 4.5 and 5 million homes. How's that for perspective?

 

As for the level of institutionalized and casual Jew-hate, the former the result of an enormous intake of Muslims into Canada in the past several decades, the latter the always-present but generally underground antisemitism that always hovered in the air among the general Canadian population: "It's deep, it's structural, it's embedded, it's years old, it's informed by religion, it's informed by culture. And so it's not going away any time soon. But I think we can bring the temperature down, if we have strong leadership", ventured Professor Kogan. 

 

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