Last spring’s anti-Israel encampments on university campuses across Ontario forced Jewish students, faculty and staff to navigate a climate of hostility. These protests, often framed as calls for justice, frequently gave way to exclusionary rhetoric and the vilification of Zionists (Jews). The calls for universities to divest from Israel were not simply about foreign policy — they were part of a wider campaign to delegitimize Jewish identity on campus.
In an effort to bring down the temperature, many university administrators agreed to undertake a review of their investment policies. Those deliberations have been ongoing since the fall. Now, in a welcome and principled development, several of Ontario’s leading universities have formally rejected the idea of divesting from Israeli companies and those that that do business with Israel.
Queen’s University, McMaster University and the University of Waterloo have each undertaken their own reviews of investment policies and found that divestment demands were lacking in both substance and fairness. These decisions mark not just a defence of academic freedom, but a decisive stand against the antisemitism that too often animates the BDS movement.
At Queen’s University, principal Patrick Deane’s review committee for responsible investing “recommended against divesting Queen’s pooled endowment and investment funds from companies conducting business with or in the State of Israel.” At McMaster, the university reaffirmed that investment decisions must be grounded in financial responsibility — not ideological pressure.
And last year, administrators at the University of Waterloo stated that, “The call to boycott, divest and sanction universities from one country is antithetical to our mission,” and that Waterloo “has not supported movements to unilaterally divest or boycott from any country or company outside of national security concerns or without guidance or direction from government.”
Each of these statements, while couched in careful administrative language, reflects a broader recognition that the BDS movement has contributed to an increasingly unsafe and exclusionary environment for Jewish students, and that it is contrary to core Canadian values.
On many campuses, BDS campaigns have been accompanied by calls to silence Jewish or Israeli speakers, exclude Jewish campus organizations and disrupt events and university business with chants equating Zionism with racism or genocide. In some cases, Jewish students who express support for Israel are harassed, shouted down or accused of complicity in war crimes.
This is not theoretical. In fact, just last month, a young man from Waterloo, Ont., was arrested and charged with uttering threats to cause death or bodily harm after he allegedly sent more than 100 antisemitic death threats through an online form on Hillel Ontario’s website.
Let’s be clear: targeting the world’s only Jewish state for economic punishment — especially while ignoring or excusing the abuses of countless other nations — is not a principled stand for justice. It is a selective, obsessive hostility that crosses the line into bigotry.
The campaign to isolate Israel in academic, economic and cultural arenas is not merely a misguided protest, it is a modern manifestation of Jew-hatred, repackaged for unsuspecting audiences.
The Ontario universities that have rejected calls to divest from Israel represents yet another public rebuff of the antisemitic BDS movement.
National Post
Jay Solomon is the chief advancement officer for Hillel Ontario.
