By: Sam Heaton 

Human Rights Professor Bill Skidmore Speaks on Feb. 4 Credit: Sam Heaton
Human Rights Professor Bill Skidmore Speaks on Feb. 4
Credit: Sam Heaton

Student and faculty activists for Palestinian human rights have long felt unfairly targeted by Carleton University senior management.

From the banning of an Israeli Apartheid Week poster in 2009 to treating pro-Palestine activism as a security issue, Carleton’s behaviour amounts to what two groups call attempts to stifle critical discussion about Israel/Palestine on campus.

On Feb. 4, Students Against Israeli Apartheid (SAIA) Carleton and Faculty for Palestine (F4P) Carleton presented publicly for the first time evidence of Carleton senior management and pro-Israel campaigners interfering in academic and extracurricular debate on Palestinian human rights.

Speaking to a standing-room only audience in Dunton Tower, MA student Dax D’Orazio of SAIA and human rights professor Bill Skidmore of F4P recounted their experiences in the classroom and organizing events on Palestine.

D’Orazio explained how the pro-Israel Hillel Ottawa targeted SAIA’s first event, called “Israeli Crimes, Canadian Complicity.” Correspondence obtained by freedom of information requests show that the group complained to Carleton senior management that due to “incendiary language” the event could “get out of control.”

Without citing any specific concerns, Hillel demanded increased protection for the safety of students at the event, and argued that by holding the event Carleton was “entering uncharted waters.”

In response, Carleton senior management issued a campus-wide e-mail about the event, increased the security and police presence, and repeatedly clarified that it did not sponsor or endorse the event.

D’Orazio found this overreaction negatively impacted campus discourse. Despite what he called agreement by mainstream human rights organizations on the facts of Israeli rights abuses, many professors simply would not discuss the topic in class out of fear.

“On the substantive issues of the Israel-Palestine conflict,” he said, “there is in fact little controversy… The controversy is simply manufactured in an attempt to obfuscate and frustrate the attempts to discuss Palestinian human rights on campus.”

The event, he said, detailed the creation of a campus narrative whereby Palestinian human rights activists are represented as being aggressive, borderline anti-Semites who contribute to a poisoned, confrontational environment.

Carleton senior management then takes up this narrative without question, including what D’Orazio calls “the core conflation, that criticism of Israel inevitably leads to Jewish and pro-Israel students feeling attacked, unwelcome, intimidated, etc.”

The 2009 banning of an Israeli Apartheid Week poster at Carleton came after pro-Israel groups took out full-page ads in the National Post declaring the week an “anti-Semitic hate-fest.”

D’Orazio also detailed repeated instances of vandalism, harassment and assault against SAIA materials and members, which he said were not considered serious by Carleton senior management.

Skidmore, on the other hand, provided evidence for what he called “a small part” of the intimidation efforts against himself and others at Carleton who discuss Palestinian human rights.

According to Skidmore, there is a double standard on Israeli-Palestinian issues in the classroom. After a Palestinian woman was invited to speak during one of his lectures, Skidmore was confronted by a student afterwards who complained that students had “actually believed” what the speaker said.

At the same time, Hillel was able to arrange a direct meeting between the student and the university Provost. Internal correspondence revealed that an “alternative evaluation” of Skidmore by the student was discussed at the meeting, something that would violate Skidmore’s collective agreement as a professor.

In another case, a Hillel member told the Carleton Provost, the university’s chief academic advisor,  that biased information was being provided in Skidmore’s class, that Skidmore had “publicly criticized” the student’s comments, and had “at no time spoke up to make the space safe for all opinions to be presented.”

Skidmore contradicted the claim and noted that he recorded the lecture in question. Of the thousands of students he has taught over the years, Skidmore said no one spoke more openly or frequently than the student who made the complaint.

“I made sure he got to respond to every comment made by the guest speaker or other students. In effect, I moved him to the front of the speaker’s list almost every time.”

Eventually, fellow students became upset with the student due to his repeated questioning of the speaker, who Skidmore says was a Palestinian “with direct experience of the issues being addressed.”

At that point, Skidmore says he did intervene to “emphatically” remind the class to listen respectfully to one another, including those whose views they disagreed with.

Despite this, affiliates of the Ottawa Israeli Awareness Committee, a pro-Israel group, have casually equated Skidmore’s lectures to anti-Semitic attacks, and alleged that those who write pro-Israel papers receive lower grades than others.

“We have a situation at Carleton where professors who speak about the violation of Palestinian human rights run the risk of being victimized by false accusations,” said Skidmore.

D’Orazio also noted that he is enrolled in a graduate level class taught by the former Canadian Ambassador to Israel. “I would consider him to be biased, if you want to use that term,” he said, “but it never crossed my mind that I could possibly get a lower mark because I wrote a critical paper contrary to his personal views.

“I actually would love to have a professor that I completely disagree with,” said D’orazio. “I think that having a professor that disagrees with me politically can be more fruitful… you should be challenged, you should feel uncomfortable – it’s part of university.”

This article was first published in The Leveller Vol. 6, No. 5 (Feb/Mar 2014).