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Abstract
Rather than the exception to an otherwise progressive intellectual environment in North American, and specifically Canadian universities, the suppression of speech related to Palestine reveals the racial limits of a settler-colonial liberal politics of acknowledgment and reconciliation. The mainstream or institutional conceptualisation of academic freedom does not address the structural racism and settler-colonial realities within which Canadian universities are embedded, rendering them as ‘natural’ allies for Israeli institutions and state practices. A complicated, if revealing, moment of exposure of the limits of the liberal script of reconciliation is the land acknowledgment, which has become, since October 2023, an opportunity grasped by some critical scholars to acknowledge the links between the ongoing genocide in Palestine and settler colonialism across Turtle Island. Tracing the oppositional functions of the land acknowledgment, this article exposes the political limits of a liberal racial order, which is explicitly challenged by expressions of solidarity with the Palestinian struggle for liberation.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 See National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation: https://nctr.ca/records/reports/#trc-reports (accessed April 24, 2024). While not institutionalised in the same way, the land acknowledgment is becoming increasingly more commonplace at universities in the US as well.
2 The University of British Columbia, for instance, in concert with the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT), recommends particular formulations of the land acknowledgment, all of which include the word “unceded” in reference to Indigenous lands.
3 Whilst the legal determination of whether Israel has and is committing genocide at the ICJ is some years off, I concur with the opinion of genocide scholars who have found that Israel’s actions constitute a textbook case of genocide. See (Segal Citation2023); and see also for a critical discussion on this issue (Samudzi Citation2024).
4 As Eyal noted in his sardonic if grimly titled piece “Exchange Rate” (Weizman Citation2023), Hamas and other militants breached a sophisticated and complex security apparatus, and attacked what Israel has called its “frontier settlements” which have been built on the Palestinian villages destroyed in 1948.
5 See, for just a few of many examples, the treatment of law students at the Toronto Metropolitan University’s Lincoln Law School after signing a petition to the law school administration (Sealy-Harrington Citation2024); the repression of medical staff and students across Canada (Basu Citation2024); and the policing of a Palestinian-Canadian academic at York University while giving a guest lecture (Ayyash Citation2024).
6 See UBC’s policy on academic freedom here: https://vancouver.calendar.ubc.ca/campus-wide-policies-and-regulations/academic-freedom/introduction.
7 (Abu-Lughod Citation2020) explores the contradictions and pitfalls of using the settler-colonial framework in relation to Palestine in its current instantiations which at times, can render Palestinians as ‘Indigenous’ in ways that may not fully reflect the history of colonisation nor its past intellectual trajectories. She undertakes this exploration using the land acknowledgment as a focal point.
8 See for example, (SaidCitation1979) and in particular, the essay “Zionism from the Standpoint of its Victims” (56-115); (Makdisi Citation2022).
9 For a thorough analysis of Canada as a racial, colonial and imperial project see (Thobani Citation2007). Increasingly, this presumption of settler whiteness is being challenged. See (Mathur, Dewar, DeGagné Citation2011).
10 See (Gordon and Newfield Citation1996).
11 See (Tatour Citation2019), where she explores the perils of ‘indigenising’ Palestinian Bedouin identity as a form of cultural difference in the Israeli context.
12 South Africa presents oral arguments at the ICJ, Feb 2024, in the case Legal Consequences arising from the Policies and Practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOQZ7zafDVc.
13 For example, see the webinars organised by the Decolonise Palestine Teach-In collective, some of which available here: https://www.thesocialjusticecentre.org/decolonise-palestine.
14 There were of course, also many tensions. (Nayar Citation2012) maps some of the shifts in relations between Punjabi immigrants to British Columbia and First Nations.
15 The Komagata Maru was a ship whose passengers defied the Continuous Journey regulations that sought to limit immigration to Canada from India in 1914. The ship and its passengers were denied entry to Canada, and eventually had to return to India, after enduring months of hardship. See (D. Bhandar et al. Citation2020).
18 On the responsibility that attaches to the act of bearing witness see (Qutami Citation2023).
19 Many scholars have explored this similitude, see for instance (Abdo Citation2023); and generally, (Wills et al. Citation2022).
20 The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of anti-semitism can be found here: https://holocaustremembrance.com/resources/working-definition-antisemitism.
22 While the webinar recording has since been ‘private’ on the B’nai Brith website, a fulsome description of events and links to media reporting on the incident can be found here, at the ‘Sack Selina’ website: https://sackselina.ca/.
23 CAUT letter demanding Robinson’s resignation, along with the Federation of Post-Secondary Educators of British Columbia (FPSE-BC), for ministerial interference in university administration regarding employment matters, 1 February 2024: https://www.caut.ca/latest/2024/02/caut-calls-bc-ministers-resignation-over-political-interference.
24 Natalie Knight was first suspended for comments she made at a demonstration, then reinstated, and then finally fired (Little Citation2024).
25 B’nai Brith website: https://www.bnaibrith.ca/eventssa/an-evening-with-our-jewish-public-officials/.
26 When Palestinians seek justice in Israeli courts, they are also confined to using the settler colonial legal system; in spite of this, as with First Nations in Canada, they do so in order to stave off the worst aspects of colonial dispossession and as one part of a much larger struggle for decolonisation.
27 Arthur Manuel remarks on how the provincial Native Youth Society he worked with in Alberta in the early 1970s received funding from B’nai Brith. See (Manuel and Derrickson Citation2015, 37).
28 Faculty who objected to my hiring at Allard Law Faculty based on my work on Palestine and my support for BDS stated that they would feel “unsafe” in my presence, were I to be hired. These claims have appeared in the bureaucratic paper trail dealing with the fallout from my hire. For details, please contact the author.
29 This is a derivation from (Rothberg Citation2009, 3), where he argues against the idea of collective memory as competitive memory and suggests “that we consider memory as multidirectional: as subject to ongoing negotiation, cross-referencing, and borrowing: as productive and not privative.”.
30 In light of the above discussion, we can note here that Darwish’s poetry has been banned at various times in Israeli schools; and as recently as 2016 far-Right politician, Avigdor Lieberman, who was then Defence Minister, called his poems “fuel for terror attack.’” (Skop Citation2016).