by Harvey Oberfeld
January 22, 2024
They sign up for the minimum number of courses (sometimes as few as two to qualify as “full time” students) … and then spend their days pushing foreign agendas, organizing anti-Israel propaganda “exhibits”, rallies, sit-ins and protests, fomenting dissent and intimidating/harassing other students they view as the enemy.
It HAS already happened here, at a Canadian university, I’m informed by a highly reliable source, a university professor, who taught there for many years.
And if a major, well funded, propagandization effort has occurred at one “higher level” Canadian university, does anyone really believe it is not also taking place on other campuses across the country?
College/university campuses in Canada have become, not places of civilized dialogue of alternative views and perspectives, where sharing and proposing differing ideas for resolution of conflicts are promoted/respected … but instead, centers of intolerance, intimidation, hate and even violence.
“Montreal police say a 22-year-old student was arrested Wednesday after allegedly assaulting a 54-year-old security guard at Concordia University during a violent altercation involving several people who align with opposing sides of the conflict in Israel and Gaza,” the CBC reported just a few weeks ago.
“A second security guard,19, and another student, 23, were injured by assaults during the altercation. All three people suffered non-life-threatening injuries and were not transported to hospital.”
(Read the entire story here: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/concordia-unversity-altercation-montreal-1.7023019.
Ironically, this happened at my own alma mater, Concordia University in Montreal, outside the Henry F Hall Building … the construction of which, as a student journalist, I reported on for The Georgian university newspaper (sporting my hard hat and detailing progress on the work site as the building went up) , while I was a Political Science (BA) student at the university.
Of course, we had our own student/activist issues at the time ( Viet Nam War, Expo 67 funding/hiring practices, and, a hot one, whether our university should join the separatist-sympathizing Union General des Etudiants de Quebec etc.) and I recall many protests/discussions/debates on campus … but NEVER was overt hate spewed, opponents’ heads cracked, opposing students harassed or spat upon on their way to classes … or campus security officers assaulted!
Sadly, the recent Concordia hate fest/violence is NOT an isolated incident.
At McGill University, many “students” there also spend much of their time organizing and pushing a one-sided anti-Israel agenda and propagandizing the student body … and it worked!
It took a Court Injunction to stop a disgracefully, one-sided Student Union policy resolution that called on McGill “to cut ties with people, corporations and institutions that are “complicit in genocide, settler-colonialism, apartheid, or ethnic cleansing against Palestinians.”
Where exactly does that fit in the curricula of “students” pursuing Degrees in Medicine, Commerce, Science or the Arts? Looks to me like just another invasion/occupation of a higher-learning campus by extremists … there more to push extremist Palestinian propaganda/hate than study/graduate … or even advocate/propose reasonable dialogue/solutions to solve the decades-long dispute.
And do the Student Union organizers who just parrot/support the totally one-sided, biased anti-Israel diatribes on campus sound ready, mature or educated enough to hold open, even-handed consideration of world conflicts or solutions?
They disgrace McGill University.
And unfortunately, they are part of an intellectual decline of critical thought and unbiased analysis at too many of our once respected institutions of higher learning and academic integrity.
Too many university students today, unquestioningly buying into so much of what they are being fed by these activist student propagandists and extreme left professors too … remind me of those mini Maos decades ago, waving their little red books … totally abandoning independent, critical thought, preferring instead to just attack/shame others with differing points of view.
On October 25, with the blood of the 1,200 Israelis slaughtered, raped, maimed by Hamas not yet cleaned up, thousands of university students from Concordia, McGill, Universite de Montreal, Universite de Quebec and Montreal’s Dawson College staged a Walkout for Palestinian Solidarity, disrupting classes on campuses, with anti-Israel (not anti-terrorist!) protests, speeches and sit-ins.
(You can read the full story here: https://thelinknewspaper.ca/article/concordia-students-stage-walkout-for-palestinian-solidarity.
The University of British Columbia and Simon Fraser University have also been a source of intellectually-shallow, history-ignoring pro-Palestinian propaganda (the usual totally one-sided spin pushed by ultra far left Israel-haters).
No higher learning, conflict resolution expertise or critical thinking there these days!
And the administrations’ weak response, in my opinion, shamed both of them … and British Columbia as well.
What has been going on across Canada on university campuses is too well-organized, too well co-ordinated, too-well funded, in my view, to be just spontaneous or even solely the results of “student” activism.
I believe something is amiss … Canada is being “played” by more foreign agents/pressure tactics than just those well-publicized ones from China.
In the last two years, we’ve opened our doors wide to them … disguised as “students”.
In 2019, Canada welcomed 637,855 foreign students; in 2022, more than 807,000 came; and, last year, a whopping 1,028,850 … and, interestingly, Stats Canada estimates almost 20% of those NEVER enrolled in classes!
Most of the absconders are likely just here to work, make money and, although breaking the rules, are no threat to Canadian security or our democratic ways.
But I suspect at least some of them … sent and funded by Arab dictators or even Islamic third-party organizations … are here for more nefarious reasons: as activist agents pushing their governments’ or sponsors’ interests, organizing deliberately anti-Israel protests, exhibits, actions on campuses or worse, even carrying out or encouraging anti-Semitic incidents to create fear/division/conflict in our society .
It’s time to find out if those … on and off campuses … behind the radical disruptions we have witnessed at our universities, are funded or advised/encouraged/assisted in any way from overseas.
The Canadian Security Intelligence Service should investigate:
*Have any of the foreign “students” been sent/funded by governments or organizations overseas to push their agendas on Canadian university campuses?
*Are any foreign “students” working on campuses to undermine our democratic principles, our traditions of tolerance and respect for others?
*Are any of those organizing/participating in campus rallies, protests, also deliberately pushing hate, intimidation and even violence?
*What roles are extremist, activist university/college professors/lecturers/staff members playing to promulgate their own personal biases/beliefs/ideologies … and intimidate/stifle and even eliminate students/professors/staff who have differing views?
*And, are any of those above … especially foreign students … active in fomenting the scourge of anti-Semitism that has spread like a cancer on so many Canadian campuses?
Spineless campus administrators, sympathetic university activist professors and weak federal and provincial government and educational officials (elected and appointed) have not only given extremist “students” free range to organize their hate campaigns on campuses for decades, they’ve encouraged it by doing little or nothing to stop/get rid of those behind it all.
What we are now witnessing on Canadian campuses does not bode well for the intellectual future of our nation.
