Quebec Minister of Higher Education Pascale Déry has recently come under fire for her interference in course content at Dawson College, where she demanded that a French language course about Palestinian literature avoid sensitive topics. Shortly after, Déry made a similar intervention in a Palestinian literature course at Vanier College. The minister justified these investigations by claiming that the content was “explosive” and that students deserve a “healthy and safe” environment. Déry’s interventions are not unlike McGill’s own actions towards rejecting discussion of Palestine in classrooms, the exclusion of the word “Palestine” or “genocide” in the university’s email communications with the student body, and the Post Graduate Students’ Society (PGSS)’s removal of words such as “Gaza” and “genocide” from their motions of solidarity with Palestine.
Stifling discussion of Israel’s genocide in Gaza—or any other major geopolitical crisis—dismisses the lived realities of those involved, stunts positive change, and enables educational institutions to remain passive in their own contribution to acts of violence around the world. Suppressing conversation, especially that which is the most contentious and the most uncomfortable, heightens tensions and propagates misinformation.
Israel’s genocide in Gaza touches so many students in traumatic and deeply distressing ways, and the university setting is uniquely equipped to facilitate discussion around it in a respectful and informed space. As experts and professionals, university professors can act as knowledgeable mediators and encourage evidence-based dialogue in their students. In this way, not only is open discussion of weighty subjects itself destigmatized, but students are open to learning from one another instead of festering in repressed feelings and unspoken polarized conflict.
Geopolitical tensions do not cease to exist if a university chooses not to talk about them. Such silence sends the message that the lives affected by and lost to these injustices are not worth addressing in the classroom, thus enabling a false sense of detachment from those realities. McGill itself is instrumental in the genocide, as it continues to invest over $70 million CAD in more than 50 companies complicit in upholding Israel’s apartheid regime. The symbolic weight of these investments is greater than their monetary value; McGill is a world-class institution of higher education, whose actions set a precedent for other educational institutions in Canada and abroad.
Suppression of uncomfortable discussion not only pacifies past violence, but reproduces it. After an unidentified group in support of Palestine broke windows in McGill’s Leacock Building in February, President and Vice-Chancellor Deep Saini sent a message to students classifying these protestors as threats to students though no one was harmed. His message ignored the purpose of the protest entirely, instead criminalizing the pro-Palestine cause. This rhetorical tactic imbues reductive biases into the discussion of the genocide in Gaza, while simultaneously villainizing protest—by students or otherwise—and discouraging future action. It is in this fear-mongering environment, where certain causes are hand-picked as acceptable or not based on their convenience for the university, where polarizing narratives and heightened tension are encouraged in place of constructive dialogue and progress.
McGill’s student body and faculty must continue to hold the university accountable for its ongoing complicity in violence and its suppression of crucial discussion. McGill and its student body must also show consistent and energetic solidarity with Dawson College, Vanier College, and the entire CEGEP system, where the grassroots of student activism in Quebec is growing.
Ultimately, amidst censorship, suppression, and polarizing curation, it is critical that each of us individually continue to have uncomfortable conversations, both to educate others and to learn from others with an open mind. This could be with friends, family, classmates, or professors, but it must continue. We, as students, must challenge our professors when a syllabus is devoid of Palestinian, women, 2SLGBTQ+, BIPOC voices, and professors—especially those protected by tenure—must encourage and facilitate uncomfortable conversations. The power of individuals and their communal discourses in the fight against suppression is immense—neither the administration nor the McGill community can forget it.
