Crackdown on Palestine solidarity: what secret university networks reveal

Canadian Universities have long presented themselves as defenders of academic freedom, open debate and the right to challenge prevailing orthodoxies. Their response to Palestine solidarity since October 2023 has severely tested those commitments. A remarkable investigation published by the Canadian news website, The Breach, on July 30, suggests that what appeared to be a series of decisions by individual university administrations was accompanied by considerable behind-the-scenes coordination that deserves much greater public scrutiny.

Based on access-to-information records, The Breach reported that emergency-management officials from Canadian universities and colleges participated in a national network through which information concerning Palestine solidarity encampments and institutional responses was shared. The Canadian Post-Secondary Emergency Manager Network, hosted on a University of Toronto Microsoft SharePoint platform, eventually included representatives from approximately 30 institutions. A separate Alberta network brought together post-secondary emergency officials and, according to the investigation, also received information from police, and it included participation by an official from Alberta’s Ministry of Advanced Education.

The distinction matters. The Breach subsequently clarified that it was the Alberta network whose meetings included information conveyed by police and provincial officials. The national and Alberta networks were distinct, although their memberships overlapped. Even with that qualification, the reporting raises serious questions. Universities were exchanging information nationally about student political mobilization, while in Alberta, the boundaries between campus administration, policing and provincial government appear to have become considerably more porous.

There is nothing inherently improper about universities communicating with one another or preparing for genuine safety concerns. Administrators have a responsibility to protect students, faculty and property. What is troubling is the extent to which Palestine solidarity appears to have been approached as an emergency-management and security problem rather than political expression and assembly to be accommodated within university life.

The records are revealing. The University of Guelph reported steps to “target harden” areas of campus likely to be used by protesters and later acknowledged installing a security camera to monitor its encampment. Before an encampment had even materialized at the University of Ottawa, additional guards were expected to work overtime, police were placed on standby, access to an administration building was restricted, an evacuation plan was being prepared and the emergency operations center was put on alert.

The Alberta documents raise even more serious concerns. The Breach reported that the provincial network received information derived from social media monitoring, police risk assessments and cross-institutional briefings. Edmonton police reportedly provided risk assessments and intelligence before encampments had begun. Calgary police established a mobile command post shortly after the University of Calgary encampment formed. University of Alberta Protective Services also used facial-recognition technology to identify encampment participants.

An Alberta Ministry of Advanced Education official attended a meeting of the provincial network, on May 3, 2024, about a week before police cleared encampments at the universities of Calgary and Alberta. According to notes obtained through access-to-information requests, the official asked what universities expected in terms of encampment activity and how the ministry would be kept informed. The records indicated that the University of Alberta had already reached out at the ministerial level before an encampment had formed in the province.

One phrase in the documents is particularly revealing. As a MacEwan University official prepared to brief senior administrators about the network’s planning, University of Alberta emergency official Adam Conway reportedly instructed that part of the update be replaced by a directive to keep it “absolutely secret.”

The consequences were not merely bureaucratic. At the University of Calgary, nearly 100 police officers equipped with riot shields, batons and flashbangs moved against demonstrators. Roughly 30 hours later, Edmonton police carried out a pre-dawn clearing of the University of Alberta encampment. Protesters reportedly suffered injuries including concussions and pepper-spray burns. MacEwan later suspended the Palestinian Student Alliance, while three former executives were investigated, found responsible for causing a disruption and barred from non-mandatory university activities. One was reportedly informed only days before graduation that she would not be permitted to attend her convocation.

A broader pattern

These incidents fit a broader pattern. As I have argued previously in these pages (see Washington Report March/April 2026, pp. 70-71), a Palestine exception to the ordinary principles governing political expression in Canada is routinely created. A January article by members of the Jewish Faculty Network documented increasingly restrictive protest policies and several disciplinary actions. McMaster University suspended Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights and barred three students from campus activities before completing an investigation. Western University attempted to impose a “no demonstration without permission” policy, while the University of Toronto adopted restrictions treating the posting of signs, flyers and even chalk markings outside designated areas as vandalism.

Palestine-related events have encountered similar obstacles. McGill relocated an event featuring U.N. Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese. Wilfrid Laurier University cancelled a room booking for a discussion about Canada and Gaza. The University of Guelph cancelled a sold-out Palestine conference after outside pressure, although it was subsequently held elsewhere.

None of this requires minimizing anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism is real and dangerous, and universities have a legal and moral obligation to protect Jewish students from threats, harassment and discrimination. But protecting Jewish students does not require treating Palestine advocacy as presumptively threatening, nor should criticism of Zionism or Israeli government policy automatically become a security question. Many of those challenging the repression of Palestine advocacy are themselves Jewish students and professors. The Jewish Faculty Network authors explicitly call for serious measures against anti-Semitism while warning against using allegations of anti-Semitism to silence Palestinians and their allies.

The latest revelations also need to be understood in light of what students were demanding. A report released in June by Just Peace Advocates examined university investments, donations, partnerships and what it describes as anti-Palestinian racism. Based on financial information it located for 20 universities, the organization estimates that more than $1.6 billion was invested in companies it identifies as implicated in violations of Palestinian rights.

The report also identified approximately $188.8 million in funding from 27 donors it characterized as pro-Israel between 2000 and 2025 and documented institutional relationships between Canadian and Israeli universities, including research partnerships, exchanges and procurement relationships. These findings require appropriate caution. Investment in a company does not by itself establish legal complicity in international crimes; accepting a donation from a supporter of Israel does not establish improper influence; and academic partnerships can serve legitimate purposes.

But these are precisely the kinds of relationships that should be open to scrutiny. Students were asking universities to disclose where their money was invested and whether those investments and institutional relationships were consistent with their professed commitments to human rights. One may disagree with their conclusions without treating the questions themselves as illegitimate. 

The Palestine exception

This also exposes the limits of claims of institutional “neutrality".  Universities decide where to invest billions of dollars. They choose research partners, exchange programs and institutional relationships. They also issue statements about humanitarian and political crises when they believe circumstances warrant doing so. After Russia invaded Ukraine, universities across the West readily invoked international law, human rights and solidarity. Gaza has often produced a different vocabulary: complexity, neutrality, institutional restraint and security.

The disparity is especially striking given the destruction of Palestinian educational life. Scholars and U.N. experts have used the term “scholasticide” to describe the destruction not only of educational institutions but of the people, memory and intellectual infrastructure necessary for Palestinian academic life to survive. There is a bitter irony in universities devoting substantial resources to monitoring students protesting the destruction of universities elsewhere.

The Breach investigation raises another issue that should concern Canadians regardless of their views on Israel and Palestine: transparency. Reporters encountered missing records, conflicting explanations and disputes over retention policies. MacEwan reportedly told one requester that no Alberta network records existed, while another received 29 pages of correspondence; the university later said chat records had been deleted. The University of New Brunswick said a former security director could find no records of involvement in the national network, while University of Toronto records reportedly documented his participation.

The University of Toronto portion of the story requires care. After the university responded, The Breach corrected or clarified portions of its reporting, including distinctions involving Teams chats and the SharePoint platform and the university’s handling of information requests. Those corrections should be acknowledged. They do not, however, eliminate the broader questions about coordination, transparency and record retention raised by the investigation.

There is an uncomfortable contradiction here. Universities demand exacting accountability from students and meticulously document alleged violations in disciplinary proceedings. Yet when journalists and the public seek to understand how these institutions themselves exercised power, obtaining a complete record can prove much more difficult.

The implications extend beyond Palestine. Once political protest is routinely viewed through the lens of emergency management, surveillance and security, the same machinery can be turned toward other movements. Climate activists, indigenous land defenders, anti-war protesters and labor organizers have every reason to pay attention. Exceptional measures tend to outlive the circumstances used to justify them.

Canadian universities should disclose the extent of their coordination concerning the encampments, explain what information was shared, clarify the role of police and government officials and preserve relevant records. They should also provide sufficient transparency around investments and institutional partnerships to permit informed debate about divestment rather than treating the demand itself as suspect.

Most important, universities need to remember their purpose. They cannot tell students that education requires questioning power and then treat them as a security problem when they do exactly that. Nor can they celebrate the student protesters of earlier generations while suppressing the dissenters of their own.

The encampments have largely disappeared, but the surveillance practices, emergency protocols and precedents developed around them may remain. That may ultimately be the more consequential legacy.

Palestine did not create the contradictions within the modern university. It exposed them. And what has now been exposed should concern everyone who values academic freedom and democratic dissent.

(Faisal Kutty is a Toronto-based lawyer and regular contributor to The Toronto Star. His articles also appear in Newsweek, Aljazeera, Zeteo, and Middle East Eye. You can follow him on X @faisalkutty)