Public Statements Released by JAABC

All participants in the Invictus Games have the right to feel safe on the UBC campus. The vandalism and graffiti aimed at Israeli participants in the Games on the night of Friday, February 14, 2025 is part of a pattern of harassment and intimidation on the UBC campus. The university is well aware of this problem. We ask UBC’s leadership to take a decisive stand on this issue; our university must be a safe space for all of us, including all of the athletes who are guests on our campus.

The Jewish Academic Alliance of BC is proud to be one of the partners engaged by UBC’s Office for Equity and Inclusion in the development of the anti-discrimination resources on antisemitism and Islamophobia. We view these materials as part of an ongoing positive and meaningful dialog in the UBC community about these important topics.

We do, however, have some reservations about them as they currently stand:

1. While we acknowledge that Palestinians can be subject to prejudice, hate, and discrimination on the basis of their identity, we believe the term “anti-Palestinian racism” is descriptively inaccurate and unhelpful. We are concerned about the conceptual coherence of considering anti-Palestinian attitudes a form of racism, and about the deployment of the important concept of racism in a politicized and un-nuanced way that risks damaging its broader value and meaning. We are concerned in particular that the concept may be instrumentalized against people who express support for Israel.

2. We also wish to make clear that these reports do not substitute for further meaningful action by the university to counter both antisemitism and Islamophobia.

JAABC supports academic freedom and a diversity of viewpoints. The same principle that supports faculty teaching freely, also supports students learning and expressing themselves freely.

Especially given the power imbalance between professors and students, students can be silenced, or even pressured and intimidated, when professors cross a line in telling their students what they should believe and what political actions to take. We are worried that this may be what happened here. We believe that the classroom is a place that should foster critical thinking and that should allow students freely to come to their own conclusions and to express themselves and to be heard by others without embarrassment or fear.

Where faculty fail to do that, it is essential that the university enforce its own standards and ideals and we call upon UBC to do so.

On June 3, 2024 the UBC Senate convened for a special meeting called to discuss a proposal to cut or suspend ties with Israeli academic institutions. The full agenda for this meeting can be viewed here: June 3, 2024 UBC-V Senate Meeting.

After a thorough discussion, the Senate voted against adopting the motion, with 49 votes opposed and 16 in favor.

This outcome highlights UBC’s commitment to academic freedom, its support of open inquiry and exchange of ideas free form political pressures.