Discriminatory treatment of SAIA

Dear President Shoukri,

I am writing to protest the disciplinary actions taken by your administration against Students Against Israeli Apartheid at York, specifically the one month suspension of the group and fines against their organization and its contact person.

This decision perpetuates a pattern of discriminatory treatment by York administrations of groups that organize on behalf of Palestinian human rights. It is obvious to many of us at York who have observed student debates and activism around Middle East issues that pro-Israel groups are not equally disciplined for actions that are (at least) equally loud and confrontational. Groups organizing on behalf of Palestinian human rights, like SAIA, however, are regularly disciplined and harassed by the York administration.

Discriminatory treatment of this sort is utterly unbecoming of a university, an institution that ought to encourage open, informed debate about urgent issues of our times. And the fines you have imposed smack of the recent "libel chill" efforts by powerful people (one of them now in a US jail) to restrict free speech by making its exercise prohibitively expensive. To impose punitive costs on small student groups can only reasonably be interpreted as an attempt to bully and intimidate in order to close off discussion and debate.

Such actions are thoroughly at odds with commitments to free speech and academic freedom. They bring shame on York University and your administration. I urge you to reconsider these decisions, to withdraw the suspension of SAIA, and to rescind the fines against the group and its contact person.

Sincerely,

David McNally
Professor
Department of Political Science
Faculty of Arts

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