Dr. Pheroze Unwalla is an associate professor of teaching in the Department of History and chair of Middle East studies (MES) at UBC. A Killam Teaching Prize winner, his interests include MES pedagogies, teaching Palestine and critical university studies.
A recent lawsuit against the University of British Columbia is making headlines across Canada. Four UBC professors and one former graduate student are suing the university for allegedly violating a BC University Act clause that states universities must be “non-sectarian and non-political in principle.”
The petitioners reference the university’s support for land acknowledgements and EDI in addition to select statements on Israel/Palestine as proof of the university’s violation. They further ground their lawsuit in claims that academic freedom is being violated and, even more ludicrously, that “conservative” views are being discriminated against. In contrast, critics state the petitioners are using “the guise of civil liberties as a thin veil to cover genocide denialism” and perpetuating “harmful rhetoric rooted in racism.”
I agree with the critics on the above and would suggest a further opinion: the lawsuit is a sad attempt at mimicking the success of American right-wingers and Zionists in intimidating university leaders into silence, erasure and other forms of complicity. This became more apparent when the petitioners’ lawyer, Josh Dehaas, used the MAGA-style term “DEI ideology” to make a point. The lawsuit also builds on far-right successes in the campaign against EDI in Alberta that likewise connect with efforts at historical revisionism and silencing anti-genocide protests. As such, ludicrous though it may be, the lawsuit is dangerous and a litmus test for Canadian academic and legal institutions at a time of rising bigotry, right-wing extremism and liberal appeasement. I stand in solidarity with the Indigenous communities and countless others who are labouring so vigorously against the lawsuit.
That said, I am concerned by some of the critical responses which centre primarily on defending land acknowledgements to the neglect of the other named subjects (EDI, Palestine). I believe several commentators are founding their critiques on a faulty and dangerous premise by insisting land acknowledgements are apolitical since they are based on evidence and legal fact. I understand the impetus here. But the critics’ solitary focus on land acknowledgements as apolitical plays into the petitioners’ hands.
For example, in a National Post op-ed, Dehaas exploits this focus to declare a disingenuous victory, stating, “There’s been little pushback to our claims that DEI purity tests or Israel-Gaza statements contravene B.C.’s University Act requirement.” With the other two issues written off as “political,” Dehaas is subsequently able to focus on making his albeit poor case for land acknowledgements being the same.
Uncoupling land acknowledgements from the other two issues is then a mistake. Reduced to a debate on land acknowledgements, we fail to see how the three issues, and the fates of many more, are linked. Conveniently for the petitioners, we also lose sight of the more pressing questions on our university and the “political” underlying this case.
Though well-intentioned, many of the arguments against the lawsuit uncritically accept what the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association (BCCLA) cites as the lawsuit petitioners’ “perverse interpretation of the prohibition of political activity under the University Act.” And in focusing their ire almost solely on the petitioners, these critics neglect to question who helped concoct this “perverse interpretation” — the administration of UBC President Benoit-Antoine Bacon — and why it was concocted in the first place — the Palestine Exception.
Consequently, many of the critiques inadvertently bolster a troubling position on the “political” with significant consequences for the future of our work and the university at large.
As the BCCLA states, “There is no social space free from political context”; this includes the university. Because of that, facts, even scientific or legal facts, can become political through their constitution and expression (note that this does not make them untrue).
The choice to express or act on one fact but not another is likewise political. For example, acknowledging the facts of Indigenous land theft in Canada but not Palestine is a political decision with real consequences. And UBC’s choice to cut ties with Russian universities over that country’s illegal invasion of Ukraine but not with Israeli universities that are plainly complicit in Israel’s blatant violations of international law has little to do with these contexts being different. It is instead a display of political calculus on which lives matter, and which countries can(not) be easily sanctioned to the university’s PR and financial benefit.
The question then is not whether land acknowledgements and their expression are political. They are. The question is: How did we get to the absurd point where “political” is a slur and adopting an evidence-based “political” position is deemed beyond the purview of the university?
There is a larger history of confusing the political for the propagandistic and against an unsubstantiated “neutrality,” especially where Palestine is concerned. But to understand the significance of this lawsuit, we need to scrutinize both the opportunistic petitioners as well as those who helped create the opportunity itself: the Bacon administration.
In seeming attempts to insulate itself from malicious attacks and warranted critiques, the administration has been working for over a year to ‘neutral-ize’ our university. Though ostensibly aimed at justifying its silence on Israel’s crimes, the administration’s efforts are now endangering decades of gruelling labour by professors, students and staff on other subjects like Indigenous rights.
The current legal fiasco over “political” land acknowledgements can arguably be traced back to public statements and email correspondence issued by UBC administrators during the anti-genocide protests that rocked universities across North America in 2023-24. The statements came as UBC was reckoning with (a) “frivolous yet disturbing lawsuits” accusing the university of anti-Semitism; (b) alleged political interference at BC universities by a now-ousted Zionist politician, ex-Minister of Education Selina Robinson; and, conversely, (c) widespread calls for UBC to denounce Israel’s genocide, divest from complicit corporations and cut ties with Israeli universities as they had done with some other countries that violated international law.
Amid this intense pressure, and in line with the example set by other North American university leaders, the Bacon administration began spreading the idea that the university had to be apolitical/neutral on the genocide, promoting the “perverse interpretation” of the University Act that is now being used against them. Two examples serve to illustrate this point.
In late 2023, UBC Provost Gage Averill sent an email that upturned precedent and potentially violated departmental autonomy by prohibiting departments from issuing statements as a unit. As it asserted:
One reason for [prohibiting department statements] is that the University is a heterogenous community with multiple and divergent opinions. More pointedly though, Part 12 of the University Act, section 66 (1) notes that “A university must be non-sectarian and non-political in principle”.
In the same email, Averill specifically warned department heads against signing petitions or statements in their capacity as heads, given that they were considered “agents of the university.”
The result? At least one department removed a statement on Palestine from their website, and some faculty began worrying over their legal liability related to petitions and statements on other subjects. While omitting explicit mention of the University Act, the provost’s website now formally cautions against departmental statements. As Provost Gage Averill declares in “Guidance for ongoing collegial discussions,”
UBC must remain institutionally impartial and inclusive on matters that extend beyond its immediate purview. Statements that could compromise the perception of institutional neutrality and inclusivity should not be made in a way that might reasonably be perceived as being made on behalf of UBC, its faculties, departments, institutes, or any other constituent units of UBC.
Note here the admixture of a vague neutrality with a twisted sense of inclusivity.
Then, in May 2024 and in response to protestors’ demands, Bacon issued a public statement. In defending the administration’s silence, he cited part of Stanford University’s vacuous institutional neutrality statement, including that “Maintaining university neutrality allows for our individual scholars to explore [complex global or political matters] freely.” Although later warning against moral relativism, Bacon noted that the university could not “presume to speak for everyone” and, perhaps most astonishingly, that “Any university position, even if supported by a majority, by definition undermines the right of holders of different views to express themselves and participate in the debate.”
There are further examples, but, overall, the administration’s contention appeared to be that neither the university nor any of its constituent units could adopt a stance on Israel’s genocide and other crimes because doing so would (a) be too “political”; (b) extend beyond the university’s “immediate purview"; and (c) violate the rights of peoples with different opinions.
Unsurprisingly, several similar contentions were made in summer 2024 as Zionist groups and individuals, including Israeli university presidents, successfully petitioned the UBC Senate against cutting ties with Israeli universities. One group even quoted Averill and referenced Bacon to make their points on “institutional neutrality” and the University Act, claiming that cutting ties would be “a clear violation of UBC’s obligation to remain non-political.” For most UBC senators, this apparently made sense when it came to Israel.
But, as we now see, the ambiguities of what is “political” and “beyond [the university’s] immediate purview” has left UBC exposed to new attacks. The administration’s re-interpretation of the University Act and similar skewed language on neutrality, freedom, inclusivity and diversity (of opinion) are now being employed by the lawsuit petitioners to argue against land acknowledgements and EDI.
Many critical articles on the lawsuit denounce the petitioners’ exploitation of concepts like “freedom” and “diversity,” but unfortunately accept their (and the administration’s) interpretations of the University Act and institutional neutrality. We must challenge both on theoretical and practical grounds.
As political scientist Rafeef Ziadah states, “Neutrality … is not apolitical; it is a mechanism that perpetuates colonial violence and shields institutions from accountability.” Neutrality, then, is a convenient figment behind which both bureaucrats and bigots can hide. More than that, it is a useful tool to “selectively validate certain narratives … that align with the dominant political and ideological order — while marginalizing others, particularly those challenging the status quo.”
On the practical, we must contest the administration’s rendering of the University Act clause. Far from gospel, I believe it constitutes a radical re-interpretation and reckless diminution of the university’s responsibility to our community and wider society. For one, the clause in question exists only in the section that deals with theological colleges and hence was likely aimed at regulating their activities. Moreover, asked about the lawsuit, David Robinson, executive director of the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT), said that the organization has not understood the clause as preventing universities from adopting “broadly political positions on all kinds of things.” As they state, “We’ve always interpreted [section 66] to mean [universities] are non-partisan. That is, that they don’t support one political party or another.”
In other words, the Act was never intended to compel “institutional neutrality” on “political” issues. It was the Bacon administration that helped create this impression by cultivating and disseminating a “perverse interpretation” of the University Act, carelessly paving the way for an absurd but perilous lawsuit. If successful, it could prevent the university from moving forward on initiatives ranging from Indigenous rights to climate change, gender and racial equality, stem cell research or any subject that might be deemed “political” and/or “beyond its immediate purview.”
Akin to their American counterparts, the Bacon administration’s stance on “neutrality” has opened the door for racial and religious supremacists, genocide and climate deniers and anti-feminist, anti-queer and anti-trans activists to legally harass and pressure the university into silence. This is a clear example of how liberal use of the Palestine Exception (to speech and academic freedom) is a gateway to repression of other initiatives that speak truth to power and challenge unjust status quos.
In declaring their stance on the non-political university during the genocide, I believe the administration was implicitly rehearsing the misleading accusation that “Palestine is political” and hence that even a well-evidenced Palestinian critique must be silenced in the name of a contrived “neutrality.” As Professor Muhannad Ayyash notes, we should not dispute that speaking on Palestine is political but rather take to task the embedded indictment that it, and it alone, “introduces a toxic politicization.” Like so many others, Ayyash also recognizes that “all academic knowledge is always political and politicized” and acknowledges “the separation between political and academic knowledge to be a chimera that hides intimate connections between knowledge/power.”
But beyond obscuring these intimate connections, the administration’s attempted concoction of a non-political university betrays three further harmful perspectives.
First, it speaks perhaps to a conceit common to corporate university administrations: Many seem to believe it is in their power, and theirs alone, to dictate to the university community what subjects and statements are “political” and off-limits and which are “academic” and hence permissible. This cannot be allowed to stand.
Second, consciously or not, singling out Palestine as “political” reveals a potentially patronizing view that UBC’s many other university-wide initiatives — including EDI, fossil fuel divestment and land acknowledgments — are apolitical. On land acknowledgements, this would actually run counter to the definition provided by UBC’s own X̱wi7x̱wa Library:
A land acknowledgement (or territorial acknowledgement) is considered a respectful, yet political, statement that acknowledges the colonial context of the Indigenous territory/territories where a gathering is taking place.
Finally, the inferred classification of these and other initiatives as apolitical is an insult to the students, faculty and staff who, through their combined research, teaching and solidarity work, laboured for decades to convince the university of their necessity.
These organizers arguably understood some basic facts that are getting lost in the current debate and the push to formalize “institutional neutrality” at UBC and beyond:
- Our work is always political.
- The university was never neutral and never will be.
Through speech or silence, engagement or withdrawal, university administrations are constantly making choices that have vast ramifications, especially for the most vulnerable among us. Consequently, this debate is not about whether the university should be political or not. Rather, the question we must all ask, now and again, is what kind of politics do we want our university to embrace and manifest? A capricious politics of cowardice that serves the interests of bureaucrats, bigots and genocidaires? Or an evidence-based politics of decolonial liberation that strives towards equality and justice for all?
If it is the latter, we must be brave and unflinching in its application, no matter the context or the threats levied against us by bad-faith actors. To fail in this regard, to create exceptions as the administration did with Palestine, is to invite the attacks we see now. The petitioners waging this lawsuit deserve all the criticism in the world. But let’s also hold to account those whose craven politics made it possible in the first place.
This is an opinion article. It reflects the contributor's views and does not reflect the views of The Ubyssey as a whole. Contribute to the conversation by visiting ubyssey.ca/pages/submit-an-opinion.
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