The CAMERA Fellowship supports student leaders in developing and strengthening their pro-Israel activism on campus. With the school year about the begin, we are giving introducing the students who will be working hard to promote the facts about Israel on campus. Meet Ben Shachar. A senior at York University, Ben Shachar is studying biology. He is a...
Actions Speak Louder Than Words: An Open Letter to Mamdouh Shoukri
We are writing this statement to offer a student perspective on the recent events at York University, specifically the formation of the President’s Advisory Committee on Inclusion and President Mamdouh Shoukri’s subsequent statements to The CJN. Under President Shoukri’s near-decade-long tenure, the university administration has demonstrated alarming apathy in the face of...
‘Free speech’ is Not a Cover for the Incitement of Violence
Paul Bronfman’s principled decision to pull funding from York University must serve as a wake-up call: the university has a real and pervasive problem with anti-Semitism that it is failing to acknowledge. York administrators are far more willing to moralize in hazy abstractions of “free speech” and “inclusivity” than to...
York University: It’s More Than Just A Mural
In North American universities, the right to a “safe space” free from dissenting or controversial ideas is, regrettably, becoming sacrosanct. Speech is policed for any statement that could be construed as insensitive or politically incorrect. In light of the widespread tendency to censor even the most innocuous of statements, it...
Why is anti-Semitism being excluded from anti-Oppression events at York University?
When the York University student union organized its anti-oppression programming this past October, one group was noticeably omitted from the list of oppressed groups. Events were held to raise awareness about Islamophobia, anti-black racism, consent, queerness, and disability, but not even one workshop or panel was organized to educate students...
Anti-Semitic Conspiracy Theories on Campus
The anti-Semitic conspiracy theories of the past – Jews are plotting to rule the world, Jews control the banks, Jews are agents of calamity and catastrophe –have found new life in the North American university campus. At the City University of New York, the “Students for Justice in Palestine” club blamed the “Zionist...
Campuses Have Become Breeding Ground for Hate
As a new school year begins, the familiar chill of malicious, unbridled anti-Semitism is being felt by Jewish university students across the country. Today, a university student’s intellectualism and tolerance are gauged by the ferocity of his or her Israel hatred. To be a humanitarian, you must deny the humanity...