'Hiding their Jewish identity': Professor warns antisemitism is making campuses intolerable for Jews
“Bondi was a warning shot,” cautions Cary Kogan, professor of psychology at the University of Ottawa. “If Western governments aren’t going to deal with the issue (of antisemitism), this is what we’re going to end up with. And I worry; the intelligence community has told us very clearly that there are bad actors here in Canada, and you know, the government needs to listen.”
Offended, both as a Jew and an academic, by faculty union manoeuvres to constrain the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism, Cary co-founded the Network of Engaged Canadian Academics (NECA) in 2022. It was a prescient move; a year later, in the aftermath of the horrific Hamas massacre of Jews in Gaza, the network was positioned to support academics across Canada.
“We’re 400 members across 53 campuses,” Cary explains, “concerned about the safety of Jewish faculty and students and staff and combatting antisemitism.” What’s going on in campuses across the country is “really taking us away from the things that a university is supposed to be about.”
After graduating with a PhD in psychology and completing a residency at SickKids hospital in Toronto, Cary’s been teaching psychology for two decades. In that capacity, he’s studied faculty experiences of antisemitism. “Basically, what we find is there are two groups of faculty; those who have experienced no antisemitism or very low, and those who have experienced really high levels,” he shared in a recent conversation.
The mental health of the latter group takes a hit, leading to professional disruption, he explains: “It seems to work through feeling that you have to support yourself, your Jewish identity; that you’re vulnerable; and that you’re betrayed by your institution and your colleagues.” Faculty often tell him they will retire early or focus on something else in their lives; some can’t even speak to colleagues in their own department.
“In a very strategic and intentional way,” Cary asserts, “our universities are being used as a source of ideological propaganda. And there are bad actors who we know are doing that.” It makes sense, he adds, if you are trying to get some “intellectual ideological capture,” focus on university campuses; that’s where you have the most academic freedom.
The network he helped build is a line of defence against campaigns targeting Canadian universities, most often, he explains, those post-secondaries “with a high proportion of Jewish students and faculty, like the University of Toronto,” or campuses more likely to attract media attention.
I ask him: Why aren’t colleges and trade schools targeted? “Trade schools don’t teach sociology, they don’t teach anthropology, they don’t teach sociology and gender studies,” Cary explains. University campuses, “are the places where there’s been an ideological picture that incorporates anti-Zionism into the fold, so it emerges from, I think it’s driven by, a lot of faculty who have very strong ideological positions on this stuff.
“You just don’t get that when you’re teaching people how to be paramedics or how to be technicians. All very important trainings,” he notes, “but it’s hard to talk about the conflict in that context.”
We talk through the arsenal of tools available to combat antisemitism on campuses in Canada: the enforcement of laws and rules and policies already on the books; better transparency of foreign donations; greater collaboration with federal intelligence agencies; DEI policies that incorporate Jewish identity and antisemitism; more proactive governance models at universities; and the exercise of leadership, even when choices are unpopular.
Feasible options, we agree, yet as Cary reports, the statistics remain sobering: Jews are one per cent of the Canadian population experiencing 70 per cent of the religious-based hate crimes. If you are Jewish, you’re 25 times more likely to experience a hate crime than the general population.
“We need to move to action,” Cary asserts, forcefully, “where people are taking a stand, being vocal about this. We can have people talking about, you know, even protesting against war. That’s fine. We can have people who are asking for rights for Palestinians. Absolutely fine. But we can’t have this kind of identity-based hate movement being taught in classrooms, being propagated through motions at university, faculty unions, student unions and all of that.”
There’s been reluctance by some institutional leadership to engage with the police, Cary decries. And in some situations, the police were reluctant to do anything because they worry about the backlash. “It’s called ‘feeding the crocodile,’” he reports, with a grimace: “If we just allow them to have their space, it will settle down.” It’s a wrong-headed notion, Cary blurts, that’s actually created a more permissive environment that’s led to escalation.
He also points to variability in how provincial laws and local policies are applied, in the face of what he sees as collaboration between faculty and students. “I mean, faculty were helping students with these encampments, helping students write these reports, make these statements, and I think there are unions, both student and faculty unions, supporting this ideological position.”
So, he continues, “it became harder for certain leaders to actually make clear statements, and there was a double standard in terms of implementing policies, more than in any other minority group experience.”
From Cary’s perspective as a parent and educator, “the biggest or the most painful thing for Jewish students is the double standard.” How do students cope? “They’re avoiding campus, taking courses online, they’re hiding their Jewish identity. Their behaviour is changing as a function of the hostility,” he reports.
“They won’t talk about their opinions on things. They’re put on the spot, asked to speak for the Israeli government, like absurd, absurd kinds of things that we would never see other minority groups be subjected to.” If you didn’t like what Vladimir Putin is doing, Cary posits, you wouldn’t go up to somebody who is Russian-Canadian and say, “I want you to denounce Putin.” That just doesn’t make sense. That’s the double standard.
And many of these Jewish students are quietly quitting programs of study that are hostile. What programs is he referring to? It’s a long list that includes feminism, gender studies, legal studies, anthropology, sociology. Law school is proving to be a problem, he adds, and medical schools too.
What does Cary see unfolding in the coming year? Of course, we will continue debating the fine distinctions between political speech and hate speech; I’m a lawyer, I know how this goes. We will clutch our pearls and lament what happened at Bondi beach. But can we break this scapegoating of Jews?
“It’s a pendulum that swings,” Cary responds, “so you’re gonna see a momentary emergence of compassion towards the Jewish community after Bondi. I think that’s clear.”
But, we’re about to see phase two in the negotiations with Hamas, and journalists will report on the destruction in Gaza — it looks like Dresden — and the reason for that, he asserts, is the land had been converted into an underground military bunker. And so, he concludes, after this momentary bit of reprieve, things will return to the stereotypes.
“It’s deep, it’s structural, it’s embedded, it’s years old, it’s informed by religion, it’s informed by culture,” Cary offers, “and so it’s not going away anytime soon. But I think we can bring the temperature down, if we have strong leadership.”
2026 is shaping up to be quite the year, for leadership.
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