On Canadian Campuses, Intimidation Is Becoming Policy

Canadian universities like to describe themselves as guardians of free inquiry. But across the country, they are quietly training students to learn a different lesson: that some ideas are simply not worth debating, defending, or discussing.

Over the past two years, pro-Israel events have become uniquely difficult to hold on Canadian campuses — not controversial in the abstract, not banned outright, but rendered practically impossible through a combination of administrative obstruction and tolerated disruption.

Whether this pattern stems from ideological sympathy or institutional cowardice matters less than its effects. The result is the same: one set of students learns that their speech is a liability, while another learns that intimidation works.

The incidents are not isolated anomalies; they have become the norm over the past two years. Since late 2023 and continuing through 2025, anti-Israel protestors have repeatedly shut down or derailed campus events.

At Toronto Metropolitan University, anti-Israel protestors disrupted a pro-Israel event to the point of chaos. At Concordia, a student group was barred from holding an Israel-related event on campus entirely. When the event was moved off campus, protestors followed and physically blocked entrances.

In Winnipeg, a pro-Palestinian group protested an IDF soldier event at a community centre with children and families present, after the event was forced out of a college campus.

Less visible, but just as telling, are the quieter administrative encounters that epitomize how pro-Israel activity is increasingly treated as a problem to be managed rather than an expression to be accommodated.

Universities often respond by insisting that they’re merely enforcing neutral policies: security requirements, space approvals, risk assessments.

But neutrality collapses when the same scrutiny is not applied evenly. Pro-Israel events routinely face heightened security fees, last-minute conditions, location changes, or outright cancellations, while other politically charged programming often appears to proceed with fewer obstacles.

In practice, this amounts to a quiet “Jewish tax” on participation: higher security bills, more paperwork, more scrutiny, and more risk simply for wanting to host an event connected to Jewish identity or Israel.

In several cases, approvals are granted only to be quietly reversed days later, with vague references to new policies and no clear explanation, leaving students with no appeal and no timeline.

When the price of speaking is predictably higher for one community, exclusion no longer needs to be explicit to be effective.

Over time, this selective enforcement reshapes campus life in ways administrators rarely acknowledge. Student leaders internalize risk aversion. Event organizers self-censor choices, titles, and themes in the hope of slipping under the radar. Jewish and pro-Israel students stop expecting equal treatment and start planning around institutional resistance as a given.

What looks like peace from an administrative office is actually  a culture of withdrawal. Students quickly learn that persistence brings scrutiny, while retreat brings quiet relief, and many choose accordingly.

Even more troubling is what this normalization teaches those who oppose these events. When protestors can disrupt, blockade, or intimidate with little consequence from the school directly, they receive a clear signal that escalation is rewarded.

The cost-benefit analysis becomes obvious. Why argue, debate, or organize a competing event when shouting loudly and causing enough chaos can make the opposition disappear? By failing to enforce their own rules consistently, universities in Canada and the US convert protest from expression into ideological enforcement.

This is not how pluralistic institutions are supposed to work. Universities exist precisely to host contested ideas without allowing one faction to exercise a heckler’s veto to another. Once administrators begin quietly calculating which viewpoints are too expensive, too disruptive, or too politically inconvenient to accommodate, the university ceases to be an arena for debate and becomes a manager of reputational risk.

The consequences extend beyond Israel. Today, it is Jewish activism. Tomorrow, it might be foreign policy dissent, religious expression, or unpopular research. Precedents do not remain neatly confined.

Universities will insist they are under immense pressure, and that may be true. But pressure is not an excuse; it is the test. Institutions that pride themselves on courage and independence cannot outsource their values to whomever shouts the loudest or threatens disruption most effectively.

This is where students, parents, alumni, and donors should step in. Silence has costs. Universities respond to incentives, not press releases or paltry condemnations. When unequal treatment becomes reputationally and financially uncomfortable, policies change. When it does not, administrative drift hardens into doctrine.

The demand here is not special treatment for pro-Israel students. It is equal treatment. Clear rules, enforced consistently. Events allowed to proceed without ideological filtering. Protest protected, but disruption penalized. Safety ensured without turning one group’s existence into a logistical burden.

If universities cannot guarantee that, they should stop pretending they are neutral forums. And if Canadians care about the future of higher education as a space for genuine debate rather than managed conformity, now is the moment to insist that campuses live up to the principles they so eagerly advertise.

Because once students learn that they can shut down ideas they disagree with, the damage is already done.

Adam Katz is a 2025-2026 CAMERA on Campus fellow and a political science and history student at the University of Manitoba.