Howard Levitt: Toronto Metropolitan University has a problem that no diversity statement can solve

A pedestrian walks past Toronto Metropolitan University signage. Photo by Peter J. Thompson/National Post files

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Toronto Metropolitan University has a problem that no diversity statement can solve.

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Its own independent review, headed by a former Ontario Court Of Appeal Justice, contains evidence that Jewish faculty members, staff and students have become afraid to be visibly Jewish at work.

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Many participants told investigators that they had experienced antisemitic incidents and feared for their physical safety, while several said they had gone “underground” for fear of being identified as Jewish.

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Stop there for a moment.

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Imagine an employee at any major Canadian institution telling an independent investigator that members of her community have gone underground because they no longer feel safe identifying themselves.

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Would we call that an inclusion problem?

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A communications problem?

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A disagreement over politics?

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Or would we ask whether the employer had created a workplace that had become intolerable?

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That is the question Toronto Metropolitan University has to confront and long ago should have.

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The external review, conducted by former Justice Mary Lou Benotto and Margot Finley, was not commissioned by a newspaper columnist or an advocate looking for ammunition. It was commissioned by TMU itself to examine the university’s handling of an increasingly bitter campus conflict involving Israel, Palestinians, Jewish students and faculty, protests, free expression and campus safety.

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The reviewers heard from people on all sides.

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And what emerges is not a picture of a university successfully managing an extraordinarily difficult debate. It is a picture of an institution where trust collapsed.

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Some Jewish faculty and staff told the reviewers they were withdrawing from campus life. Some were reluctant to identify themselves publicly as Jewish. Some were afraid to speak about Israel or antisemitism. Some no longer knew whether they could safely raise concerns with administrators.

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Those are not people engaged in an energetic academic debate.

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They are the words of employees retreating from their workplace.

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And there is another passage in the report that is, in some ways, even more revealing.

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TMU considered whether the opposing camps should be brought together for dialogue. That would seem like an uncontroversial proposition at a university, a rather obvious first step toward reconciliation and healing.

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If two groups cannot stand each other, perhaps they should talk.

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If Jewish students believe pro-Palestinian activism has long crossed into antisemitism, and pro-Palestinian students believe accusations of antisemitism are being used to silence Palestinian advocacy, perhaps the university should create a forum where they can dialogue with, even challenge, each other directly. That is what universities are supposed to do.