Earlier this academic year, the University of Toronto made an abrupt decision to block the hiring of Dr. Valentina Azarova to head its Faculty of Law’s International Human Rights Program (IHRP), following the intervention of a major donor who objected to Dr. Azarova’s scholarship on the Israeli state’s violations of the human rights of Palestinians.  This trampling of the faculty recommendation to hire Dr. Azarova has led the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) to censure the University of Toronto.

Quite admirably, a large number of the University’s own faculty have endorsed the censure and are leading a movement calling for the rest of us to pledge to honor it.  The CAUT censure calls on outside speakers and scholars not to accept appointments, speaking engagements, or distinctions and honors from the University of Toronto until satisfactory measures are taken by the administration. You can learn more about the censure of the University of Toronto—and, very importantly, you can pledge to respect it—here.

Thank you for joining us in demanding that academic freedom, and faculty decision-making about hiring, at the University of Toronto not have a Palestinian exception, as we know has so often been the case at so many institutions of higher education in North America and elsewhere.

USACBI Organizing Collective.