Pro-Palestinian demonstrators gather at Toronto Metropolitan University, April, 2024. Sarah Dawson, who was a second year student at TMU’s Lincoln Alexander School of Law when she signed the letter, says the goal of the lawsuit is to deter institutions from suppressing activism on Gaza.Sammy Kogan/The Globe and Mail
A group of current and former Toronto Metropolitan University law students who signed a controversial letter expressing unequivocal support for Palestinians after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israeli civilians has filed a lawsuit against the university.
The statement of claim, which has not been tested in court, alleges TMU defamed the signatories by publicly condemning the letter as antisemitic and intolerant.
The lawsuit also accuses TMU’s Lincoln Alexander School of Law of negligent misrepresentation and breach of contract for promising prospective students an unapologetically progressive legal education and then failing to follow through on that commitment.
The signatories are asking for $10-million in general and punitive damages.
“These students chose this law school in reliance upon public representations being made by Lincoln Alexander that it was focused on anti-oppression, on Indigenous rights, on tolerance,” said Dimitri Lascaris, one of the lawyers representing the 10 signatories on a pro bono basis. Instead, he said, TMU and Lincoln Alexander have sided with pro-Israel voices, showing themselves to be intolerant of alternative points of view.
TMU said Friday it could not comment on a legal matter.
Sarah Dawson, who was in her second year at Lincoln Alexander when she signed the letter, said that a central goal of their lawsuit is to deter universities and other institutions from suppressing activism on Gaza.
She believes TMU came out strongly against the signatories because, in a risk-benefit analysis, siding with the establishment felt like the safer choice.
“We’re saying: You made a calculation and the purpose of this lawsuit is to show your calculation is wrong,” she said.
The students’ litigation has been launched at a time of deeply divided perspectives on what is acceptable public discourse concerning current events in Gaza. Those tensions were exacerbated last month, when the United Nations Commission of Inquiry declared that Israel has committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza – an accusation that Israel has vehemently rejected.
This month will mark two years since terrorists launched a surprise attack on Israel, killing around 1,200 people and taking about 250 hostages. (It’s estimated about 20 remain alive in Gaza.)
In the days after Hamas’ assault, as the international community displayed an outpouring of support for Israel, student activists at Lincoln Alexander became concerned that the long-standing suffering of Palestinians was absent from the conversation.
At that time, Israeli troops had not marched into Gaza, but thousands of Palestinians had been killed in air strikes, according to the region’s health ministry. (Today, Gaza’s health authorities say more than 66,000 Palestinians have died since Oct. 7, 2023.)
Pro-Palestinian demonstrators at an April, 2024, protest on TMU’s campus.Sammy Kogan/The Globe and Mail
The students began circulating a petition that called for the law school’s administration to drop its neutral position and offer a public showing of support for Palestinians.
The preamble to the document used incendiary language to make their point: “ ‘Israel’ is not a country,” but a colonial and genocidal state, it read. It characterized the events of Oct. 7 as a war crime, but also expressed support for “all forms of Palestinian resistance.”
The letter leaked online almost immediately.
In total, 73 Lincoln Alexander students and one graduate signed – one-sixth of the law school’s population. Most signed anonymously, but 36 used their full names.
The blowback was ferocious.
Named signatories were inundated with threats and hate mail. Some Jewish students said they were devastated by what their classmates had signed. They reported feeling ostracized and even fearful while on campus. TMU was flooded with demands to take action against the students. Donors withdrew funding. Adam Wagman, whose law firm Howie, Sacks & Henry cancelled a $75,000 donation to TMU, told The Globe last year: “Israel is existential for Jews – period … When you question the right of Israel to exist, you question my right to be safe.”
Jonathan Rosenthal of Osgoode Hall Law School was among 20 prominent lawyers who called for stiffer consequences for the letter, which prompted more than 700 members of the legal community publishing an open letter supporting the students.Sammy Kogan/The Globe and Mail
Meanwhile, the letter fell during the summer job recruitment period. Ontario’s Ministry of the Attorney-General asked TMU law student applicants to sign an attestation that they had not signed the petition. Some Bay Street law firms that had tapped TMU students for interviews asked them to withdraw if they had been involved.
On Oct. 23, 2023 – three days after the letter leaked – TMU published a response: “The Lincoln Alexander School of Law did not issue, endorse or condone this letter. We unequivocally condemn the sentiments of Antisemitism and intolerance expressed in this message.”
Shortly after, about 20 prominent lawyers, including Brian Greenspan, Will McDowell, Tom Curry and law society bencher Jonathan Rosenthal, released their own letter expressing “grave concern” with the university’s response, which had not discussed any consequences. This triggered its own backlash, with more than 700 members of the legal community publishing an open letter supporting the students: “This chilling effect on freedom of expression and academic freedom has the hallmarks of a new McCarthyism.”
Two anonymous sources on Toronto Metropolitan University campus, June 12, 2024. Alina Lee, a plaintiff in the case, says ‘we want to hold the school accountable for wrongly associating a huge population of the students with antisemitism.’Sammy Kogan/The Globe and Mail
TMU went on to hire former chief justice of Nova Scotia Michael MacDonald to conduct an independent review. In May, 2024, he released his findings: While the letter may be offensive to some, it was not antisemitic as the students had intended to criticize Israel, not Jewish people. Justice MacDonald raised concerns about the students’ “aggressive” tone – a style of advocacy that he found ineffective, especially given that they were training to be lawyers – but he found that the comments were protected under the university’s Statement on Freedom of Speech. The justice chastised TMU for publicly condemning the petition as antisemitic and found it contributed to the backlash.
At the time, Mr. Rosenthal told The Globe he found Justice MacDonald’s analysis deeply flawed: “Substitute any minority other than Jews, and none of this would even be a discussion.”
Alina Lee, a plaintiff in the case, said that when TMU issued its statement condemning the students, many were already being doxxed and receiving death threats.
“What we want is two-fold. We want to hold the school accountable for wrongly associating a huge population of the students with antisemitism and intolerance for speaking out on a huge injustice,” she said.
“The second portion of our goal would be to set a precedent that affirms students’ rights to speak out on injustice without fear of retribution.”