Amidst the backdrop of growing international calls to sever ties with institutions in Israel, Canadian universities have done the very opposite. The University of Ottawa just launched a joint LLM (Masters of Law) program with the University of Haifa, wherein students divide their year between Canada and the Israeli campus. The University of Toronto Law Faculty participates in a joint venture with Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and regularly invites visiting professors. McGill University just announced a multi-year partnership with Hebrew University to teach a summer course on human rights law. McGill confirmed that “a decision [was made] by the McGill central administration three years ago to strengthen relations with academic institutions in Israel,” and this has led to the new partnership, which will be partially funded by the Israeli government.

What is problematic with these connections? Critics note that many regimes around the world have unimpressive human rights records, and yet there are few calls to axe Canadian exchange programs to China or Cuba. Indeed, some might even argue that universities serve as forces for progressive change in many repressive societies. Yet such partnerships can also serve to legitimize the partner regimes, and unlike elsewhere, Israeli universities have acted as forces of support for the ongoing occupation, rather than as checks and balances against these human rights violations. For this reason, Israeli academic institutions were included in a 2005 call by over 170 Palestinian civil society organizations calling for boycotts, divestments and sanctions.

Consider Hebrew University, where McGill’s new Human Rights intensive course is to be hosted in the summer of 2011. The Hebrew University has been engaged in the process of expelling Palestinian families from their homes for decades. Founded in 1925 in East Jerusalem, the 1948 war left Hebrew U. in an Israeli-controlled enclave for 19 years; after the conquest and occupation of East Jerusalem and the West Bank by Israeli forces in 1967, the university was reconnected to West Jerusalem. Since then, the institution’s expansionist agenda has led to building on lands belonging to the Palestinian villages of Lifta, al-Issawiya and Wadi al-Joz. Hebrew University has hired bulldozers to demolish the homes and confiscate the lands of Palestinians, such as the al-Helou family. McGill anticipates housing students of their Human Rights program in the very dorms built on this confiscated land. Did any of the authorities at the Canadian universities which partner with Hebrew U. bother to look at the photographs of Palestinian villagers aged 16 to 86 who were tear gassed, beaten, had their bones broken and faced arrest for trying to protect their homes from demolition easily located online?

Hebrew U. has participated in numerous other human rights violations. In 2002, the University awarded scholarships to students who signed up for IDF combat units for at least three weeks in operation “Defensive Shield,” which involved Israeli military incursions in the West Bank leading to hundreds of civilian injuries and fatalities. Hebrew U. hosts a military base on its Givat-Ram campus. Some of the University’s dorms are also built in the French Hill neighbourhood, an illegal settlement.

Therefore, Hebrew University functions as a vehicle used by the Israeli state to persistently violate international law, and continuously support an illegal occupation. Even if one is not willing to accept the notion of boycotting all Israeli academic institutions, Hebrew University does not seem a reasonable partner for Canadian institutions seeking to teach human rights law.

After Richard Goldstone issued his critical report on Operation Cast Lead, he was dismissed from the University’s Board of Directors. If an internationally renowned jurist is not allowed to dissent from Hebrew U’s support for Israel’s military occupation and human rights violations, it’s evident that there won’t be space for visiting students to do so.

We often hear liberal defenders of these partnerships in Canadian universities supporting the need to have a dialogue with Israelis, but it’s quite clear the Canadian approach means listening to a monologue where only the Israeli voice is heard. Countless opportunities exist for Canadian students to visit Israeli universities, with generous grants and bursaries, yet there are no such options available to visit universities in Palestine. There doesn’t appear to be a single institutionalized exchange program between any Canadian and Palestinian institutions.

Progressive Canadians may find this imbalance unsurprising, but it’s remarkable how out-of-step this leaves Canada with other Western nations. Throughout Europe and even in the U.S., formalizing relationships with Palestinian institutions of higher-learning is seen as an important element of strengthening civil society, peace-building and some might even say state-building.

A consortium of law faculties in France has devoted itself to building the law faculty at Birzeit University in the West Bank. Among them is the prestigious Institut d’Études Politiques (Sciences Po), which proudly features visits from Palestinian leaders and institutional exchanges with Al-Quds University, Arab American University (Jenin), Birzeit University, Hebron University, al-Azhar University and An-Najah National University. New York’s reputable Bard College has established a formal partnership with Al-Quds University, offering joint bachelors and masters degrees. South Africa’s Johannesburg University recently made the inclusion of Palestinian universities in research projects, a pre-condition for the continuation of their partnership with Ben Gurion University; when the Beersheba school called such a demand “international sabotage,” Johannesburg University severed its partnership with BGU. The British Council has formally committed themselves to assisting Palestinian universities develop.

Given the difficulties faced by Palestinian students in obtaining permission to exit for study, the support of institutionalized partnerships with Canadian universities would pave the way for many young Palestinians to access higher education abroad. Instead, institutions like McGill University actually prohibit research, fieldwork or exchanges in the West Bank and Gaza due to a travel directive issued in 2009 prohibiting students from academic travel to regions that DFAIT places under a travel advisory.

Canadian universities have chosen neither to support the development of civil society in Palestine, nor to stand up to the academic complicity in Israel’s human rights violations. In a climate of underfunded post-secondary institutions in Canada, it may seem lucrative to simply take donations from well-funded groups like the Canadian Friends of Hebrew University, but the price of these partnerships involves legitimizing the occupation, and this is too high a price to pay.