McGill suspends extracurricular events on campus due to safety concerns

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McGill University has suspended all bookings for extracurricular events on campus until January after activists threatened online to cancel a planned event this week, which the university said escalated into a targeted death threat.

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In an email to the university community on Monday, McGill said an outside group, which co-organized protests last week that led to vandalism and violence downtown, had taken to social media to call for the event to be “shut down.”

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“This in turn caused waves of online anger, including a targeted death threat,” the post said.

“We have communicated with police, but the risk to event participants and the McGill community remains unacceptably high,” the university said.

The event has been moved online. McGill did not confirm which event was planned. McGill also announced that no new bookings for extracurricular events would be approved until January.

When asked if it knew the speaker, the university told The Gazette: “We don’t know.”

However, StartUp Nation Montreal, an Israeli student club at McGill and Concordia, said in an Instagram post that the event in question included Mosab Hassan Yousef, a former Palestinian militant who became an Israeli informant in the late 1990s before moving to the United States . His father, Sheikh Hassan Yousef, is a co-founder of Hamas, a terrorist group in Canada that is now in an ongoing war with Israel.

According to flyers on social media, Yousef would be interviewed by Israeli influencer Ysabella Hazan.

In a joint post, the Palestinian Youth Movement Montreal and Students for Palestine’s Honor and Resistance (SPHR McGill) called for the event to be canceled, accusing Mosab Yousef of promoting “violence against Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims.”

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SPHR McGill recently had its club status revoked by the student union due to what McGill described as multiple violations of the memorandum of understanding with the student union, including glorifying violence against civilians following Hamas’ attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.

The Muslim Students’ Association of McGill also released a statement urging the cancellation of the event.

On Monday, Yousef posted on X: “Never trust anyone who identifies as Muslim, especially if he pretends to be an innocent sheep. Muslims have no compassion for non-Muslims.”

Yousef and Hazan did not respond to requests for comment in time for publication.

Montreal police said Tuesday they were aware of the event and had expected protesters to be on the McGill campus for it, but by morning protesters had not shown up. The spokesperson had no information about a death threat.

The decision to move online and suspend all on-campus extracurricular event bookings until January comes as Canadian universities continue to face challenges in balancing free speech with security amid ongoing tensions and protests over the war between Israel and Hamas, with McGill emerging as a focal point for activism in Montreal.

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This month, Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, spoke at McGill. Her appearance provoked objections from several Jewish organizations, calling for the event to be canceled. Ultimately, the lecture was moved from the Faculty of Law to the student association building.

In his message this week, McGill emphasized that hosting controversial speakers is a core part of university life, but it also underscored the need for security and stability.

“Where security threats exist, we must intervene, and that threat level is steadily escalating,” the university wrote.

The suspension of bookings coincides with the exam period, which the university says “provides students with time and space to focus on their exams and to consider our approach to invited speakers in the future.”

Commenting on the decision, Richard Robertson, director of research and advocacy at B’nai Brith Canada, said: “McGill’s decision not to allow the reservation of university spaces for extracurricular events for the remainder of the year means that, as has been the case to date It has become all too common that it is the student body that is unnecessarily punished for the caustic actions of fringe radicals who continue to compromise the well-being of the entire campus community.”

He said McGill must take proactive steps to “confront troublemakers who undermine student life.”

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