As staff unions promote off-campus radicalization sessions, academic conferences discuss the 'genocide' in Gaza. The solution? Speaking up

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As a lifelong student and educator, I’ve been in academia and the arts for the last quarter-century. I was a witness to the first Israeli Apartheid Weeks at York University in the early 2000s. I’ve followed, and fought, the anti-Israel obsession of CUPE 3903 (York University’s contract faculty union), including introducing a motion to stop them from manipulating their platform to promote non-labour issues on campus. It didn’t take.

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Days after the October 7 massacre in Israel by Hamas and other Gazan groups, the York Federation of Students (YFS), York University Graduate Students’ Association (YUGSA) and the Glendon College Student Union (GCSU) celebrated the atrocities as “‘land-back’ actualized” and Palestinian “resistance against their oppressors” in an abhorrent pro-Palestinian public statement, which is still online.

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CUPE 3903 is particularly notorious for its anti-Israel stance. In late January 2024, its