On the Heterogeneity of Legal Responses to Pro-Palestinian Encampments on Canadian University Campuses

A series of occupation protests denouncing military occupation and assault on Gaza by Israeli Defense Forces started in 2023 and escalated 2024, with the spread of pro-Palestinian encampments on university campuses on the USA, Canada, Europe and other countries. The first encampment on university campuses in Canada was at McGill University in April 2024, followed by those at University of Toronto, Ottawa, Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM), University of Calgary and Alberta, and others across the country. Despite being quite similar in tactics (occupation protest) and demands (disclosure, boycott, divest and sanctions), the responses from universities varied substantially. While a few from the start took a very repressive approach using police forces similarly to the scenes from Columbia University that circulated the world; others, and most of them, engaged with longer occupation protest and mobilized law and politics in a more complex way than simply calling the police to dismantle encampments. This paper aims to discuss the different responses from Canadian universities to pro-Palestinian encampments on their campuses, with a particular emphasis on how universities mobilized law (State Law of any kind or university regulations) and security apparatuses (public police, campus police, security guards, etc.) as part of their governance of protests and the negotiation with protesters. We will explore five particular socio-legal arrangements: brute use of force (police), use of internal regulations and policies, use of criminal law, use of civil courts (injunctions), mixed strategies.