After Memorial University issued the statement “Update on student protest,” Osgoode Hall Law School of York Assistant Professor Heidi Matthews said that the university’s update on the Palestinian solidarity occupation and encampment “both misunderstands the UofT injunction decision and how it applies—or does not apply—to the protesting students and Newfoundland and Labrador courts. It’s a legal and political mess.”
Matthews questions why Memorial stated it “expects protestors to respect [the UofT] court decision” when the university knows decisions from Ontario courts do not bind the courts of Newfoundland and Labrador. She then states, “The protesting students are *certainly* not bound to respect an out-of-province decision.”
Matthews states, “The university appears to be weaponizing a court decision from another jurisdiction to intimidate peacefully protesting students and bootstrap its own legal position.” Matthews points out that in its statement, Memorial pivots away from the private property question, which was the sole basis on which the University of Toronto injunction was issued and makes vague claims about “safety.” Memorial does not specify how the protest was “disruptive” or “unsafe.”
The University of Toronto argued in part that the protestors had appropriated its Front Campus “to the exclusion of others” and Justice Koehnen found that by removing the university’s “ability to control what occurs on Front Campus, the encampment had caused irreparable harm.” However, the judge explicitly rejected the university’s claim that the encampment was violent. In contrast to U of T, Memorial is claiming the protesters are vaguely “disruptive,” not violent. Matthews states, “The constitutional right to peacefully protest cannot be limited on this basis.”
Matt Barter is a graduate of the Humanities and Social Sciences Faculty at Memorial University of Newfoundland, holding a degree in Political Science with a minor in Sociology. He enjoys reading thought-provoking articles, taking walks in nature, and volunteering in the community.
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