When a new law school in Toronto opened its doors in September, 2020, its brochure promised an unapologetically “progressive” legal education.
Ryerson Law, as it was then called, embraced diversity, equity and inclusion. Technology would be central. The curriculum included professional placements, so students would graduate ready to be working lawyers. At its core, this new school – soon to be renamed the Lincoln Alexander School of Law at Toronto Metropolitan University – promised to change the status quo.
“We are ready to engage with the most challenging legal issues of our time,” dean Donna Young, the only Black woman leading one of Canada’s 24 law schools, said at the launch ceremony.
Three years later, those tenets were put to the test with the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, during which about 1,200 people were killed and some 250 taken hostage. Amidst the immediate outpouring of international support for Israel, student activists at Lincoln Alexander worried that a history of Palestinian suffering was being overlooked.
Given the school’s founding principles, they urged their administration to speak out – and break with the conventional wisdom that universities should keep quiet on political matters. Similar demands were being made on universities across Canada and the United States. Lincoln Alexander refused, and as the days went by, tensions grew on campus.
Smoke from an Israeli rocket rises over the northern Gaza Strip in October, when Hamas attacks on nearby Israeli towns provoked an even deadlier response.JACK GUEZ/AFP via Getty Images
On Friday, Oct. 20, the students sent the dean a petition calling on Lincoln Alexander to drop its “neutral” position.
The letter writers declared that “‘Israel’ is not a country,” but a colonial and genocidal state. They characterized the events of Oct. 7 as a war crime, but also expressed support for “all forms of Palestinian resistance.” They argued that the Hamas attack was a direct result of “Israel’s 75-year-long systemic campaign to eradicate Palestinians.”
Altogether, 73 students and one alum signed – a sixth of the law school. More than half had used an anonymous moniker such as “Student in Solidarity,” but 36 signed with their full names.
By Sunday – 48 hours after its creation – screenshots of the petition had gone viral on social media, inciting waves of vitriol against Lincoln Alexander and its students. Signatories were doxxed and told they would never get jobs.
“I certainly wouldn’t hire any of these students and the fact some choose to ‘show’ their solidarity by keeping their name hidden means I’d have to write off hiring anyone from years 1-3 from the current crop at @LincAlexLawTMU,” Toronto lawyer Jeff Hershberg tweeted that night.
At the law school, housed on the fourth floor of TMU’s Podium building, the petition’s aftermath has affected all students in some way, whether they signed or not.Sammy Kogan/The Globe and Mail
In the days that followed, the story made national headlines. Donors dropped funding. Law firms that offered student placements withdrew from the program. And the school’s dean and TMU’s president were inundated with irate messages accusing TMU of enabling antisemitism.
Among the students, those who weren’t involved were furious that their degree and job prospects might be tainted. Some Jewish students felt ostracized. The signatories believed their administration had abandoned them to online harassment.
Over the last two months, The Globe and Mail has interviewed dozens of people connected to the controversy – faculty and staff, prominent lawyers and law firm leaders, spurned donors and students on all sides of the issue. Hundreds of documents have been reviewed, including internal TMU e-mails, donor complaint letters and Bay Street memos, collected from the people involved as well as through multiple freedom-of-information requests.
This investigation’s discoveries raise some of the most pressing questions of the moment: where is the line between hate speech and free speech – and who gets to decide? What capacity do organizations and institutions have to tolerate different political perspectives? And how do we make room for growth and mistakes in a world where anything can end up on the unforgiving internet?
For Lincoln Alexander, the petition has forced the question of whether it’s possible for an institution such as a law school to be truly different. Student-led Palestinian solidarity protests have spread across campuses in the United States and Canada, challenging university leadership. But activism in a law school presents a unique challenge for both students and administrators, who inhabit two worlds: the academic one, where free speech and academic inquiry are paramount, and the legal one, where there are professional consequences for speech that could tarnish a firm’s reputation with clients.
This is the story of how a three-page letter written by a group of twentysomething students led to a crisis not only at one law school, but in the Canadian legal world at large.
R is a student who signed her name and she would do it again today. (The Globe interviewed about a dozen signatories; some will be identified with an initial and others have been kept confidential, as many have received death threats.)
She found activism in high school, volunteering in the areas of harm reduction and gender-based violence. She decided to become a lawyer to fix the justice system’s problems from the inside. Only one law school interested her: Lincoln Alexander, named for the history-making lawyer who, in 1968, became the first Black person elected to the House of Commons and later Canada’s first Black cabinet minister. “I’ve done work with people who are unhoused, incarcerated, on bail – people who are the most disenfranchised by the justice system,” R said. “TMU marketed themselves as a place to do that work.”
But just weeks into law school, R says she felt duped. In one of her classes, she was asked to write a sentencing brief for someone charged with a drug-related offence. R wrote an analysis about why the accused should serve no jail time and instead receive care. She says the professor nearly failed her.
After Oct. 7, R and many of her classmates felt that their law school should publicly support Palestinians. The students were told the university doesn’t make political statements, but they pushed back: If Lincoln Alexander meant all the things it had said in its marketing, it had a duty to speak up.
Meanwhile, Jewish students and faculty were also pressuring the administration to release a statement condemning Hamas and expressing solidarity with the Jewish people. They relied on the same argument – that Lincoln Alexander’s commitment to equity meant it had to be vocal. The school stayed firm. On Oct. 11, it released an internal e-mail to the school community that acknowledged a loss of life in both “Israel and Palestine.” It called for “peace and justice” and advised students to engage in discourse with “humility, empathy, respect, and professionalism.”
The statement left many unhappy.
Images of injured Palestinians and abducted Israelis flooded social media in the war's initial weeks as all sides demanded action.Mohammed Abed/AFP via Getty Images; Hannah McKay/Reuters
On campus, the conflict was coming up in some classrooms. Jewish students reported that the conversation could be one-sided and made them uncomfortable. Complaints were also filed about Jewish professors for a variety of reasons. With each passing day, horrifying images of dead children – killed in Israel’s retaliatory strikes in Gaza – were being posted to Instagram and TikTok. As were the faces of the 250 hostages, who included a baby and preschoolers.
Throughout this fraught period, students were glued to social media, taking note – and often screenshots – of what their classmates and professors were liking, posting and resharing.
Then one of the school’s senior administrators, associate dean Sari Graben, retweeted messages from the Israel Defence Forces. She also reposted a comment that remarked how quickly the world was to doubt Jewish claims of terrorism, while accepting Hamas’s word at face value.
Some students were enraged.
To them, an associate dean promoting these messages was tantamount to the administration taking a side. But from the law school’s perspective, Ms. Graben was posting from her personal account and the comments were protected speech.
A meeting was scheduled between the deans and some students. Ms. Graben did not apologize for the posts, but agreed to take them down, because – she explained later to The Globe in an e-mail – she felt it was her job as an academic leader to be responsive to student concerns and to “bring a sense of calm dialogue to very complex geopolitical issues” that impact everyone. Students left the meeting feeling their concerns weren’t being taken seriously.
Dean Donna Young heard from students directly as they grew frustrated about the response from other administrators.Kate Dockeray
This seems to have been the tipping point.
A group of like-minded students launched a letter-writing campaign to Ms. Young. Next, a small student club called the Abolitionist Organizing Collective decided to put the concerns in a petition.
On Oct. 20, the student club posted the draft in a Google document and sent the link to classmates through group chats, text messages and social media direct messages: “SIGN THIS LETTER if you wish to demand that the LASL administration unequivocally stand in solidarity with Palestine!”
That same day, the club sent the petition to Ms. Young. Unbeknownst to most of the signatories, the club characterized the document as an “open letter.”
M, a signee and a member of the Abolitionist Organizing Collective, said the language in the petition is drawn from sources such as Human Rights Watch and the United Nations. The document does cite various UN reports, but in a sign of the times, it also footnotes a social media reel from a popular pro-Palestinian commentator.
For her, the response to the petition’s wording has been infuriating. She believes people are purposely misreading the line about “all forms” of resistance in order to distract from the core message: while grieving for Israel, do not ignore the long-standing pain of Palestinians.
“The letter leaves no room for misinterpreting the Oct. 7 attacks, which we call a war crime, with the Palestinian right to resist,” said M, who dreams of a career in international human rights law.
R has a similar view on the response to the “all forms” line: “I read that as folks who are colonized don’t owe us an explanation for their resistance.”
As for the controversial “‘Israel’ is not a country” line – it’s not, said several signatories. And neither is Canada.
“We are all people who critique Canada for violent settler colonialism,” said C, who signed anonymously. She, like others, regularly participates in Indigenous-led blockades. “I am not picking on Israel for being a colonial state. I am a settler living in a colonial state. To treat Israel differently just because they’re Jewish is the definition of discrimination.”
The petition is directed at the Israeli state, not Jews, say these students, who categorically deny being antisemitic.
One of the signatories is a Palestinian with family living in the West Bank: “I was very proud of the letter when I saw it.”
This group of signatories doesn’t regret signing, even though the blowback was painful. As for any negative repercussions for their careers, students such as R, M and C say they don’t want to work on Bay Street anyways.
Despite all signing on to the same letter, the petition signatories are not a monolith.
Many said they disagreed with the extreme language, but wanted to do something to support Palestinians.
At that moment in time – the third week of October – Israel had not launched its ground invasion, but more than 3,700 Palestinians had been killed, according to Gaza’s Hamas-controlled Health Ministry. (That number is now estimated by Palestinian health authorities to be about 37,000). The humanitarian crisis was also under way. UN Secretary-General António Guterres warned of “a dangerous new low,” with water, food, fuel and medical supplies running out in Gaza.
This group of signatories said they worried what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s promise of “mighty vengeance” would mean for civilians. They supported a ceasefire and efforts to open humanitarian corridors. And even though they had issues with some of the petition’s points – including wording that questioned Israel’s legitimacy – most students believed the petition would never be made public, so they weren’t concerned about agreeing with every word. (After the leak, the Abolitionist Organizing Collective apologized to signees for not clarifying that the petition would be an open letter.)
“I saw it as a way to start a conversation with the dean,” said one signee. This student – like several – didn’t read the document closely before adding their name, because they thought it wasn’t supposed to be some “big, official thing.”
For this group, the fallout has been especially devastating.
One signatory, who read the document in full for the first time on social media, recalls feeling nauseous. A friend had texted to say it was online. By the time the signee logged on, people were posting screenshots of their personal social accounts and labelling them a terrorist sympathizer.
A first-year signee said they read the petition and knew it was inflammatory, but they wanted to show support for Palestinians. Classmates were urging each other to show their solidarity. They didn’t think about how it might impact the school or their Jewish peers.
Once the petition was released, students who had applied for jobs began to field questions about it from law firms and Queen's Park.Sammy Kogan/The Globe and Mail
The petition landed in the middle of the summer-position hiring process. Copies of e-mails viewed by The Globe show that, beginning on Oct. 25, employers – firms such as Miller Thomson, Aird & Berlis and Cassels Brock & Blackwell, as well as the Ministry of the Attorney General – began reaching out to TMU applicants with concerns about the petition and asked students to disclose whether they had signed.
“While we by no means demand that people outside our Firm agree with our own values, when recruiting law students who we hope will develop their careers with us and some of whom will grow to be our senior leaders, we do seek out people who share our fundamental values,” read an e-mail from Miller Thomson. “Accordingly, if you have signed this letter or intend to do so, we would ask that you withdraw your candidacy with us.”
Ontario’s Ministry of the Attorney General said that, given the uncertainty around who had endorsed the petition, all TMU law students seeking employment with the ministry would have to sign an attestation “that they did not sign the letter, either openly or anonymously.”
The Globe reached out to the ministry as well as each of the law firms for comment. Aird & Berlis noted that in the most recent summer student recruitment round, they hired students from several law schools – including Lincoln Alexander. Cassels declined to comment and Miller Thomson said it was committed to fostering a safe and respectful work environment. The Ministry of the Attorney General said it followed a procedure that was fair and transparent.
Across Toronto's financial district, TMU students who signed the petition began to face pushback as the controversy grew.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
On Bay Street, firm leaders say there was internal pressure from some partners not to take on any TMU students, because there was no way to know who had signed anonymously. Some firms were able to avoid the issue because they hadn’t tapped Lincoln Alexander students for summer interviews, but those that had were left navigating a minefield.
One senior partner in a management role, who is not being named because he was not authorized to comment publicly, said the feeling was that hiring Lincoln Alexander students would invite unnecessary risk, both in terms of upsetting current partners and potentially creating tension with clients: “No one is going to say this on the record, but of course every name on that letter is on a list now.”
For the students, the ramifications weren’t just jobs.
A signatory in her first year had signed up for a mentorship program with the Crown attorney’s office, but after the petition became public, the lawyer she had been paired with never wrote back. The program was later “paused.”
She received messages calling her a terrorist supporter. “I have seen the letter you signed and as a result, I have written to every law firm and provided them your name and that you support the terrorist group Hamas,” read one e-mail.
Another signatory says she fell into a depression. She was in her early twenties and less than two months into law school when the saga erupted: “To feel like everything was over before it even started was really scary.”
At Lincoln Alexander, after the petition had been sent to Ms. Young, the administration went into crisis mode. Senior leaders held an emergency meeting on Saturday, Oct. 21. On the Monday, the day after the petition went viral, the law school issued a statement: “We unequivocally condemn the sentiments of Antisemitism and intolerance expressed in this message.”
Signees told The Globe they felt betrayed. As they dealt with being doxxed, their own school had labelled them as antisemitic, emboldening the people who were sending them threats.
TMU president Mohamed Lachemi's inbox was flooded with messages demanding that petition signatories be expelled or penalized.Christopher Katsarov/The Globe and Mail
Others felt the administration’s response was grossly inadequate.
Jonathan Rosenthal, a criminal defence lawyer, an adjunct professor at Osgoode Hall Law School and bencher with the law society, co-wrote an open letter that was signed by about 20 prominent Toronto lawyers, including Brian Greenspan, Will McDowell and Tom Curry, which expressed “grave concern” with the response. They were especially struck that the school’s statement had not discussed consequences. The inboxes of Ms. Young and TMU president Mohamed Lachemi were inundated with dozens of messages, some of which demanded the students be immediately expelled.
(In November, TMU announced it was bringing in former chief justice of Nova Scotia, Michael MacDonald – who most recently co-led the Mass Casualty Commission – to investigate whether the signatories had violated the code of non-academic conduct. The law school itself did not initiate the investigation.)
But this backlash had its own backlash. More than 700 members of the legal community published an open letter chastising the “lawyers, law firms and law schools” who were conflating criticism of the State of Israel with antisemitism. “This chilling effect on freedom of expression and academic freedom has the hallmarks of a new McCarthyism.”
Meanwhile, in the weeks after the petition, Ms. Young and other school leaders met with prominent players in the legal community, according to both interviews with lawyers involved and records obtained through access requests. The administrators apologized and tried to reassure them that Lincoln Alexander had a plan to move forward. They also advocated on behalf of those signatories who had expressed deep regret.
About 10 of the regretful signatories had tried to write a letter explaining themselves and apologizing. In the end, they decided it would only make things worse.
“It felt like it didn’t matter,” said one of them. “No one was listening.”
Hours after the Abolitionist Organizing Collective originally shared the petition with students, a member of the Jewish Law Students’ Association reposted the link in the club’s group chat. One member of the group recalls a sinking feeling as she watched more and more of her classmates’ names appear.
“The fact that they started off with Israel is not a real country – they’re totally invalidating the Jewish experience. And the fact that they were saying ‘all’ resistance is justified in the context of Oct. 7 – you’re saying it’s okay to murder innocent Israelis for their cause,” she said. “I know there are two sides to this and people are getting hurt on both sides. And I know not everyone is going to have the same views, but Hamas is a terrorist organization.”
This student, like other Jewish students who spoke to The Globe, would only do so on condition of anonymity. They said they have felt shunned in the hallways. The rhetoric on campus, they say, is anti-Israeli, and by extension antisemitic.
Joshua Sealy-Harrington, an assistant professor at Lincoln Alexander, disagrees with that conclusion, and said that a “feeling” that something is antisemitic is not enough to make it so.
“There are plenty of men who are upset by ideas in feminism. They can be bothered by it. They can say it’s anti-man. No one credibly says that if some men are upset by feminism that feminism is therefore sexist,” he said.
Within TMU, Prof. Sealy-Harrington is a polarizing figure. He is a fierce anti-Zionist and has been the only faculty member in the law school to forcefully defend the signatories on social media and in news reports. Some of his colleagues say the professor inflamed the situation at a time when a sizable group of signees were trying to move on. Prof. Sealy-Harrington told The Globe it was “ridiculous” to suggest he was making things worse by defending “vulnerable students from defamation by their own administration.”
In April, he was voted “professor of the year,” although he is leaving the school. In September, he will be teaching at the University of Windsor’s faculty of law.
Joshua Sealy-Harrington's efforts to defend the signatories drew criticism from some colleagues who said it made matters worse.Sammy Kogan/The Globe and Mail
For people such as lawyer Adam Wagman, whose firm Howie, Sacks & Henry cancelled a $75,000 donation to TMU because of the petition, Prof. Sealy-Harrington’s views on antisemitism are frustrating.
He said that in the past several years, the wider culture has gained a better grasp of concepts such as anti-racism and micro-aggressions, and the idea that the impact of an action on a marginalized group – not the offender’s intentions – is the most important. So why do non-Jews get to tell him, a Jewish man, what constitutes antisemitism?
“Israel is existential for Jews – period. When there was no Israel, there was nowhere for Jews to go. And as a result, almost 40 per cent of Jews on the face of the Earth were killed,” Mr. Wagman said. “This happened during my parents’ lifetime … When you question the right of Israel to exist, you question my right to be safe.”
Jillian Rogin, an associate professor at the University of Windsor’s law school and member of the Jewish Faculty Network, rejected the idea that criticism of Israel is antisemitic.
“In my view, criticism of Israel, even if it hurts many Jewish people who identify with Israel, is a difference of political opinion,” she said. “The idea that Israel, as a national state, is acting in the interests of Jews everywhere is very flawed … It’s acting in its own interests.”
Prof. Rogin, who is currently working on a PhD about Jewish advocacy and hate-speech legislation in Canada, said that after the Six-Day War in 1967, the Israeli State and its supporters actively worked to frame anti-Zionism as a form of antisemitism in order to shield themselves from scrutiny. People should not collapse the two, she said.
But Osgoode Hall Law School’s Prof. Rosenthal said that even questioning whether the petition is antisemitic is in and of itself offensive.
“Any student who signed that letter committed professional suicide,” he said. “They will never be hired by the government. They will never be a judge or gain any prominence in law.”
As to whether there is a path forward for those who want to make amends, Prof. Rosenthal says it’s important to remember that the signees are not teenagers. They are training to be lawyers, a profession where judgment is crucial. However, Prof. Rosenthal says he approached Lincoln Alexander and offered to help any student who wanted to publicly retract their support for the petition: “No one took me up on that.”
(Of the students who spoke to The Globe, none were aware of this offer, although several said they would not have considered it because Prof. Rosenthal was leading the public campaign against them.)
Jonathan Rosenthal says signatories of the petition at TMU 'will never be a judge or gain any prominence in law.'Sammy Kogan/The Globe and Mail
Lincoln Alexander tried to host its own sessions in an effort to start rebuilding the community. The school launched a series of “listening circles” facilitated by Raja Khouri and Jeffrey Wilkinson, the authors of The Wall Between: What Jews and Palestinians Don’t Want to Know About Each Other. None of the signatories who spoke to The Globe attended.
“Unfortunately, these were happening during the external investigation,” said a first-year signee. “I think a lot of us wanted to go, but we were worried that what we may say could be used against us. The school had come out and said we were antisemitic. So there was a lack of trust.”
The Globe sent questions to the administrators at Lincoln Alexander about the crisis and how it plans to move forward. In an e-mail, Ms. Young – who is currently on a sabbatical that was previously planned – and interim dean Graham Hudson wrote that they acknowledge much work needs to be done.
“We’re still a young law school but we know there’s tremendous resilience here that will enable us to continue thriving,” they wrote. “We remain deeply committed to ensuring that all students, faculty, and staff at the law school feel supported and experience a sense of belonging and wellbeing.”
With respect to applications, it will likely take another year to assess the impact. Applicants were up 11.4 per cent for the 2024/25 academic year, however the deadline was Nov. 1 last year, just as the scandal was unfolding.
TMU would not provide stats on the number of students who secured summer jobs, but anecdotally, it appears that the majority were able to find one. Few secured positions on Bay Street, although TMU students are not necessarily focused on that career track. Some Jewish students who spoke to The Globe said networks within the legal community have supported them.
On May 31, 2024, more than six months after launching his investigation into whether those who had signed the petition had violated the code of conduct, Justice MacDonald released his findings: The letter may be troubling and offensive to many, but it was not antisemitic. He noted that students had intended to criticize Israel, not Jewish people. He concluded the comments were protected under the university’s Statement on Freedom of Speech, which provides students with wide latitude to explore ideas.
“The standard is not perfection. Students are entitled to make mistakes, and even cause harm, without necessarily facing sanctions,” he wrote.
As for the administration, Justice MacDonald sharply criticized the school for publicly labelling the petition as antisemitic – an act he says contributed to the backlash. (The Globe asked Ms. Young about this and she indicated that she accepted the findings of the report.) The report did acknowledge that given the public outcry, administrators felt they needed to act quickly: “With hindsight, the reaction was understandable, albeit regrettable.”
Prof. Sealy-Harrington said the report “unambiguously vindicates” the students and those who defended them.
For Prof. Rosenthal, the MacDonald report and analysis was deeply flawed and will not change anyone’s mind. “I think it’s horribly antisemitic. I stand by what I said … Substitute any minority other than Jews, and none of this would even be a discussion.”
The professional world has also not been satisfied.
One prominent leader at a Bay Street firm said the fact that the MacDonald report found no wrongdoing and didn’t propose even a symbolic punishment – such as a one-day suspension – has made moving forward difficult.
James Noronha, who was the president of the law school’s student society this past year, said it’s important to remember that the MacDonald report didn’t give the signatories a free pass.
“He said it didn’t meet the definition of breaching the code of conduct, but it also says there were deep flaws in the advocacy that was put forward and we need to learn from it,” Mr. Noronha said. “I think the report reflects that two things can be true at once: You can be within the code of conduct, and actions can be well intentioned, but it can still cause harm.”
Mr. Noronha, who just graduated from Lincoln Alexander, came to TMU as a mature student. He had spent 17 years working with the Special Olympics and has pursued a career in disability law. During the crisis, he served as a sounding board for students on all sides.
“People want a say, they want to speak, but the listening part is really hard. At the same time everyone has been speaking in these absolutes,” he said. “They’d like to see action from the school, from the students, from the legal community, professors, and I get that. But over the course of the year, the thing you realize is there are not perfect actions or perfect words for every moment.”
Sammy Kogan/The Globe and Mail
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