On Sept. 16, The Rover—an independent, reader-funded news outlet in Montreal—hosted a screening and panel discussion to showcase their first-ever documentary, Palestine on Campus, at Collectif MTL’s St. Catherine location. The 30-minute film, created by The Rover’s managing editor Savannah Stewart and producer and videographer Justin Khan, follows the recent hostilities inflicted on pro-Palestine student activists by their own university administrations.
Through interviews with McGill and Concordia students—including former Vice-President External of the Students’ Society of McGill University Hugo-Victor Solomon, professors at McGill and Dawson College, and legal experts—Palestine on Campus portrays a recent security crackdown across Montreal higher education that targets pro-Palestine activists.
The screening began with The Rover’s founder, Christopher Curtis, addressing the crowd of approximately 40 attendees about the importance of Palestine on Campus’s investigation.
“Almost all of the mainstream news stories about the Gaza encampment in Montreal perform mental gymnastics to avoid talking about the role that our institutions play in supporting genocide,” he said.
The documentary was followed by a panel, moderated by Stewart. One panelist, Gwendolyn Schulman, is a McGill alum who helped lead the successful anti-South African apartheid movement on campus in the 1980s and co-founded CKUT‘s long-running Amandla! program.
On the panel, Schulman noted the troubling differences between the anti-apartheid struggle and pro-Palestine activism for divestment from companies complicit in the genocide of Palestinians on McGill’s campus today.
“Even when we did our sit-ins and our demonstrations, […] the one thing McGill did not do ever was [call] the police, and it never used private security firms against us,” she stated. “In fact, it was the exact opposite. They were so concerned about their public image that they wouldn’t let the police anywhere close. [….] We were never criminalized for what we did. We were never threatened with being expelled.”
Joining Schulman on the panel was Rine Vieth, a sociolegal scholar who contextualized how the increasing risks university student and faculty activists for Palestine face are unfolding just as much in Canada as they are, very visibly, in the United States. They also discussed how McGill’s recent austerity measures have been accompanied by an incongruous increase in the amount of private security employed by McGill, reflecting the “neoliberalization of higher education.”
“McGill is ostensibly a public university,” Vieth stated. “These are our tax dollars being used to fund this.”
Vieth and Schulman spoke alongside Danna Ballantyne, the Concordia Student Union (CSU)’s External Affairs & Mobilization Coordinator. Ballantyne discussed the struggles the union has faced since Concordia launched an ongoing investigation into the CSU for allegedly violating administrative policies during a Special General Meeting in January 2025. During the meeting, approximately 94 per cent of attending undergraduates voted in favour of Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) protocols for Palestine.
“There is absolutely nothing more dehumanizing than asking someone to talk bureaucracy while their friends and family are being murdered,” Ballantyne said. “The investigation is really not the main thing here. There’s a genocide happening. [….] Our friends are still dying at the end of the day. [….] You know, they call us a fringe minority, [but] most of us showed up to that meeting and [voted in favour of the BDS motion] when they said, ‘Do you want to divest?’”
Ballantyne concluded by describing how to address burnout as an activist, advising that “the more people in [one’s] entourage care, the less tired” they will feel continuing the fight for Palestine.
“If there’s one thing that all of us have, that everyone in Gaza needs right now, is connection,” she implored. “Please just make a friend from Gaza and talk to them. [….] Answer someone’s [Instagram] story […] and say, ‘We’re with you.’ [….] It makes every difference to them, and it’ll remind you what’s going on.”
Schulman also noted the importance of holding university communities accountable by preserving institutional memory.
“McGill celebrates itself for being the first Canadian university to divest. They never point out that they fought us tooth and nail and we won,” she proclaimed. “Eventually, [pro-Palestine activists] are going to win [the fight for divestment], […] and McGill is going to claim credit [again]. [….] We know what McGill was and what McGill has become, and what it needs to become down the road.”
