The Azarova Affair
Did the response to a University of Toronto hiring decision show antisemitism?
We have just enjoyed a couple of days in Hilton Head, South Carolina, which has a beautiful beach, and a steady breeze to go with the hot weather. Even while strolling along the beach our thoughts turned again to the recent report: Anti-Palestinian Racism: Naming, Framing and Manifestations by the Arab Canadian Lawyers Association (ACLA). As discussed in our previous article, the adoption of a proposal by the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) which called for updating its anti discrimination curriculum to emphasize the issue of anti-Palestinian racism (APR) was likely driven by reference to the ACLA report. For that reason the ideas in the report are worth examining to understand where the TDSB is going and how it will affect Jewish and pro-Israel students and staff.
The ACLA report begins with the following:
WHAT IS ANTI-PALESTINIAN RACISM? Anti-Palestinian racism is a form of anti-Arab racism that silences, excludes, erases, stereotypes, defames or dehumanizes Palestinians or their narratives. Anti-Palestinian racism takes various forms including: denying the Nakba and justifying violence against Palestinians; failing to acknowledge Palestinians as an Indigenous people with a collective identity, belonging and rights in relation to occupied and historic Palestine; erasing the human rights and equal dignity and worth of Palestinians; excluding or pressuring others to exclude Palestinian perspectives, Palestinians and their allies; defaming Palestinians and their allies with slander such as being inherently antisemitic, a terrorist threat/sympathizer or opposed to democratic values.
The ACLA report declines to say this is a definition, in deference to the widespread criticism in anti-Israel circles of the IHRA working definition of antisemitism, but it is a definition in all but name. My previous article, The Murders and Lies of Rasmea Odeh, focused on one example of alleged anti-Palestinian racism, cited in the forty two page report.
Some might say that by looking at the examples, I am burying the lede, because the language of the definition itself has lots of material that raises concerns for anyone who wants to make the case for Israel. I am not ignoring that. But the examples provide a set of concrete circumstances which allow us to understand how the charge of anti-Palestinian racism is likely to be used in practice.
Natalia Azarova as a Prototype for APR
In this article I will look at another case, cited as an example of anti-Palestinian racism in the ACLA report. Indeed the ACLA says what happened in this case played a role in their formulation of the concept of APR in the first place. This is the controversy surrounding the (non)hiring of Valentina Azarova. Azarova is a scholar activist whose work shows a singular focus on, and relentless hostility to Israel. She had worked previously for Palestinian NGOs. A controversy erupted at the University of Toronto in 2021 over a decision not to hire Azarova for a position at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law.
Image: Valentina Azarova lecturing ——-Source: Hillary Rodham Clinton School of Law
The job at the centre of the controversy was Director of the Toronto Law School’s International Human Rights Program (IHRP). In its own opinion on the affair the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) wrote:
‘the Director oversees the IHRP’s advocacy initiatives, clinic, speaker series, working groups, publications, internship and mentoring programs. In addition, the Director is required to supervise students, develop and deliver clinical legal education programs, and organize and conduct workshops, conferences, and research.’
The job would have made Azarova the public face of the program and, among other duties, entailed the mentoring of student’s projects working in human rights advocacy with organizations outside the university.
A committee was appointed by Dean of Law Edward Iacobucci to advise on the hiring decision. The committee consisted of a faculty member at the law school, Professor Audrey Macklin, a research associate, Vincent Wong, who was teaching one course at the Law School, and an administrator, Assistant Dean Alexis Archbold.
The committee recommended unanimously that Azarova be hired for the position. Dean Iacobucci, decided for reasons that were within his discretion, not to accept the recommendation of the committee. Instead of proceeding with the work of seeking an alternative, the committee refused to do so. Vincent Wong resigned from the school and expressed the belief that “Palestinian rights and international law with respect to the Israel/Palestine situation are now demonstrably a taboo subject in the law school”.
The furor that followed the decision not to hire Azarova made international headlines. As we will see, the ACLA played a role in driving this reaction. The fallout included the investigation of a sitting Ontario judge over allegations of judicial misconduct and the censuring of the University of Toronto by the CAUT. We were left wondering at the time over whether what we were witnessing was an outbreak of antisemitism.
We discovered a first rate essay on the matter in the course of our research for this article. It is Valentina Azarova: A Controversy Assessed. It was published as a “Fathom Long Read”, which is accurate as to its length, but it is worth the time spent reading through it. Professor Cary Nelson, the author of the Fathom article, has taken the time to read everything Azarova has written that is available in the public domain.
Azarova’s writing has been both scholarly and polemical. Nelson’s review of her work shows that hostility to Israel is the unifying idea behind everything she has written. In one of her papers: Towards a Counter-Hegemonic Law of Occupation: The Regulation of Predatory Interstate Acts in Contemporary International Law, she argues for change to aspects of international law that work to Israel’s advantage, such as the notion that Israel has a right to defend Israeli soldiers and civilians in the occupied territories against attacks by Palestinians. Instead she seeks to enshrine the idea that any acts by Palestinians against Israel are legitimate resistance, and any acts by Israel to protect itself from such attacks are criminal. This is essentially the position of the anti-Israel demonstrators that have proliferated around the world since October 7.
Other work has sought to strengthen the liability of third parties for any connection with Israel’s presence in the territories captured in 1967. This would have the practical effect of bringing the enforcement of a boycott against Israel into the domestic law of third countries.
In her work for Palestinian NGO al Haq (which has ties to the PFLP), Azarova has written about Israeli archaeological activity in such a way as to treat every artifact unearthed by Israeli architects, no matter how central to Jewish history, as theft of Palestinian heritage.
Nelson’s own purpose in reviewing Azarova’s body of work is to look at a troubling phenomenon which he has been studying for a while: The politicization of the academy. In the Azarova controversy he sees a significant increase in the severity of this problem. In the article he argues that the people on the hiring committee and the dean of the Faculty of Law ought to have carefully scrutinized Azarova’s work to assess her suitability for the position. Instead, when accused of declining to hire Azarova due to her political positions, the dean insisted that the hiring decision had not taken her controversial work into account. In Nelson’s view, the Dean was derelict in his duty in not doing so.
Competing Narratives
Unlike Rasmea Odeh, whose case was mentioned only in passing in the ACLA report as an example of APR, the Azarova case was discussed at greater length as an illustration of the phenomenon of APR, and the ACLA itself played a role in what unfolded. Let’s look at how the ACLA report describes what happened to Azarova and then compare it to the way it was covered in Cary Nelson’s article.
Here is how the ACLA report introduces the events surrounding the (non)hiring of Valentina Azarova:
In September 2020, an international scandal erupted at the University of Toronto (U of T), Faculty of Law over their hiring of a new Director for the International Human Rights Program (IHRP). The faculty rescinded a job offer to Dr. Valentina Azarova after Justice David Spiro, a sitting Canadian judge and former director of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA), used his influence as a donor to relay CIJA’s concerns over Dr. Azarova’s hiring because of her scholarship on Palestine/Israel. (emphasis added)
This introductory paragraph begins with a factual error. While the hiring committee had recommended hiring Azarova, the dean decided not to do so. No job offer was made and therefore no job offer could have been rescinded. “Decided not to hire” would not have made such a compelling sentence, but that is what happened.
Secondly, the ACLA ties the decision to “rescind” the job offer to Azarova to a conversation the dean had with Justice David Spiro. Justice Spiro is Jewish and had worked before his appointment for the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) an organization that works to support Israel. Spiro was also a donor to the university. The claim that Spiro used his influence as a donor to convey the opinion of CIJA is a matter of legal dispute.
For the ACLA, the response to the Azarova affair was a milestone in building awareness of APR. They cite the censure of University of Toronto by the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT). A campaign to for the censure motion drew the support of other academic individuals and organizations
The ACLA itself participated in a complaint against judge Spiro at the Canadian Judicial Counsel for allegedly trying to influence the hiring decision. When the judicial counsel declined to discipline Judge Spiro, the ACLA participated in an appeal of the decision.
In response to a the claim of undue influence by Judge Spiro, the University of Toronto asked retired Supreme Court Justice Thomas Cromwell to act as an independent investigator. The ACLA presented an argument to the Cromwell inquiry. Cromwell found that the decision by Dean Iacobucci was not improperly influenced by Spiro. This is not mentioned in the ACLA report.
Without waiting for Cromwell’s findings the CAUT instituted measures against U of Toronto. As Nelson notes in his article, the CAUT elected to censure U of T, it’s harshest available remedy. Cromwell’s findings that there was no undue influence did not deter the CAUT. The decision to censure was supported by a boycott of U of T by faculty at other Canadian Universities.
The campaign of vilification against Dean Iacobucci and Judge Spiro led eventually to the faculty offering the job to Azarova, an offer which she turned down.
For the ACLA, these events were a driving force in formulating the concept of anti Palestinian racism.
The consensus (within the ACLA; ed) was if Dr. Azarova had written about any human rights crisis other than Palestine/Israel, she would be the current director of the IHRP at the Faculty of Law. The basis of this scandal was her legal position on Palestine/Israel, which was uncontroversial in mainstream academic discourse on the subject, yet still led to her de-hiring
The statement that Azarova’s legal positions on Palestine/Israel were uncontroversial in mainstream academic discourse is presented as a fact, but is more like an attempt to stake out an ideological position. As we will see when we look at Cary Nelson’s account of the affair, uncontroversial is not a word that describes any of Azarova’s work.
Natalia Azarova Affair as an Outbreak of Jew Hatred
In his own review of the events leading up to the public controversy, Cary Nelson notes that as an administrator, Azarova would not be protected by academic freedom.
Faculty members are free to take controversial public political positions, but administrators are expected to be neutral. It is much more difficult to insist that an administrator ‘does not represent the institution.’ Administrators are not protected by academic freedom. Few if any of Azarova’s supporters seem to recognize that stark fact.
Nevertheless, the CAUT’s decision to censure U of T and promote a boycott in support of the measure cites protection of academic freedom as the central issue in the case.
Cary Nelson points out that Azarova’s avowed commitment to Palestinian advocacy would draw into question whether she could or would mentor and supervise students who were pro-Zionist and wanted to focus their social justice activism on fighting antisemitism or protecting the rights of Jews.
It’s hard not to think that the outrage over the affair among faculty as represented by the CAUT and among the constituents of the ACLA, was driven by a profound antipathy to Zionism, similar to that which is found in Azarova’s own writing. As the examples associated with the IHRA definition show us, sometimes this kind of response crosses the line into words and acts of hatred toward Jews.
Cary Nelson quotes Vincent Wong’s polemic against the hiring process:
Wong reserves especially strong rhetoric for the role he believes institutionalised, structural racism and sexism—‘the operation of intersectional power and privilege that continues to govern the legal academy, the legal profession, and the judiciary in Canada’—played in the decision: ‘this episode first related to improper conduct and influence by a powerful white male judge (Justice David Spiro), was bumped up to and decided upon by a powerful white male Dean of Law (Dean Ed Iacobucci, son of former SCC judge Frank Iacobucci), was mediated through another powerful white male investigator (former SCC judge Thomas Cromwell), and was then whitewashed by a powerful white male University President (President Meric Gertler) while all other voices have been sidelined.’ Finally, Wong attributes the sequence of events to a conspiracy between the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) and conspiracy among some of those just named, ‘an almost surreal story of what went on behind the scenes with Dean Iacobucci, the funding offices at UofT, Justice Spiro, and the CIJA, who found out about Dr. Azarova’s candidacy and explicitly set out to put the brakes on it.’ There is some indication of where Wong’s political sympathies lie.
What struck us at the time was that the people involved challenged the authority of anyone who came to a conclusion about the matter that differed from their own. The invocation of the race and gender of the decision makers would, in another context be taken as offensive and a sign of bias and hatred.
The fact that the ACLA fully embraces this account of the events and does not even mention the fact that there were different opinions on what happened to Azarova seems to confirm that anyone standing in the way of appointing a person whose animus toward Israel is visceral and profound will be tarred with the accusation of anti-Palestinian racism.
The embrace by the TDSB of the concept of anti-Palestinian racism gives us genuine and reasonable cause for worry that the perspectives of Jews and others who support Israel will not only be ignored, but will be vilified and silenced in any future implementation of measures to prevent APR. The adoption of APR at the TDSB is something that Jewish staff, parents of TDSB students, and the organized Jewish community should oppose with every tool at their disposal.
The work we are doing to promote awareness of the critical issues affecting Canada’s Jewish community is a labour of love, but also an attempt to build a community of well informed readers who are able to stand up to the growing threat of hatred against Canadian Jews driven by the demonization of Israel. We would be grateful if those who are able would consider upgrading to a paid subscription to support our work.
As an additional incentive, paid subscribers can leave a comment.
Thank you to everyone for reading Canadian Zionist Forum.
You are certainly reaching your goal "to promote awareness of the critical issues affecting Canada’s Jewish community .... [and] .... build a community of well informed readers. thank you for another enlightening (and well-written) article.