Montreal(May 23, 2018) – A McGill University report suggests the school's handling ofthe BDS issue at its downtown Montreal campus is causing students to feelalienated and excluded.

The Principal's Task Force on Respect and Inclusion onCampus Life published its final report for the school year. Itraises serious concern over the university's handling of a student councilmeeting last year where a pro-Israel student politician said he was the subjectof a smear campaign by BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) activists simply becausehe was Jewish. 

"MyJewish identity was now public and a target was placed squarely upon me by theMcGill BDS movement," Noah Lew wrote.

Thereport found "the October 2017 SSMU General Assembly and the BDS debatewas the source of significant alarm by many survey respondents. There was aperception that the Principal had taken sides on the controversy..."

Anine-member McGill task force studied the issue in-depth, using surveys, focusgroups, and both public and private consultation meetings. The research was farwider in scope than the work that informed a nine-page Principal's report on theOctober incident published in December. That report found that a prominentstudent political group used "anti-Jewish tropes" on social media butalso concluded that there was insufficient evidence to point to anantisemitism problem in McGill's student government. 

This new in-depth report, which dealt with anumber of campus speech issues, identified "a real need for moretransparent, humane, and empathetic communication between all members of ourcommunity."