There must be a path to peace

Somewhere between apparently spitting at university officials while receiving a graduation diploma onstage (McGill) and the withholding of graduation diplomas from students who’ve most aggressively resisted demands to dismantle “pro Palestinian” campus encampments (Harvard), there must be a pathway toward conciliatory resolution.

- ROSIE DIMANNO

Pro-Palestinian protesters chant at University of Chicago police while being kept from the university's quad on May 7. As of Sunday, there were about 80 encampments left in the U.S. and, according to a timeline on the University Affairs website, four in Canada, Rosie DiManno writes.

Somewhere between students given a 10-minute deadline to vamoose and the arrival of cops to clear out protesters (York University), and the entrenched encampments where squatters have vowed to stay put ad infinitum unless their demands are met (University of Toronto), there surely should be space to manoeuvre a peaceful deliverance from stridency. Although it’s curious how Toronto Police acted expediently in one case (asked by administrators) and haven’t acted at all in the other (not without a court order in hand).

Somewhere between tear gas and batons to disperse a student march blocking streets (University of Quebec in Montreal) and capitulation to ultimatums from shouty demonstrators at prestige institutions (Rutgers, Brown, Northwestern), there’s got to be a rational denouement that doesn’t absolve hotheads and outside agitators.

Just as somewhere between the celebration for four hostages rescued in central Gaza by Israeli special forces on the weekend and scores of Palestinians simultaneously killed in airstrikes during the extraction, there has to be an off-ramp for a devastating military offensive now into its eighth month, which has claimed tens of thousands of lives.