Context

The University of Alberta is central to the origin story of Witch, Please Productions. We, Marcelle and Hannah, were both located at the U of A when our original podcast, Witch, Please, began; we are also both alumni of the Department of English and Film Studies where Marcelle is currently an instructor. It was at the University of Alberta where we discovered our passion for publicly engaged scholarship, and where we learned to revel in the complexities of feminist, anti-racist, and decolonial politics in conversation with community. Our deep connection to the institution compels us to publicly denounce the horrific and shameful actions of the university’s current administration. 

On Saturday, May 11, 2024, the University of Alberta’s leadership invited a heavily militarized police force to enter campus and brutally dismantle a peaceful student-led encampment. This action mimicked the similarly brutal dismantling of a peaceable student encampment authorized by the University of Calgary on May 9, 2024. These encampments are part of a worldwide student movement to protest academic institutions’ complicity in the ongoing genocide in Gaza and to call for divestment from companies that facilitate that genocide. The encampment’s demands for the University of Alberta were articulated simply and clearly:

• Disclose and divest from institutional and financial investments with Israeli institutions and all companies financially complicit in the occupation, and thus the current genocide of Palestinians;
• Defend the right to protest by giving amnesty to any and all participants of this encampment;
• Declare via an immediate statement its condemnation of this genocide and call on the Canadian government to end all military contracts with Israel.

Rather than meeting with representatives from the encampment, the administration of University of Alberta chose to “evict” the protestors in a move so disproportionately violent it must be condemned in the strongest terms. Let us be very clear that no student protest ever warrants police intervention; yet all accounts of the encampment at the University of Alberta have emphasized its robust learning environment and safe, welcoming atmosphere. The administration’s cowardly, violent response to its own students represents an egregious failure of leadership that cannot be undone. As Natalie Loveless wrote in her public resignation from her role as Associate Dean of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion in the Faculty of Arts, “With police marching on our students, on our campus, I can neither protect students nor facilitate the difficult conversations that are needed to advance equity and justice for our community.” 

Call to Action

In response to the violent silencing of student protest at both of these institutions, academics from across Canada are signing an open letter calling for the boycott and censure of the University of Alberta as well as the University of Calgary. We at Witch, Please Productions wholeheartedly support this boycott and join in the call for the Canadian Association of University Teachers to formally censure both institutions for undermining the right to free expression and assembly at these public institutions of education. We also encourage any of you who are also Canadian academics to sign onto the open letter. 

Further Reading

Sign the open letter and call for boycott and censure of the Universities of Alberta and Calgary (also linked above) here.

Procedures relating to censure as outlined by the Canadian Association of University Teachers can be found here.

The original statement of intent, including the core demands, by the People’s University for Palestine (the name of the encampment at the University of Alberta) can be found here.

A statement from the Palestinian Student Alliance can be found here:

A statement of solidarity from the Indigenous Students’ Union can be found here.

A statement of solidarity from the University of Alberta Political Science Department can be found here.  

Letter of resignation from Natalee Lovelace, quoted above, can be found here.

Letters of resignation from ALL faculty members serving on the University of Alberta Faculty of Arts Committee on Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion can be found here.

An open letter from two “Ashamed Alumni” can be found here.

An open letter from faculty members at the University of Alberta and University of Calgary Faculties of Law can be found here.