The University of Manitoba proclaims commitments to human rights and academic integrity, yet invests in arms manufacturers supplying Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Jonathan Jenner exposes the contradiction, framing it as a trilemma between ethics, investments, and intellectual seriousness—and argues that only divestment can resolve the university’s moral failure.

Canada could be an educational superpower. Taking advantage of the brain-drain from the US, we could recruit the best and brightest to fill our labs, faculty lounges, and classrooms. By leading the world in research, we could build back up some credibility and soft power on the world stage. But we need to fix our own long-neglected system first.

People in Canadian prisons are barred from using the internet or email, and printed materials are limited and hard to come by. Most prisons have a library, but access can be heavily restricted due to rolling lockdowns and bureaucratic obstacles. This lack of access to information creates significant barriers that extend far beyond an individual’s time in prison.

Despite Poilievre’s flagging popularity and disagreements within the Canadian right over his divisive style, the Conservative leader refuses to pivot from Trumpian politics. In fact, he is reinforcing his Trump-like image in the final days of the election, including by threatening crackdowns on Canadian universities to suppress criticism of Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

A non-political civil service, diversity, USAID, the National Endowment for the Humanities, Fulbright Scholarships, federal funding for scientific and medical research—the Washington Post, the Kennedy Center, the National Gallery of Art, Ivy League universities, “big law”—the great institutions of liberal America are falling to Trump like dominoes, one by one.

The notion that the Munk School promotes democracy, liberty, and freedom is tainted by its namesake’s legacy. The centre was bankrolled by a right-wing oligarch whose fortune was drawn from plunder, and who actively quashed critical reporting on his company’s global activities. If the professors ditching Yale for Munk have any awareness of these facts, they haven’t shown it.

The law in authoritarian states protects the criminality of the powerful. It revokes due process, basic freedoms and the rights of citizenship. It is an instrument of repression. It is a very small step from the stripping of rights from a legal resident holding a green card to the stripping of rights of any citizen. This is what is coming.

Totalitarian regimes seek absolute control over the institutions that reproduce ideas, especially the media and education. Narratives that challenge the myths used to legitimize absolute power—in our case historical facts that blemish the sanctity of white male supremacy, capitalism and Christian fundamentalism—are erased. There is to be no shared reality.

If Canadians accept the flimsy, speculative pretexts offered by university authorities to crush peaceful protest, we risk the further erosion of our political rights and freedoms. If these rights may be trampled underfoot on university campuses without legal challenge, where are they protected? Constitutional lawyers, don your armour.

More information has been revealed about why the University of Alberta decided to replace “equity, diversity, and inclusion” initiatives with a “new framework” called “access, community, and belonging” (ACB). It is clearer than ever that the impetus for this move was political and ultimately aimed at placating the province’s far-right politicians.