Faculty join U of T encampment protest

Pro-Palestinian student protesters are entering the third day of their encampment demonstration at the University of Toronto Saturday and are seeing faculty joining them in support. 

Robyn Maynard, an assistant professor at the University of Toronto, was at the encampment Saturday supporting students. 

She said there's a large number of University faculty there in solidarity.

"We feel it's really important that we can be here as witnesses, given the kinds of dangers some of the students have been exposed to," she said. 

"It's also important to be here, because their demands are important....asking the University to divest from Israel," she said. Maynard said academic colleagues and students have been killed in Gaza and the university was destroyed.

She said the students will not leave until the school divests. Maynard pointed out that Brown University and Rutgers University have agreed to look at students demands, in confronting their own student protests.

Another protestor, Ahmed Ayash, said he completed both his masters and PhD at the University of Toronto.

"[Students] believe in supporting this cause. I think that they're willing to stay for as long as it takes until U of T really understands that the students are serious," he said.

Since the encampment was set up Thursday, over 3100 U of T alumni have signed a letter in support of the students. 

Undergraduate student Baron Mackey says the school has divested after student outcry in the past. He pointed to the 2021 announcement that U of T would divest from fossil fuels.

"Hundreds of students and faculty have shown up," he said. Adding that the school is engaging in public messaging that is not painting an accurate picture of the encampment that has been "very peaceful." 

"We take things day by day, hour by hour," he said. 

The university has said it's concerned about what it claims as reports of threats and other illegal activity but has so far not indicated it plans to remove the encampment.

"We have conveyed our expectations and shared our observations regarding actions that have contravened them, including lack of crowd control, health and safety risks, destruction of property, and use of language that is considered discriminatory, threatening or hateful," the university said in its latest statement to the U of T community on Friday.