Author’s photo, 30 July 2024.
By Edward Dunsworth
Order has been restored to the campus of McGill University. Gone is the tent village, its perimeter fence adorned with a multilingual cacophony of banners decrying genocide and crying out for peace and freedom. Gone is the “Free Store,” the “Profs 4 Palestine” tent, and the video monitor screening documentaries. Gone too is the mud, everywhere and thick, and the truckload of wooden pallets cleverly laid down as sidewalks and platforms.
And gone are the dozens of young people who dared to believe that an institution of higher learning should have nothing to do with a state carrying out genocide, apartheid, and the most heinous of war crimes.
After months of legal battles, fearmongering, and handwringing, McGill’s administration finally succeeded in ending the antiwar encampment, hiring a private security firm to evict campers and a demolition crew to take down the camp on July 10, some ten weeks after it was first established.
Having restored order, McGill is anxious to ensure it is maintained. The encampment is gone, but the campus is not “back to normal.” It is transformed.
