Montreal”s Concordia University student newspaper has drawn strong criticism for biased coverage of Israel trips taken by university”s current and past presidents.
The campus paper, The Link, published a biased lengthy front-page article on February 21 titled, “Allied in Apartheid: Palestinian Students Denounce Concordia President”s Trip to Israel,” interviewing students who denounced the trip taken by President Graham Carr to Israel in the summer of 2002 and similar trips taken by his predecessors, according to Honest Reporting Canada.
The story quoted campus anti-Israel group Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights (SPHR) attacking Carr”s Israel visit and his meeting with the head of Bar-Ilan University. It said that the group “condemn[s] our president”s visit to occupied Palestine and the resulting deal between Concordia University and this Zionist institution [Bar-Ilan] as this action directly violates Concordia”s alleged commitment to decolonization.”
According to the media watchdog, the authors of the story also interviewed several students who spoke similarly using “anti-Israel rejectionism,” including a student who said, “I don”t think there”s anything academic about the apartheid, colonization and years of mass expulsion, of terror or killings.”

“While anti-Israel voices exist outside the mainstream, there is no clear rationale for why The Link gave these voices such a prominent voice to air their grievances,” Honest Reporting Canada”s Robert Walker wrote on its website. “There is no evidence that those opposed to the visit to Israel outnumber their peers after all, BDS referendums on Canadian campuses are increasingly failing in recent years.”
He noted that 20 years after a notorious anti-Israel riot at Concordia University, “there are voices who apparently wish to see a return to knee-jerk, anti-Israel rejectionism. While they are entitled to their views, however backward, it is unclear why The Link decided that a small group of antagonists deserve such a fawning platform with which to spread their disinformation.”