Discussions of Justice Spiro exemplified campus Antisemitism
The Azarova affair was a reminder of the fraught place of Zionism on campus
Last week, in a group chat of my closest friends from law school, someone shared a link to a newly published decision from the Federal Court.
“Does this mean it’s finally over?” I asked, upon reviewing the contents of the decision.
“Looks like it” they replied.
The Federal Court case we were discussing was National Council of Canadian Muslims v Canada (Attorney General), the judicial review into the Canadian Judicial Council (CJC) decision not to sanction Justice David Spiro.
The Justice Spiro case, and the circumstances surrounding it loomed large over my final year of law school, and the commentary of professors and peers on the situation served as an incessant reminder of the pervasive permissibility of casual Antisemitism.
In 2020, legal scholar Valentina Azarova was purportedly the top candidate for the directorship of the International Human Rights Program, a non-tenure track position at the University of Toronto’s Law School. After Azarova was ultimately not offered the position, scandal broke out, much of it centering on communication between Tax Court Judge and donor David Spiro, and a law school administrator recommending that more “due diligence” be done into Azarova because of her track record of scholarship alleging Israeli apartheid and war crimes, and the reactions this was likely to provoke from the broader community.
With immediate fervor, the Azarova affair appeared to be heightening tension for Jewish law students in Canada. The situation shone a spotlight on anti-Israel scholarship, and the place of scholars who promote this space at universities. But beyond the intellectual sphere, it changed the nature of the comments made about Jews and Israel, and questions asked of Jewish students. Suddenly, peers felt comfortable imposing perspectives on a complicated geo-political situation onto Jewish students, alleging that by fact of their faith they must support one side and oppose the other. The truth of individual Jewish support for Israel is always more complicated. Insinuations of Jewish privilege or imagined Jewish control began to tug at the seams of countless situations where questions of faith and Israel should never have been introduced.
The reaction of law school community to the Azarova affair became an incessant reminder of how differently Antisemitism is treated than other forms of racism. Students and professors posted regularly on Twitter about the situation and raised the issue in class whenever possible, including on occasion espousing online support for acts of violence committed against Israeli Jews. In the name of their defense of Azarova and condemnation of Justice Spiro, they were empowered to make comments on the complicated situation in the Middle East with little backing or regard for the impact these comments might have. Even after the CJC found that Justice Spiro’s conduct had not risen to the level of requiring sanction, and that his remorse for his actions had been clearly demonstrated through public statements, students shared links to articles in the chat window of an online class stating that Justice Spiro and “people like him” should not be allowed on the bench.
At the forefront of the allegations of bias and inappropriate conduct against Justice Spiro was his Jewishness and his connection to Jewish community organizations. The myths of Jewish power lingered in the air of every conversation of him or Azarova - this idea that he held some higher power, as a Jewish and Zionist person, to influence the decisions of the University.
Bias, in the realm of judges, is not taken lightly. Accusations of bias have an extremely high threshold to reach, and few achieve this - it requires acts that clearly display that the trier of fact’s mind has already been made up or there is some conflict preventing them from making the decision they would otherwise make. Contacting an administrator to advise them of a potential controversy falls short of this standard.
Too often during my law school experience I witnessed professors and administrators forget, omit, or fail to recognize the impacts of Antisemitism on Jewish students, and the ways that conversations about Israel are not merely an intellectual exercise for those with some skin in the game. In the push for increased diversity and inclusion, the Jewish community has lost its minority status, particularly in the realm of higher education. This shift has played a central role in the increased permissibility of casual Antisemitism of the kind that arose out of discussions of the Azarova affair.
Justice Spiro never made a personal statement as to his feelings about Azarova’s scholarship, nor did he explicitly advise against hiring her. The reason she was not selected remains unknown. The CJC found that his actions did not merit sanctions and the Federal Court confirmed this decision. For over a year, one person’s attempt to advocate for their community opened the floodgates to public comments going well beyond legitimate criticism of Israel.
It is of relief to many that the Justice Spiro case is, with any luck, finally put to bed, but what the way it was used as an excuse to justify comments ranging from inappropriate to Antisemitic is unlikely to soon be forgotten.