The 2025/26 Concordia Student Union handbook is out. On the surface, it looks like a standard spiral bound planner. Bold type proclaims “Made for students, by students,” and the cover shows protesters holding signs about justice and liberation. But if you know Concordia’s history, you know a handbook here is never just a handbook.
I covered the first controversial one for The Suburban back in 2001. That edition was not called a student agenda at all. It was titled “Uprising.” It was not subtle. The name was lifted straight from the Palestinian Intifada. Inside, pages urged students to rise up and take to the streets. Canada Day was portrayed as a day of shame. Israel’s Independence Day was relabeled Al Nakba, the catastrophe. One page showed a plane hurtling toward a room of businessmen with the caption “this is not an agenda called uprising, this is an agenda for uprising.” This was handed out to students just before September 11.
It was not educational. It was propaganda. Jewish students did not see themselves represented in it. They saw themselves attacked. The president of the CSU at the time, Sabrina Stea, could not defend the direction things had gone and resigned in the middle of the uproar. The union had crossed a line and they knew it.
But the climate kept getting worse. On September 9, 2002, Concordia was supposed to host former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Instead, the Hall Building descended into chaos. Protesters hurled furniture, smashed windows, blocked doors, and assaulted people who came to hear him speak. Riot police stormed the building and used pepper spray. The speech never happened.
What often gets whitewashed is who suffered that day. Holocaust survivors who came to hear Netanyahu were physically assaulted. One of them was philanthropist Thomas Hecht, a man who had dedicated his life to education and community building. To think that a Holocaust survivor, a man who had already endured humanity’s worst, was shoved and attacked at a Canadian university in 2002 is something that should stain Concordia’s reputation forever.
Names from that day are still remembered. Now journalist Aaron Maté, then a CSU vice president, was among those arrested. Yves Engler, who would later make a career out of anti Israel agitism, was suspended for his role in the violence. Today, Engler is trying to climb even higher. He has launched a bid for the leadership of the federal NDP. The same man suspended for campus rioting at Concordia now wants to lead a national political party.
And he was not alone. Laith Marouf, one of the organizers of the Netanyahu riot, was also suspended by Concordia. Marouf would go on to resurface years later in Ottawa, tied to the Liberal Government through a federally funded so called anti racism program that had to be shut down after his history of antisemitic statements became public. The trajectory from campus mob organizer to government consultant shows just how far Concordia’s poison has spread into Canadian public life.
Fast forward to 2025. The CSU’s latest edition does not have the brazen title “Uprising.” It looks cleaner, more polished, almost corporate. But the university’s atmosphere has not fundamentally changed. Last year, vandals smashed the windows of the Azrieli Institute of Israel Studies and spray painted anti Israel slogans across its walls. Instead of condemning it, members of Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights (SPHR) expressed pride in the attack. Jewish students were left once again to wonder if Concordia’s administration would ever protect them.
So when I see “Made for students, by students” stamped on this new handbook, I know exactly what that means. At Concordia, “students” has never meant all students. It has meant the ones who cheer when Jewish spaces are trashed. It has meant the ones who turn an academic agenda into a revolutionary manifesto. It has meant the ones who think silencing Jewish voices by force is a form of activism.
I covered Uprising in 2001, I watched Netanyahu’s speech collapse under violence in 2002, and I have seen every cycle of this story play out. Concordia’s handbook is not an innocent planner. It is a marker of where the CSU stands, and by extension, where Concordia still stands: a campus that has never learned to treat its Jewish students as equal members of the community.
This is my alma mater. And I am ashamed. Because when men like Yves Engler and Laith Marouf can go from rioting in the Hall Building to reaching for national political power and government funding, it proves that Concordia’s failure is not confined to one campus. It has infected the country. And unless we call it out for what it is, it will only grow stronger.
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