Content warning: This article discusses Islamophobia and mentions antisemitism.

On January 30, U of T’s Muslim Law Students’ Association (MLSA) released a statement expressing concerns over an online Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) training course assigned to first-year law students that contained Islamophobic content. 

The issue has since been raised to the National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM), which started a campaign to demand a public apology from U of T’s Faculty of Law.

The course’s content

Titled “Antisemitism: From Its Origins to the Present,” the course is available through the open online course provider Coursera. The course contains six modules, with the first module titled “What is Antisemitism? Definitions and Origins” assigned to first-year students to complete by January 31. The module was part of the Faculty of Law’s mandatory “EDI and Professionalism” program for first years. 

The online course was created and is taught by two instructors who are part of Yad Vashem, Israel’s official memorial to Holocaust victims, established by the Israeli Parliament in 1953. 

Students would also later receive emails from Coursera with content summaries of other modules in the course. 

Module five’s summary, titled “The Islamic and Arab World” stated, “The historical context of Allah’s anger towards the Jews significantly shaped the Muslim community’s attitudes and interactions with Jewish populations,” and that “The emergence of Islamism has profoundly influenced modern extremist movements, with roots in ideological foundations established by groups like the Muslim Brotherhood.” 

“Allah” refers to the Arabic word for “god,” and “Islamism” refers to a set of political ideologies that draw from Islamic tradition and are often wrongly conflated with terrorism. 

In the MLSA’s statement on Instagram, it wrote that “Amongst other claims, the modules propagandize Islamic history, using the Holy Quran and Hadith to make empirically false and dangerous claims that Muslims are antisemitic […] [They] make blatantly Islamophobic and prejudicial assertions that Muslim societies are unaware of notions of equality and paint Muslims as terrorists.” 

The Varsity was able to access the course’s materials. In a module five video titled “A Distorted Interpretation of the Past,” Esther Webman, a former research fellow at Tel Aviv University’s Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies, claims that “Anti-semitism is rooted in the Islamic text because the Islamic texts are used in order to create modern times anti-semitism.”

MLSA members Humza Khan, Sakina Hasnain, and Samar Moghal wrote for U of T Faculty of Law’s independent student newspaper Ultra Vires that the timing of the course’s assignment was “especially disturbing” given that January 29 is recognized as the National Day of Remembrance and Action against Islamophobia in commemoration of the Québec City Mosque Shooting. 

The 2017 mass shooting at the Islamic Cultural Centre of Québec City killed six men and seriously injured five others. 

“This heinous act of terrorism, fueled by Islamophobic vitriol, serves as a solemn reminder that prejudice exists within our communities and country. This year, […] Muslim students at U of T Law were given a rude awakening and stark reminder that our school is no different,” they wrote. 

Faculty of Law’s response and updated statement 

On February 4, the MLSA posted an updated statement on its Instagram. The post said that the administration privately responded to the association’s previous statement, emphasizing that they had only assigned the first module to students and expressing their regret for the “unintended” harm. 

The post stated, “The fact that the module containing the most Islamophobic content was not assigned does not absolve the administration.” It added that the administration assigning the module without checking other modules in the course, “only underscores their failure to properly review this material before distributing it to students. The inclusion of these modules at all reflects a lack of due diligence and a disregard for the harm it could cause.” 

The statement called for a public apology from the Dean of the Faculty of Law, Jutta Brunnée, a retraction of the course, and a commitment to consulting with equity-seeking groups on EDI materials applicable to them. The statement was co-signed by various law school student groups, including the U of T Law Union and the co-presidents of the Jewish Law Students’ Association (JLSA). 

On February 27, JLSA members Pe’er Krut and Maytal Lazarovic also wrote a piece in Ultra Vires on behalf of the JLSA. They shared that the Faculty of Law had been in conversation with the JLSA in regards to antisemitism training and had confirmed that they would be bringing in a speaker — until the training was moved to the online course “with no warning or explanation.”

“The very students these trainings are meant to support were, once again, left correcting mistakes that Administration could have avoided if they had just meaningfully consulted the people affected,” they stated. 

Khan, Hasnain, and Mughal shared in their Ultra Vires piece that, following the updated statement, the MLSA was called to a private meeting with the Deans of the Faculty of Law. After first-year law students were sent an email from Assistant Dean Maxwell-Alleyne, which informed them that the module had been unassigned and that the EDI and Professionalism series had been paused.

“This feedback is troubling, and we will be contacting Coursera to relay your concerns. We are taking this feedback very seriously,” the email read. It also added instructions for students on how to disable Coursera’s auto-generated emails.

In an email to The Varsity, Associate Dean of the JD program, Christopher Essert, wrote that, “The concerns that have been raised did not relate to the assigned material, but to other modules that were not assigned and to auto-generated prompts and summaries students received from the online course provider.”

He added, “The Faculty regrets the unintentional harm that has resulted from this situation, particularly for Muslim students, and has paused the EDI and Professionalism series to review its approach and content.” 

“Faculty leaders will continue discussions with student groups and community organizations to consult on the design and delivery of learning opportunities that better advance inclusion and belonging,” Essert wrote.

Escalation to NCCM campaign

On February 14, the NCCM Instagram account posted screenshots of the course summaries and the administration’s response that was sent to students’ emails. 

The post called for community members to send letters to the administration demanding acknowledgement that the material was Islamophobic and an investigation into how the course materials were selected. 

As of writing, the administration has not issued a public apology for including the course material. 

NCCM’s Senior Advocacy Officer Fatema Abdalla told The Varsity in an interview that the law school’s course material “is an example of systemic Islamophobia that we have seen within universities and in the education space… There’s so much more that needs to happen, and in this scenario, the University of Toronto [Faculty of Law] should be held accountable. It’s very important that we see a public apology come out from them.”

Abdalla added that diverse perspectives need to be considered when assigning such materials.

“It’s very important that there’s a… diverse representation wherever folks are passing such course material… There need to be measures taken into account, ensuring that diverse perspectives are heard so that such material is never circulated, ever again,” she said.