Speakers from Palestine are being brought into Ontario classrooms via Zoom to lecture students — paid directly from union dues deducted from publicly funded professor salaries — without meaningful efforts to fact-check viewpoints or ensure balance in a place that is meant to be dedicated to learning facts.

Professors at Trent University are paid primarily from Ontario taxpayer grants and tuition fees. Upon hiring, they are automatically enrolled in the Trent University Faculty Association (TUFA), with union dues deducted straight from their paycheques.

While an “opt-out” exists, it only redirects the money to charity — you cannot simply stop paying. Thus, public sector funds support this faculty association regardless of individual professors’ agreement.

TUFA has gone all-in on one side of the Israel-Palestine conflict. In June 2024, they passed a “Prevent Scholasticide in Palestine” motion. An original petition drew around 60 faculty signatories — mostly from Sociology, Gender & Women’s Studies, International Development, and Environmental Studies.

The motion then passed at a special meeting with a two-thirds majority among the 120–150 attendees present.

The motion strongly criticizes Israel for defending itself against the largest terrorist attack it has ever experienced (October 7, 2023), demands an immediate ceasefire, full divestment from and boycott of anything tied to Israeli military/defence/security/intelligence/tech sectors, and establishes a committee to sever every possible institutional link.

Go Ad Free

It also works to revitalize and repurpose Trent’s existing Scholars at Risk program specifically to nominate and bring in Palestinian academics. The full motion is publicly available on the Trent Faculty website.

TUFA has since rolled out programs paying Palestinian scholars from Gaza and the West Bank $300 USD each time to speak to students via Zoom in classes and public events. The association is now budgeting thousands more to expand these sessions, including hiring a grad student to organize even more.

One has to question whether these speakers have been properly vetted given their controversial public stances.

One example: On February 6, 2026, the School of the Environment’s TSE Seminar Series hosted a Zoom talk by Mazin Qumsiyeh from Bethlehem University, titled “Environmental destruction versus environmental justice and sustainability: Case study in Palestine.”

It remains listed on the Trent University website.

In his own public writings, Qumsiyeh advocates a “One State Solution” that would abolish Israel’s Law of Return as “discriminatory and racist” while insisting on full Palestinian refugee return — widely interpreted as ending Israel as a Jewish state. You can see more detail about his position on his website.

Further concerns arise from Qumsiyeh’s social media history, which includes Holocaust revisionism and blood libels. In an October 2025 post he wrote, seemingly in reference to Israel: “I think worse than Hitler. Hitler never starved a territory he occupied. But both committed genocide (holocaust).”

I think worse than Hitler. Hitler never starved a territory he occupied. But both committed genocide (holocaust) https://t.co/4S6MfXS66e

— Mazin Qumsiyeh (@mazinq) October 3, 2025

Yet no equivalent push for balance appears when it comes to Israel-Palestine programming funded by TUFA dues.

A glaring symbol of the one-sided tilt is the Faryon Bridge. In May 2024, Students 4 Palestine (S4P) Trent began a vigil there, chalking hundreds of names of Palestinian children reportedly killed in Gaza (citing Gaza Ministry of Health figures, which is run by Hamas).

They renamed it the “Alareer Bridge” after Refaat Alareer, who supported “armed resistance,” called October 7 “legitimate and moral,” compared Hamas actions to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, and rejected reports of sexual violence by Hamas as “lies.”

When Israel ran out of lies, it regurgitated the rape and sexual violence lie. The first to get the Zionist marching orders is this UN racist Antonio Guterres.
ALL the rape/sexual violence allegations are lies. Israel uses them as smokescreens to justify the Gaza genocide. https://t.co/GcWWIhItI5

— Refaat in Gaza 🇵🇸 (@itranslate123) December 4, 2023

Re-chalkings of the bridge continued through 2024–2025 and beyond, updating to nearly 19,000 names by fall 2025, with slogans like “4 years old, deprived of the joys of preschool.” Trent’s administration allowed it to remain during 2024 convocation citing free speech.

In early August 2025, pro-Israel messages appeared (“RELEASE HOSTAGES,” a Star of David), but The Arthur, Trent’s only school newspaper, described them as “vandalism” and “heartless defacement” amid framing the war as “genocide.”

By September 15, 2025, S4P and Faculty 4 Palestine erased them, re-chalked again, and vowed annual events — making it a permanent fixture.

There is zero equivalent recognition for October 7 victims — no chalked names for the 1,200 Israelis killed, no vigils for hostages, no acknowledgment of that side. Pro-Israel voices risk being shouted down or literally erased.

This isn’t free speech in a neutral sense. It’s insidious, taxpayer-subsidized political indoctrination — clandestine, unbalanced, and lacking transparency or any commitment to presenting multiple perspectives on one of the most divisive issues today. Ontarians have every right to question how public dollars fund this without accountability, especially when it shapes young minds in university classrooms.

We reached out to Trent University for comment but did not hear back by the time of publication.