Canadian activist professors plan two-day strike of universities to promote defunding the police

A group called Scholar Strike is planning to hold a two day strike against university classes across Canada to bring attention to anti-racism doctrine and defunding the police.

Their website says that they will hold a series of public digital teach-ins to bring together activists, artists and scholars from York University, University of Toronto, Ryerson University and OCAD University. The "Scholar Strike" is set to take place on September 9 and 10. The site contains a link to a YouTube channel called "Scholar Strike Canada" where their teach-ins will be streamed tomorrow and the next day.

Beverly Bain, a co-organizer of the strike and a women and gender studies professor at the University of Toronto, told The Star “Our university cannot simply give us these platitudes, these statements that say, we do not support anti-Black racism, but at the same time, we’re not seeing that they are genuinely participating in restructuring within the institution itself.”

Scholar Strike's website outlines the aims of the strike:

• Support the demands for defunding the police and redistributing those resources to Black, Indigenous, racialized, queer and trans communities for the creation of sustainable and healthy communities.
• Support demands to remove campus police.  All agreements between policing institutions and universities must be rescinded.
• Address the historic and current underrepresentation of Black and Indigenous faculty (full and part-time) in all Canadian institutions and press University Administrations to prioritize the urgency of these faculty hires.
• Commit to supporting meaningful efforts to recruit, admit, retain and mentor Black, Indigenous and racialized undergraduate and graduate students.
• Support the campaign by CUPE 3261 to stop the University of Toronto from contracting out caretaking services thereby relinquishing its responsibility to safeguard secure and suitable paying jobs and health and safety of workers
• Advocate for the creation, expansion, and maintenance of mental health and health care resources for students at our universities.
• Support the demand for affordable education, sustainable jobs and housing for students and cultural professionals across all the universities.

So far, over 500 faculty members from across the country have signed on to participate in this strike and more universities are taking note.

A statement released by the University of Calgary is telling students and faculty that they, "may choose to participate in Sep. 9 and 10 events." and that "in the coming months the University will be hosting a series of conversations and workshops on this topic."

Scholar Strike's website describes the movement to have "originated in the U.S from a tweet by Dr. Anthea Butler who, inspired by the striking WNBA and NBA players, put out a call for a similar labour action from academics." They say "the Canadian action is aligned with the one in the U.S., in its call for racial justice, an end to anti-Black police violence and it adds a specific focus on anti-Indigenous, colonial violence."