Openly Jewish
TMJew Hillel TMU Hillel Ontario
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A partnership of

TMJew Hillel TMU Hillel Ontario
Applications open Tuesday, October 20, 2026 Toronto Metropolitan University

OpenlyJewish

TMU Special Symposium on Antisemitism at Canadian Universities

Apply to attend Read the case Limited capacity. Every seat is reviewed.
Five languages, one sentence. Each line has a note; select or focus a line to read it.
Times
Registration 7:30 a.m., close 5:00 p.m.
Optional dinner 6 p.m.
Location
POD-250, Podium Building
350 Victoria Street, Toronto Metropolitan University
Map to the building
Admission
By application · $50
Free for the first 50 students approved
Convened by
Hillel TMU, Hillel Ontario and TMJew, through the TMU Jewish Employee Community Network.
The case
Why this day

Canada's antisemitism crisis demands a targeted, serious, and intellectually honest response. Universities have been ground zero.

Across Canada, campus environments have become places where antisemitism is rationalized, minimized, reframed, or excused — through scholarship, activism, institutional neutrality, and academic freedom. The result is a climate in which many Jewish students, faculty, staff, and community members experience hostility and exclusion, along with a profound loss of confidence that universities can recognize antisemitism clearly when it appears in their own midst.

Openly Jewish brings together scholars, institutional leaders, Jewish community organizations, students, faculty, staff, and public-sector partners for a day of discussion, reflection, and practical problem-solving. It is hosted at Toronto Metropolitan University, in the heart of the sector that must now examine its own role. That setting is not incidental. It is central to the purpose of the day.

Name academic antisemitism clearly, understand how it operates, and build practical strategies for change.

The questions
What is the work

Four questions, taken seriously for a full day.

The lived experience of students, faculty, staff, and community members: what hostility and exclusion look like day to day, how they are documented, and what they cost the people carrying them.

The mechanisms themselves — scholarship, activism, institutional neutrality, and academic freedom — and how each can be used to rationalize, minimize, reframe, or excuse.

What it takes to be openly Jewish at work and in class: the risks people weigh before speaking, and the conditions that make speaking possible.

Practical strategies built in the room by the people who will have to use them, rather than recommendations handed to institutions from outside.

Openly Jewish is intended to be serious, respectful, and constructive — while refusing to pretend that this problem is abstract, distant, justifiable, or someone else's responsibility.

Program
October 20

The shape of the day.

7:30 – 8:30 a.m.

Registration

Doors open at POD 250. Identity is confirmed against your application, so bring photo ID.

8:30 – 8:45 a.m.

Code of conduct and policy on recording

Daphne Taras

8:45 – 9:00 a.m.

Welcome and land acknowledgement

Harry LaFormeJanice LaForme

9:00 – 10:15 a.m.
Keynote

What is happening to Jews on Canada's campuses?

Cary Kogan

10:15 – 10:45 a.m.

Break — snacks

10:45 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.
Panel 1

Academic freedom and brainy antisemitism and antizionism: veiling Jew-hatred in scholarship

Jacqui DresslerRhonda Lenton

12:00 – 1:30 p.m.
Working lunch

Facilitated discussions in four groups

  • Group 1Jews and DEI on campuses
  • Group 2Faculty unions and representation rights
  • Group 3How Jewish employees organize for voice
  • Group 4Dealing with fear, threats and intimidation in the classroom and on campus
1:30 – 2:30 p.m.
Keynote

Second keynote

Jesse Brown

2:30 – 3:00 p.m.

Break — snacks

3:00 – 4:30 p.m.
Panel 2

Constructive ideas and examples that inspire

Ayelet KuperShelley CarrollZach Sadowski

4:30 – 5:00 p.m.

Closing remarks

6:00 p.m.
Optional

Dinner at Kosh Chai

Not included in the symposium fee. Register separately on your application.

All speakers and schedule subject to change. Stuff happens.

Attend
By application

The room is finite. Who is in it is not incidental.

Tell us who you are and why you want to be in the room.

Fee
$50, including kosher refreshments and a kosher dairy lunch. Returned in full to anyone whose application is not approved, less the payment processing fee, which the processor does not return.
Student seats
50 seats are reserved for students, free for the first 50 approved.
On arrival
Identity is confirmed at the door against your application. Bring photo ID.
Waitlist
The room holds 150. Eligible applicants beyond that go on a waitlist.
Symposium Code of Conduct

Maintaining the safety and dignity of all participants in this symposium is essential. In order to register, you must agree to be respectful of all attendees, speakers, and topics, regardless of your agreement with the content. Disruptive behaviours are unacceptable. Examples of disruptive behaviours include but are not limited to:

  • Interrupting or attempting to stop speakers from delivering their remarks,
  • Interfering with other participants’ ability to participate in or engage with the symposium,
  • Filibustering, speechifying, or otherwise delivering a speech rather than asking a question during Q&A sessions,
  • Disrespecting or disregarding the moderator of any session,
  • Distributing or displaying materials without consent.

All applicants to attend must verify their identities before entering the symposium.

Any violation of decorum will be reported to attendees’ academic institutions or employers as applicable.

Each session will have a moderator and the event will have an individual identified as responsible for enforcement of the code of conduct. The event is approved and overseen by TMU Security, and security personnel may remove individuals who are in breach of the code of conduct.

You are asked to agree to the Symposium Code of Conduct as part of your application.

Convenors
Who is hosting

TMJew

The Toronto Metropolitan University Jewish Alliance is a convening body for Jews affiliated with TMU.

TMJew exists to foster a supportive and inclusive environment for Jewish employees, staff, and other non-student affiliates of TMU; to respect the diversity of Jewish identities, traditions, and perspectives; and to represent the concerns and interests of Jews as equity rights holders to university administration, governance bodies, and external stakeholders.

It also promotes understanding of Jewish history, culture, and contemporary experience; responds to antisemitism and its manifestations in academic settings; and advances equity and inclusion within the university community. TMJew is an assembly of its members and Councils and has no official standing at Toronto Metropolitan University.

Leadership

  • Marsha Barber
  • Aaron Orkin
  • Leanne Sachs
  • Gena Smith
  • Daphne Taras
  • Lori Vininsky

TMJew is made up of the Jewish Employee Community Network and the Jewish Affiliates Network, the second for people affiliated with TMU who cannot join JECN under TMU policy — clinical faculty, faculty emeritus and emerita, clinical supervisors.

Presented with

Hillel TMU Hillel Ontario

Contact TMJew.info@gmail.com

Support
Another way to help

Supporting this work does not require a seat.

The room holds 150. Far more people want this day to happen than can be in it.

Openly Jewish is convened by TMJew, through the TMU Jewish Employee Community Network, with Hillel TMU and Hillel Ontario. If you want to help this day happen — or the work it comes out of — you can give directly.

Giving is separate from applying. It does not affect whether an application is approved, and it does not reserve a seat. Applications are reviewed on what people write, and nothing else.

Donate — opens in a new tab

Venue
Getting there

Location

POD 250
Toronto Metropolitan University

Podium Building, 350 Victoria Street, Toronto. Steps from TMU Station.
Map to the building
Room and accessibility details

Safety

The symposium has been approved and organized in collaboration with TMU campus security. Attendance is confirmed at the door against your application, which is why we ask for date of birth and photo ID.

Speaker biographies

Lilach Marom

Lilach Marom

Panel 1 · Assistant Professor, Faculty of Education, Simon Fraser University

Lilach Marom is an assistant professor in the Faculty of Education at Simon Fraser University. Her research draws on critical theories to highlight issues of equity, anti-racism, and inclusion in education. She has worked as an educator with diverse students and communities in multiple contexts. She has written about the experiences of racialized, Indigenous, disabled and international students in higher and teacher education. Her current project examines EDI policies, discourses, and action plans in higher education and K-12, asking what is included and what is left unaddressed in pursuit of a more robust understanding and implementation of EDI.

Rochelle Direnfeld

Rochelle Direnfeld

Panel 2 · BA (Hon.), LLB · Senior criminal counsel, Alliance of Canadians Combatting Antisemitism

Called to the Ontario bar in 1990, Rochelle Direnfeld served in the Ontario Public Service for more than 33 years, holding roles as assistant Crown attorney, deputy Crown attorney, Crown counsel, and ultimately deputy director for Toronto Crown Attorneys in the Criminal Law Division of the Ontario Ministry of the Attorney General. She retired from public service at the end of 2023. Throughout her career, Rochelle prosecuted a broad range of Criminal Code matters before the Ontario Court of Justice, the Superior Court of Justice, and the Ontario Court of Appeal. A significant focus of her work was youth criminal justice, where she developed policy and provided training and lectures to Crown counsel, the defence bar, the judiciary, and police. Since 2018, she has been deeply involved in addressing hate-motivated offences, serving as the Toronto Region representative on the Attorney General’s Hate Crime Working Group and providing legal advice to prosecutors and police on hate crimes. After October 7, 2023, Rochelle returned to work with the Hate Crime Working Group at Crown Law Office—Criminal until November 2024. In January 2025, she joined founder Mark Sandler at the Alliance of Canadians Combatting Antisemitism as senior criminal counsel. She also chairs the Canadian Criminal Law Working Group (CCLWG), a coalition of senior criminal counsel from across Canada that advocates for victims of antisemitic hate crimes as they navigate the criminal justice system. Through ALCCA, Rochelle delivers hate-crime training to police and prosecutors nationwide.

Rochelle also serves as vice-chair of the Board of Directors of BOOST Child and Youth Advocacy Centre, a wrap-around agency supporting children and youth who have experienced abuse, along with their families.