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A non-Jewish Canadian professor says he was fired from his university for defending Israel in a social media post as anti-Semitism spread across Canada following Hamas’ October 7 terrorist attacks.
Paul Finlayson told Fox News Digital that he lost his job at the University of Guelph-Humber in Canada after taking a strong stance online about the massacre and kidnapping of Israelis and foreigners, including Americans and Canadians.
Finlayson responded to a LinkedIn message from a foreign teacher in November 2023, whom he said was “calling for the elimination of Israel.” Although the author later deleted his post and all related comments, the National Post quoted Finlayson’s response in a December 2023 article.
Finlayson wrote, “If you say ‘from the river to the sea’, you’re a Nazi.” “I’m not neutral. I stand with Israel. I stand against the anti-Semites who want nothing more than dead Jews: who take millions from their education and health care budgets and spend them on making wars… You stand with Palestine means you stand with Hitler. You don’t want peace, you want dead Jews… They murdered 1,400 innocents and took 250 hostages and raped people. “Celebrated demons as heroes.”
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Paul Finlayson says he lost his job after taking a strong stance online against Hamas terrorist attacks on Israel. (Paul Finlayson)
Since the post, Finlayson says he has faced a targeted campaign against him, which has affected his professional status and job prospects.
Finlayson said students at the school found her LinkedIn reply before the post’s author deleted the thread, sparking outrage. While meeting with a student in his office on November 27, Finlayson said an administrator was waiting outside, ultimately giving him a suspension letter.
A copy of the suspension letter, provided by Finlayson, cites “inappropriate online comments” and places the professor “on leave pending the outcome of the investigation.” It instructed Finlayson not to “contact any of your departmental staff or students or wider members.” [university]”
Finlayson said he was “very well liked” by students, who ranked him highest among the business department’s faculty. He said that rumors of allegations against him destroyed his academic reputation, which included designing courses and writing textbooks.
“My case has been prosecuted by defamation, and it is being prosecuted by defamation,” Finlayson said of the “Kafkaesque” situation that ensued.
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Anti-Israel protesters hold anti-Semitic posters in Edmonton, Alberta, on April 13, 2025. (Artur Vidak/Nurfoto)
He says his union, OPSEU Local 562, refuses to represent him. The union did not respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
Finlayson was officially fired by the university in July 2025. He provided a copy of his termination letter, which said that after a “formal complaint of discrimination and harassment”, an investigator found that his “conduct violated the Ontario Human Rights Code and Humber’s Human Rights and Harassment Policy, and that [he] They are engaged in retaliation under both instruments.”
The Humber Harassment Policy states that “Anyone who attempts to retaliate or threatens to retaliate against a person who initiated a complaint or participated in a proceeding under this policy may be subject to disciplinary action.”
The same policy states that “Humber upholds and supports the right to equal treatment without discrimination on prohibited grounds”, including anti-Semitism.
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On March 3, 2026, a shooting was fired at Temple Emanu-El in Toronto. There is no report of anyone being injured. (Nick LaChance/Toronto Star via Getty Images)
The University of Guelph-Humber did not respond to questions from Fox News Digital about Finlayson’s suspension, investigation and firing, and whether anti-Israel posts shared by her students and a university professor violate Humber human rights and harassment policy.
The University of Guelph’s “UofGforPalestine” Instagram page, which bills itself as the account of “students, staff and faculty standing in solidarity with Palestine,” has shared posts with the inverted red triangle that Hamas uses to mark targets. Like the US, Canada also designates Hamas as a terrorist group.
In November 2024, the group shared photos on its Instagram account of a guillotine that “appeared on a pedestrian walkway” in Guelph, along with images of the heads of Canadian, American and Israeli leaders wrapped in red paint. Although it is called an “anonymous submission,” the post states its “message” is, “Death to empire, death to colonialism and imperialism, death to the war machine.”
University of Guelph Humber in Ontario, Canada. (Google Maps)
A professor at the University of Guelph-Humber, whom Finlayson believes brought the case against him, has posted inflammatory rhetoric on his LinkedIn account, calling Israel a “terrorist state” and saying the world “cannot have both peace and Israel”.
The professor did not respond to Fox News Digital’s requests for comment.
While Finlayson lost his position, elsewhere in Canada, activism led to very different circumstances for three York University employees who were among 11 individuals charged in November 2023 with “hate-motivated mischief” for plastering a bookstore with images accusing a Jewish CEO of genocide and spraying the store with red paint, the National Post reports.
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Although they were initially suspended from the school, it appears that the profiles of at least two staff members remain on the York University website. One, a professor, recently taught courses at the school in the winter 2026 semester. York University did not respond to requests for comment regarding the reinstatement of staff members’ roles.
Since the October 7 terrorist attacks, anti-Semitism has erupted in Canada. In April, B’nai B’rith Canada’s League for Human Rights released a report showing that 6,800 anti-Semitic incidents occurred in the country in 2025, representing a 9.4% increase compared to 2024. On average, this represented 18.6 events a day and was the “highest volume” recorded since the group began tracking events.
