Massey College fellow resigns after he says he was asked to let ‘advisory committee’ vet antisemitism conference

A sign on Massey College. Photo by Matthew Sherwood for National Post/File

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University of Toronto law professor Peter Biro has resigned his fellowship from Massey College after he says the institution wanted an “advisory committee” to vet an antisemitism conference he was organizing.

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“A good portion of Canadian society is utterly oblivious to the fact that our current age represents the next great transmutation of jew-hatred in human history,” Biro wrote in his resignation letter dated May 31. “That only underscores the critical importance of this conference.”

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The one-day conference titled Antisemitism in Our ‘Free and Democratic Society’: A Canary’s Song was scheduled for Sept. 15 at Massey, a college affiliated with — but independent of — the University of Toronto. The event, according to Biro’s resignation letter, was set to feature Canada’s former special envoy on Holocaust remembrance and combatting antisemitism Deborah Lyons, Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights founder Irwin Cotler, as well as American Holocaust historian and diplomat Deborah Lipstadt.

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“Massey College accepts with regret the resignation of Mr. Biro. Massey College condemns antisemitism in any form and is committed to playing its role in addressing it,” Massey College Principal James Orbinski said in a written statement.

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Biro wrote that Massey’s concerns stemmed from a lack of coordination with the college and questions surrounding the appropriateness of “partner organizations.” The conference was due to be co-hosted with the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights.

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Biro dismissed the Massey College president’s concerns as “absolutely false,” writing that everything was developed with “full cooperation with and the full contemporaneous knowledge of the Principal, beginning in mid-January and continuing through to May 27.”

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He wrote that he had previously chaired and participated in other conferences at Massey without any issue.

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Orbinski said that he “cannot comment on prior processes” given that he only became principal of Massey College in 2024.

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“When Massey was first approached by Mr. Biro with his written draft conference proposal on antisemitism, after some conversation, I agreed to hold a programmed conference on antisemitism. I welcomed the initiative and told Mr. Biro that Massey would engage in a process of consultation about the proposed conference,” Orbinski said.

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Orbinski told National Post that he and Biro had “two meetings on the proposed conference,” during which he “particularly emphasized the centrality of consultation and collaboration in defining the agenda and speakers, and my responsibility as Principal to seek appropriate advice, and that I would do this.”

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“Unfortunately, Mr. Biro did not check back on the process of consultation,” he wrote. “I had begun that process of consultation with colleagues, when I was informed by email that all Mr. Biro’s proposed speakers had been invited, that the Prime Minister of Canada had been invited, and that a partnership with another organization had been established. Much of the necessary collaborative process was ignored. In a subsequent phone call with Mr. Biro, he informed me that the agenda was fixed, that he was moving the conference to another venue, and that he was resigning from the College.”

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Biro called Massey’s concern “one of substance rather than one of process” from “undisclosed senior members of the College about whether the subject of antisemitism is being curated in an appropriate fashion, (and) about whether the salient issues are being framed in a politically and socially appropriate way.”