In a tentative victory for Demilitarize McGill and others, Quebec’s Commission d’accès à l’information has ruled against McGill’s request to give university administrators the authority to deny future access-to-information (ATI) requests at their discretion.

Outstanding ATI requests, including those concerning military research by the Shock Wave Physics Group and CFD Lab, remain in litigation, as McGill continues to use the court system to at least delay disclosure of the documents that detail its partnerships with militaries and defence contractors.

The McGill Daily: McGill’s request to limit access to information denied

The Telegraph newspaper reported yesterday that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime has dropped fuel-air explosives (FAEs) on a high school. The attack, which took place in the rebel-held city of Raqqa on 29 September, killed at least 14 civilians. Human Rights Watch  identified the bomb likely used as being a Russian ODAB-series fuel-air bomb.

Source: Reuters

FAEs are the predecessors to what are today termed ‘thermobaric’ explosives. McGill University, through the Shock Wave Physics Group (SWPG), has contributed to the development of both technologies in three major waves of research, beginning in the 1970s. In 2004, a committee of the U.S. National Research Council cited research by McGill Prof. David Frost as offering a needed tool for the development of more lethal thermobaric weapons. In 2013, the SWPG is receiving funding and other resources from the Canadian military for the same type of research.

Demilitarize McGill: Thermobaric Weapons

FAE Attack: Human Rights Watch Report

Backgrounder on Russian FAEs

Be on the lookout for new Demilitarize McGill stickers around campus! Want to get involved in what we’re doing? We’re always open to new people coming to a meeting, proposing an action or an event, or joining our ongoing projects. Write us at [email protected].

This year, our group has already grown in size, and we’ll be meeting regularly throughout the fall and winter. We intend to build on last year’s successes in researching McGill’s military ties, sharing information with students and the public, and beginning to directly contest the University’s role in the development of the knowledge and technologies that assist the managers of imperialist wars.

Together, we can build our capacity to disrupt military research at McGill!

Published September 13, 2013 in the McGill Daily

It is a matter on which the authority of Empire tends to go uncontested – that of establishing which means of indiscriminate killing are acceptable and which are not. Sarin gas, bad; drones armed with Hellfire missiles, generally alright.

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By Farid Rener, published March 18, 2013 in the McGill Daily

A walking tour of locations where McGill conducts military research started at 3690 Peel, home to McGill’s Institute of Air and Space Law (IASL), on Thursday. The tour – organized by a new incarnation of Demilitarize McGill, a student group that has been dormant since 2010 – was attended by approximately 15 students.

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Welcome to the new Demilitarize McGill website!

By Peggy Curran, published 2010/02/09 in University City (Montreal Gazette)

The campaign to Demilitarize McGill will live to fight another day.

Or at least another month.

McGill is citing a procedural glitch for postponing a vote at Wednesday’s Senate meeting on a controversial rewrite of the university’s ethics guidelines for research.

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BY PATRICK LEJTENYI
Published February 11, 2010 in The Montreal Mirror
Campus peaceniks at McGill are preparing for war. The casus belli: weapons research done by the university’s scientists that will now be unrestricted by a 23-year regulation designed to make such research transparent and open to public scrutiny.

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New policy is too vague on ethics, according to student representatives
By Stephanie Law

February 11, 2010, The McGill Daily

The absence of restrictions on potentially harmful research in the new Regulations on Conduct of Research policy continued to raise concerns in Senate on Wednesday.

The new policy was originally up for approval at Wednesday’s Senate meeting, but due to an administrative oversight, the policy was only briefly discussed. McGill Vice-Principal (Research and International Relations) Denis Thérien explained that the Academic Policy Committee must approve the policy before it is brought to Senate, which had not been done yet.

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