FIRST READING: He's Canada's number one author, and he's leaving Canada for safety reasons

 

Gad Saad said constant Montreal death threats ultimately proved untenable. 

At the precise moment that his book Suicidal Empathy is topping world bestseller charts, prominent Canadian academic Gad Saad has announced he is permanently leaving Montreal for the United States, citing escalating threats to his personal safety. In a May 12 appearance on the Joe Rogan podcast, Saad said he had accepted a post at the University of Mississippi. He said repeated death threats had made it untenable for him to continue as a marketing professor at Concordia University.

“I’m now leaving in large part because it became difficult for me, if not impossible, to be a high-profile Jewish professor who supports the right of Israel to exist,” he said. Saad confirmed the move in a Victoria Day social media post, thanking Concordia “for the complete freedom that I was granted to pursue any research stream and any professional endeavour that I desired.”

He added, “I did face some difficulties over the past few years stemming from the unfolding realities in Montreal but I walk away with some sadness (I’m sentimental).” Concordia University has long been a focal point of anti-Israel radicalism. As far back as 2002, an anti-Zionist riot at the school prevented a planned appearance by Israeli politician Benjamin Netanyahu, who is now prime minister.

More recently, the university was the scene of a November 2024 anti-Israel riot that saw the school’s main lobby dominated by masked mobs calling for Intifada and charging lecture halls to interrupt classes with bells and shouted slogans.

Saad told Joe Rogan that in 2017, online threats had forced him to follow a safety protocol in which he had to be escorted by security while on campus — and the doors of his classrooms locked to keep out potential assailants. I would lecture, I would be ushered out, my wife would be waiting for me and I would let out a deep sigh, ‘Thank God I survived another week,’” he said.

In 2022, Saad said he was walking with his nine-year-old son when a man asked him if he was Gad Saad, to which he replied that he was. As Saad told Rogan, “then he kind of composes himself to deal with the hatred he feels and he goes ‘I’m not going to do anything to you out of respect for your son today.’” Shortly afterwards, Saad took leave from Concordia in order to accept a post with the Declaration of Independence Center for the Study of American Freedom at the University of Mississippi.

Saad told Rogan he is in the United States on a work visa, but hopes to obtain permanent residency and ultimately citizenship. “Maybe we can turn the Saads into Americans,” he said. Saad’s departure marks the second time in 16 months that an influential Canadian academic has left Canada for the United States, blaming local political conditions for hounding them into exile. 

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