N.L. university chair disciplined for sending pro-Palestinian email to alumnus’s dad

ST. JOHN’S, N.L. — Officials at Memorial University have recommended privacy training for the chair of the school’s board of regents after he forwarded an alumnus’s pro-Palestinian campaign email to her father last month.

Becky Winsor says she isn’t sure what Glenn Barnes was hoping to achieve when he forwarded her email to her father on June 22. Winsor’s message said she stood with the activist group MUN Students for Palestine and their calls for the university to divest from “weapons manufacturing companies implicated in the genocide in Gaza,” in reference to the Israel-Hamas war.

“I think he was trying to tell on me,” Winsor said in an interview Tuesday, adding that her father and Barnes know each other outside the university. “What power does my father have over me when I have my own house, I’m married, I have two children, and my own career? I was pretty insulted.”

Barnes said in an email that he would not comment publicly on the matter.

MUN Students for Palestine have been protesting at the university for months, demanding the school disclose its financial investments and divest from “all arms manufacturing companies” and “all holdings in any entities that sponsor or are complicit in Israeli occupation, apartheid and the current genocide in Gaza.”

The group camped out in the school’s arts and administration building for many weeks until police stepped in earlier this month. They still hold regular sit-ins inside the building.

On June 19, the university publicly disclosed its investments, saying it would begin doing so each year. The activist group concluded that more than $7 million of the university’s finances are invested in weapons manufacturers and companies listed by the United Nations as being “complicit in illegal occupation.”

Winsor sent the pre-written campaign email to Barnes on June 21 by clicking on a link shared by the student group. It said the university’s investments were “unacceptable.”

In emails shared with The Canadian Press, Barnes forwarded Winsor’s message to her father at 3:44 a.m. the next day, writing, “90 so far. This is personally intrusive and insulting to a volunteer board!”

Winsor’s father wrote back, advising Barnes to raise the issue directly with the alumnus. Barnes replied that he had received more than 100 such emails.

“I am telling parents that I know just what their kids are doing,” Barnes wrote. “They need to grow up.”

The university published a statement on Friday saying its information access and privacy office investigated and found there was an “unauthorized disclosure” of a third-party email by a member of the school’s board of regents.

“As a result of the investigation, privacy training has been recommended,” the statement said. “This matter is being reviewed through the processes set out in the board of regents’ code of conduct.”

The statement says the matter has been reported to the province’s privacy commissioner.

On June 27, MUN Students for Palestine filed an access-to-information request for emails sent from Barnes “to individuals in response to his receipt of emails from a click-to-email campaign for divestment.” The response from the school’s privacy office, shared with The Canadian Press, said the university had no records matching the request.

“The individual asked to conduct a search for records had been experiencing technical issues with email,” the university’s July 18 response said.

Sadie Mees with MUN Students for Palestine said the group has since filed a complaint with the provincial office of the privacy commissioner.

Winsor said her father was “a little bit annoyed” that Barnes contacted him about her email. She doesn’t believe privacy training is an adequate reproach for what he did.

“Try something to let him know that this is not acceptable, whether that is removal from the board or the chair position,” she said.

Winsor said she is particularly concerned that he remains in his position while the school and the board make decisions about how to manage pro-Palestinian protesters on campus.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 30, 2024.

Sarah Smellie, The Canadian Press