N.L. opposition calls for firing of university chair over forwarding of alumna email

ST. JOHN’S, N.L. — Newfoundland and Labrador’s Progressive Conservatives called Thursday for the removal of the chair of Memorial University’s board of regents after he forwarded an alumna’s pro-Palestinian campaign email to her father last month.

In a news release, Paul Dinn, the Official Opposition education critic, said Glenn Barnes showed a “severe” lack of professionalism and judgment and violated the woman’s privacy.

“Members of the board are expected to act with integrity, respect, and in a manner of trust and confidentiality,” Dinn said in the release. “Unfortunately, MUN continues to make headlines for all the wrong reasons, and the chair of the board of regents must be held accountable.”

Barnes said in an email earlier this week that he will not be making any public comments on the matter.

Thirty-five-year-old Becky Winsor used a link shared by a pro-Palestinian group on campus to send Barnes a pre-written message supporting calls for the school to divest from “weapons manufacturing companies implicated in the genocide in Gaza,” in reference to the Israel-Hamas war.

According to emails shared with The Canadian Press, Barnes forwarded the email to Winsor’s father, whom he knows outside the university, and called the letter-writing campaign “personally intrusive” and “insulting to a volunteer board.”

Winsor’s father responded and told Barnes to take it up with his daughter, who has three degrees from Memorial.

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.”

University officials said last week that the school’s information access and privacy office investigated and recommended Barnes take privacy training. It also reported the matter to the province’s information and privacy commissioner.

Jim Dinn, leader of the provincial New Democratic Party, said any students or alumni affected by Barnes’s actions should have a say on how he is disciplined. However, he said in an interview that Barnes should offer “an apology, at least.”

The email blunder comes after a difficult few years for the school, which included a controversial tuition hike, a faculty strike and the departure last year of its former president, Vianne Timmons, after questions arose about her claims of Indigenous heritage.

On Wednesday, the school said it has contracted executive search firm Perrett Laver to find a new university president. The move comes after the province’s auditor general flagged in October the school’s spending on recruiters to fill its highest ranks.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 1, 2024.

The Canadian Press