ST. JOHN’S, N.L. –
Newfoundland and Labrador’s Progressive Conservatives are calling for the removal of Memorial University’s board of regents chair after he forwarded an alumnus’s pro-Palestinian campaign email to her father last month.
In a news release, Paul Dinn, the Official Opposition’s shadow education minister, says Glenn Barnes showed a “severe” lack of professionalism and judgment and he must be held accountable.
Becky Winsor, 35, 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.
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.”
The school’s information access and privacy office investigated, and officials said last week that it recommended privacy training for Barnes and reported the matter to the province’s information and privacy commissioner.
Barnes said in an email earlier this week that he will not be making any public comments on the matter.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 1, 2024.