A small group of pro-Palestinian protesters disrupted Queen's University graduation Isabel Bader Center exist KingstonOntario, Thursday night.
The group sought to draw attention to the university's medical school's silence during Israel's ongoing war with Hamas.
“Today is the PGME (Postgraduate Medical Education) graduation ceremony. Students and community members turned out in large numbers to express our dissatisfaction with the medical school's silence as the medical crisis in Gaza unfolded,” said Yara Hussein, one of the protesters.
Protesters are demanding the resignation of Jane Philpott, the current dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences at Queen’s University.
“We are not interrupting the graduation ceremony for spontaneous reasons. This is the ninth month that they (Queen's University) have been silent,” Hussain said.
“I’m here to support the community members and students who are aiming, this time, to have the university no longer be complicit in genocide,” said Kevin Beach, a health care worker in Kingston who attended the ceremony and later joined the protesters.
“In this context, we need to pay special attention to healthcare workers who are being completely ignored by schools and universities.”
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In a statement about the protest released Friday, the university said it “deeply regrets the disruption these events have caused to graduates and their families at what was supposed to be a celebration of years of academic hard work.”
It added that the demonstration was “shortened by a few minutes due to interruptions.”
The university said on its website that the ceremony celebrates final-year residents and clinical fellows.
The protests came after the university set up a divestment committee to look into protesters' previous demands that the university divest from companies with ties to Israel. Although protesters wanted at least two seats on the committee, they said the university had not met that demand.
The university said in an earlier statement to Global News that the committee is composed of board members and includes faculty, staff and student representatives.
“We have selected two additional members of the university community to consider this matter in an impartial and objective manner…,” the statement read.
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