By Lydia Kent & Maheeshan Sivanesan
On April 28, the Carleton University community once again gathered outside Richcraft Hall where the Board of Governors met, for a protest organized by the Carleton4Palestine coalition. It marked a year of protesting every publicly announced Board of Governors meeting and their commitment to complicity in the ongoing genocide of Palestinians, as they continue to invest in companies engaged in it.
Leading up to the Anniversary
The first demonstration organized by Carleton4Palestine took place on April 29, 2025, when protesters entered the board meeting room to demand divestment. They were met with campus security aggression and Ottawa Police presence, as captured in a video published to Carleton4Palestine’s Instagram page.
Students have been protesting with two clear demands: disclose investments and divest. They have consistently been met with attempts to be silenced through security presence, in addition to the so-called Institutional Impartiality Policy passed in December, which may impact the freedom of speech of anyone representing Carleton as documented by The Leveller.
“The Board of Governors is not democratic… getting these boards to divest from weapons going to Israel and fossil fuels polluting the world is like pulling teeth.”
Two students, including Nada Shubair, were allowed into an October 2025 board meeting to voice their concerns amid the rally happening outside. Shubair is an organizer with the Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapter at Carleton.
“During our protest in October, my comrade and I were allowed to voice our concerns during the board meeting,” Shubair said during her speech at the April 28 rally last month. “After back-and-forth communication with the Board, we were informed that the concerns we voiced, such as the UN recognition of the genocide in Gaza, were not ‘news’ to the board.”
In a report published September 16, 2025, the United Nations’ Human Right Council’s Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory concluded that Israel has committed genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Even prior to this, Amnesty International, a respected human rights organization, along with several other leading groups, documented Israeli actions in Gaza as genocide.
In a January 2026 statement released in response to student and community members’ concerns, the university says it is “committed to responsible investing, principled decision-making, and open dialogue with our community.” It also claims to be a signatory to the United Nations-supported Principles for Responsible Investment.
At the same time, Carleton holds investments in corporations flagged by the UN itself for “sustaining the illegal Israeli occupation and its ongoing genocidal campaign in Gaza,” as described in a July 2025 report by Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967.
One such example is Booking Holdings Inc., a travel technology company listed in the document for its expansions of property listings and hotel rooms in Israeli settlements. According to a divestment letter released by Carleton University Students’ Association (CUSA) in February 2026, the university invests over 1.5 million dollars into Booking Holdings.
The letter also highlights Carleton’s investments in various other corporations involved in the genocide of Palestinians, such as Honeywell International Inc. and BAE Systems. These companies are known for supplying bomb components, weapons systems, and fighter jets to the Israeli military. CUSA also launched a divestment petition along with the letter to present to the Board at an upcoming meeting in the next few months. So far, it has collected over 1500 student signatures.
“Bombs that killed my cousin and her two babies two weeks ago [in Lebanon] are funded by the same people in this very building.”
CUSA President Maxwell Heroux, was asked about the steps he would take as president to put pressure on the university.
Editor’s Note: Maxwell Heroux is a Leveller contributor and co-author with Maheeshan Sivanesan.
“As discussions around divestment continue this year, we will be consulting with students and working with the Divestment Subcommittee of Council to help determine the most effective ways we can influence decision-making around the university’s investments to align with student voices,” he told The Leveller in an email.
“While these investment decisions ultimately rest solely with Carleton’s Board of Governors, we believe that students deserve more meaningful engagement on the issue of divestment and are continuing to explore impactful ways to have these concerns taken seriously by the Board of Governors.”
Speeches, Poems, and Student Testimonies
Luca, an organizer from Ottawa’s chapter of the Student Mobilization Committee, discussed in his speech the struggles of getting the Board to divest. The Student Mobilization Committee is “a coalition of organizations focused on the Fight for Free Education and the surrounding student struggles,” as described on their Instagram page’s description.
“The Board of Governors is not democratic,” Luca said. “There are a scant few faculty members and students elected to the board. The provincial government and university appoint businesspeople specializing in cuts, mergers and acquisitions to long terms on the board in order to maximize the privatization of the institution.”
He added that “getting these boards to divest from weapons going to Israel and fossil fuels polluting the world is like pulling teeth.”
Although progress has yet to be made in divestment from Israeli apartheid and genocide, Carleton has divested from injustices in the past, such as the South African regime in 1987. Students formed the Carleton Anti-Apartheid Action Group in the mid-80s and through rallies at Board of Governors meetings and a petition that collected over 3000 signatures, divestment was made possible.
“Study genocide, but don’t dare protest it. Write about genocide, analyze genocide, but don’t dare question our complicity in it. And when we do speak, you close the blinds.”
SJP organizer Shubair highlighted Carleton’s three types of complicity in Israeli war crimes during her speech: academic ties to Israel through its partnership with Ben Gurion University, corporate ties through its partnerships with companies involved in Israel’s genocide, such as the Women in STEM program, and financial ties through investments.
These forms of complicity directly affect the lives of those studying at Carleton. Reem Hammoud, an SJP organizer and 4th-year Human Rights and Social Justice student, spoke about her constant worry.
“I’m standing here as someone who has barely slept, has barely ate, I don’t even know what to do with myself at this point,” she said. “Bombs that killed my cousin and her two babies two weeks ago [in Lebanon] are funded by the same people in this very building.”
Israeli forces began a military attack in Lebanon on March 2, 2026, and have since killed more than 3000 people, including over 200 children. On April 8, Lebanon faced one of the deadliest days in its history with over 100 Israeli strikes in just 10 minutes.
Reida Khadour, another SJP organizer, also spoke about Carleton’s complicity affecting her.
“The same institution that gives me a chance at a future, is the same institution that took my brother’s future away. That took away my friends’ futures, my loved ones. That took away over hundreds of thousands of futures,” she said.
Khadour also criticized the university’s messaging to students: “Study genocide, but don’t dare protest it. Write about genocide, analyze genocide, but don’t dare question our complicity in it. And when we do speak, you close the blinds.”
The Board is accused of silencing student protest a step further by installing soundproof window panels in their meeting room, according to a Carleton4Palestine (C4P) video posted on May 17th:
“…they had to install sound-proof window panels… For the past year, the Board of Governors (BoG) have closed their blinds to avoid facing students and faculty demanding divestment.
“On the March 10th BoG meeting, we set up two giant speakers to ensure that even while hiding behind those blinds, they would still have to listen to our demands. We were so loud, board members had to repeat themselves over and over during their meeting.
“So, on the next board meeting on April 28th, we doubled the amount of speakers to ensure that our voices were heard… We were so loud, our voices were heard across campus and even by passengers on the Line 2 Train. The board couldn’t hear us, even though we were right in front of the meeting room.
“Why? If you look closely, you can see an extra layer on the window that wasn’t there in March. That extra layer is soundproofing.”
The video showed these protests, speakers and windows. The C4P member continued to explain that “it costs around $1000 just to install one sound proof window panel. The board’s meeting room has around 20 windows. That means that the board would rather spend $20,000 of our tuition into silencing us than to listening to their student’s and faculty’s demands on asking the simplest thing: Stop killing people.”
Students also read poems during the rally, such as If I Must Die and On This Land by Palestinian poet Refaat Alareer.
Bessan Amer, another SJP organizer and Master’s student of Neuroscience, concluded a reading of her own poem by saying, “A land that you kill for was never yours to own. It’s the land which you would die for that truly makes it your home.”
The next Board of Governors’ meeting is scheduled for June 4.
Editor’s Note: Staff at The Leveller attempted to contact Carleton University Board of Governors Chair Beth Creary with a media request on May 5. On May 7, the Carleton University Media Relations Officer, Steven Reid responded to The Leveller stating that, “Please direct any future inquiries to me to avoid delays. Please send the list of questions to me, and I will look into your request.” Leveller staff provided questions by email on May 11 with a request for response by May 15. We have not received a response before time of publishing.
