A public lecture titled Canada and the Genocide in Gaza, organized by former Wilfrid Laurier University professor Peter Eglin and NDP leadership candidate Yves Engler, was cancelled by the university administration just one day before it was set to take place.
Despite the cancellation, the speakers went ahead with the event in an alternative location on campus.
The lecture was originally scheduled for Sept. 19 at a classroom in Laurier’s Waterloo campus. On Sept. 18, Eglin received an email from the university’s Safety, Health, Environment and Risk Management (SHERM) department informing him that the university “did not have time to produce a safety plan to hold the event.”
SHERM suggested the event be postponed. However, Eglin and Engler, with support from PhD candidate Tamara Lorincz, decided to proceed. They relocated the event to a study space in the Schlegel building, just outside the intended venue.
More than 50 attendees gathered peacefully for the lecture, which focused on what the organizers described as Canada’s complicity in what they termed the ongoing Israeli genocide against the Palestinian people.
“If the university can’t be open to a discussion about Canada and genocide, that’s a bad comment on the university,” said Engler, who is currently campaigning for the leadership of the federal New Democratic Party.
Engler stated that Laurier’s decision not to sanction the event may have been influenced by the political nature of the discussion and his leadership campaign.
Professor Eglin echoed that concern, describing the university’s response as part of a broader “culture of suppression” he claims to have experienced in previous years.
“The utter failure to address what is happening is staggering in its intellectual failure, and disgraceful in its moral failure,” said Eglin.
He referenced prior instances in 2001 and 2009 where he alleges Laurier also prevented him from hosting events about the humanitarian situation in Gaza.
During the lecture, Eglin cited findings from a commission that has spent the past two years examining events following Oct. 7, 2023. According to him, the commission concluded that Israeli authorities and security forces have committed four of the five acts constituting genocide, as defined by the 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. These acts include killing members of a group, inflicting severe physical or psychological harm, intentionally creating life conditions aimed at destruction and enforcing policies to prevent births.
These claims, while supported by some human rights organizations and scholars, remain highly disputable within the international legal and political communities.
As of publication, SHERM has not provided a public comment regarding the cancellation or the concerns raised by the speakers.
Contributed Photo/Clara Rose/Lead Reporter
