Keffiyehs, banners, cheers, and suppression: Four days of Western University’s graduation convocations
Published in Antler River Media Co-op
(*artwork by Incé Husain)
From June 10th to June 13th, Western University convocations at Canada Life Place were wielded as protest spaces for Palestine.
Numerous graduating students across disciplines faced the celebratory stage with Palestine flags, banners calling for justice, and regalia draped with keffiyehs. Outside, more protesters held banners and chanted human rights slogans to the downtown rush.
University administration, London police, and Canada Life Place staff attempted to quell the protests.
***
On the morning of June 10th - the convocation day for Law, Engineering, Medicine and Dentistry - graduating students paraded flags onstage that bore Palestine’s red, black, white, and green on one half and Lebanon’s cedar tree on the other.
Both Palestine and Lebanon continue to be attacked by the Israeli military, which Western University funds through investments in sixteen military contractors that provide arms to Israel; a report by student group Western Divestment Coalition shows that these investments summed to 10.7 million dollars in May 2024.
A July 2025 Al Jazeera article states that Western University additionally invests nearly 50 million dollars in companies enabling Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine and genocide of Palestinians. United Nations Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese’s June 2025 report, “From economy of occupation to economy of genocide”, slams universities for this complicity:
“Universities – centres of intellectual growth and power – have sustained the political ideology underpinning the colonization of Palestinian land, developed weaponry and overlooked or even endorsed systemic violence, while global research collaborations have obscured Palestinian erasure behind a veil of academic neutrality.”
Albanese’s report demands that universities, “promptly cease all business activities and terminate relationships directly linked with, contributing to and causing human rights violations and international crimes against the Palestinian people, in accordance with international corporate responsibilities and the law of self-determination.”
The fused flags of Palestine and Lebanon blazed across the backdrop of Western University’s violet insignias. They were fisted firmly, fluttering gently, as students crossed the stage in unbroken strides. Cheers, applause, and whistles rose from the audience.
Western University President Alan Shepard interrupted the convocation.
“We’re really lucky that we live in Canada, a place of freedom and peace and freedom of speech. So, as a university President, I can’t tell people what to say, but I can encourage all of us this morning not to behave in a way that is provocative to others in the crowd,” said Shepard. “People have come from different faith traditions, different communities across Ontario and across the world to celebrate the graduation of their loved one, and I really would ask all of you not to inject politics into this morning. There's plenty of other time for politics, and this is not it. Thank you.”
Midway through Shepard’s interruption, the audience became agitated. Yells of disgust and outrage roared, splitting Shepard’s sentences with cusses, boos, and loud cries of “FREE PALESTINE”. As Shepard continued, the chants became subsumed by applause; as he let the convocations resume, a single, loud “boo” followed.
The protests replicated in the afternoon convocation.
One graduating student, cloaked in a keffiyeh, raised and shook a Palestinian flag to tremendous applause.
Another unsheathed a banner with red, green, and black lettering: FORGIVE ME MOM…I JUST WANTED TO HELP.
These were the final words of 24-year-old Palestinian paramedic Rifaat Radwan, filmed against darkness, Israeli gunfire, and prayers that waned with his breaths. Radwan was one of fifteen workers headed to southern Gaza to rescue survivors of an Israeli bombing. Their ambulance was clearly marked, its attack a routine instance of Israel deliberately targeting healthcare.
“I felt like a dagger pierced my heart, but I resigned myself to God’s will, and we went to the hospital,” said Rifaat’s mother, Ghalia Radwan, in an April 2025 Al Jazeera article. She waited at the hospital, with more families whose loved ones had been martyred, for the arrival of her son’s body. “Rifaat knew how deeply attached I was to him and how I constantly worried about him, so his last words were asking for my forgiveness because he knew losing him would break my heart…My son was beautiful and charming. I adored him. He was handsome, generous, and giving without limits.”
Shepard appeared to grimace as the student held Radwan’s words high, angling them to every section of the auditorium. The audience cheered and applauded.
Another student held a banner marked with red handprints: MORE THAN 1400 HEALTHCARE WORKERS KILLED IN GAZA.
Shepard interrupted the convocations again.
“Maybe I wasn’t clear the first time. I am asking people to leave their politics at the door. I know that tensions are running high and all and I’m asking people to have a celebratory audience with others around Ontario and around the world without injecting politics into it this afternoon. And it’s disappointing when I see people who are graduating with a degree of doctorate of medicine disrupting the ceremonies. Please don’t do that.”
He reiterated that “there’s plenty of time for politics elsewhere and this is not it.”
But it remains unclear when Shepard's allocated time for politics is. It does not appear to be when peacefully protesting for divestment on campus, which Western administration responded to with 1.7 million dollars worth of unbudgeted funds to “securitize” and suppress, recruiting Corporate Investigation Services, Alpha Security Services, London Police Service, and Western Special Constable Service. It does not appear to be when seeking dialogue with finance administrators about Western’s investment portfolio, which the administration rejected. It does not appear to be when exercising rights beneath Western’s Freedom of Expression policy, which the administration opposed with the widely-condemned, and now modified, procedure 1.1 that restricted campus protests.
It seems that the place for politics may only be in Western’s investment portfolio, as summarized in Albanese’s report: “Universities worldwide, under the guise of research neutrality, continue to profit from an [Israeli] economy now operating in genocidal mode. Indeed, they are structurally dependent on settler-colonial collaborations and funding.”
This “genocidal mode” includes Israeli forces destroying education in Palestine.
According to an April 2025 WAFA article, the Ministry of Education and Higher Education in Palestine counts 352 damaged government schools, 146 raided government schools, 111 completely destroyed government schools, 91 bombed and vandalized government schools, and 89 bombed and vandalized UNRWA schools; 20 damaged higher education institutions, 60 completely destroyed university buildings, and 8 raided universities.
In Gaza, nearly 15,000 students have been killed and 23,936 injured; in the West Bank, 135 have been killed, 830 have been injured, and 724 students and 193 staff members have been detained. The WAFA article concludes: “The Ministry emphasized that 788,000 students in Gaza remain unable to attend their schools and universities since the start of the aggression, with many students suffering from psychological trauma and facing challenging health conditions.”
Official livestreams of convocation produced by Western University largely cut out footage of graduating student protesters. Uncensored streams, rich with protest scenes, soared through social media.
“Keep politics out of my ExxonMobil-sponsored civics class,” retorted a community member to Shepard’s remarks.
***
On June 11th, the stage was for graduating students from Arts & Humanities, Huron University College, the Ivey School of Business, and Information and Media Studies.
Elliott Cooper, a graduating Master’s student in Information and Media Studies, described wearing his keffiyeh on stage, brandishing a banner, and then immediately facing security from Canada Life Place. They confiscated his banner.
“I felt anxious while lining up to receive my diploma, and carefully withdrew the banner I was holding from my suit pocket before ascending the stairs, just in case withdrawing it too suddenly might attract intervention from anyone on stage,” said Cooper.
His banner read: Not even the healers are safe.
He had chosen it especially for Palestinian-Canadian doctor, Medical Director of the Glia Project, and Western University professor Tarek Loubani, “one of the kindest and most courageous Londoners” Cooper has ever met. In March 2025, Loubani gave a talk at King’s University College on Israeli forces’ deliberate destruction of healthcare in Gaza and the ingenuity required for hospitals to function.
Loubani is currently in Gaza’s Nasser Hospital providing emergency medical care. Last year, Nasser Hospital was shelled, besieged, and stormed by Israeli forces.
“We try to treat them. They’re often too young to understand that their parents are dead. But they sit there struggling, wounded,” Loubani said of the targeted children pouring into Gaza’s hospitals, in a July 2025 Democracy Now! interview. “Every day brings new types of severe and terrible injuries. For example, yesterday there were gunshot wounds to the head. Two or three days ago, we were noticing, especially, young men and boys were getting gunshots to the groin. And so, every day seems to be a new exercise in the depths of human depravity in terms of targeting men, boys, women and children, especially in terms of the youngest children. I think every doctor who operates and works in Palestine will tell you that that’s the most jarring, the most terrible part of our job, is just the war on children on every level.”
Cooper was loudly booed by the audience. A few people cheered. A security guard approached when he walked off the stage.
“I’m going to have to take that from you,” the guard said about the banner. “You can’t have that back here.”
Canada Life Place policies state that “flags, banners or signs are subject to Canada Life Place Management Approval.”
Cooper was instructed to retrieve the banner from Canada Life Place guest services after the ceremony. Left only with his red keffiyeh, Cooper observed the rest of the convocations and then exited the auditorium with the graduates.
“Shame,” a man said to Cooper in a low voice.
Cooper picked up his banner from guest services, returned his regalia, and left to celebrate the evening with his family.
“The reception I got from security and the crowd was discouraging, and not just on a personal level. It was demoralizing because being against the bombing of hospitals should not ever be considered a divisive stance,” said Cooper. “Western claims to be moving towards decolonization, and does have initiatives in place for this work. Yet, somehow, speaking up against the occupation of Palestine was unwelcome, and we were told "there's a place for that, but not on the stage."”
He adds that introductory speeches at the convocation had “clear Canadian nationalist overtones” inconsistent with Shepard’s pleas for a politically neutral ceremony. Western University Vice Chancellor Kelly Meen urged students to provide “service to Canada”, decrying Canada’s financial dependence on the United States and lauding its culmination in a “renewed energy and determination” in Canada. Meen called Canada “one of the best nations in the world”, uttered a land acknowledgement recognizing “the presence of Indigenous people in educational settings”, and then clapped when Shepard told graduates not to use their ceremony to protest Canada-funded ethnic cleansing of Indigenous peoples in Palestine.
Earlier in the ceremony, invited speaker Connie Walker - a Pulitzer Prize winning Cree journalist - spoke of residential schools and internalizing “the true history of Canada, of understanding how this country was built”.
Now, Canada is backing Israeli forces as they implement a plan to seal Palestinians in concentration camps. They attempt to lure Palestinians into these camps - which they call “humanitarian bubbles” - through starvation and killings.
“The idea of a concentration camp is predicated on forcing people out by removing all of the ingredients of life,” Tarek Loubani continued in the July 2025 Democracy Now! interview. “We’ve seen them remove clean water. There’s no clean water in Gaza for any intents and purposes. There is no food really anywhere…And all of this has been resulting in hundreds of additional deaths each day. I see patients who are shot every single day. I see patients who are blown up every single day. But what’s new over the past month is that now I also see patients who are starving to death or who have starved to death. I see little babies, which are often reported, sometimes not. And I also see elderly people, people with immune conditions, people with chronic conditions. This is what the Israelis count on to force people into the concentration camp.”
Cooper learned about Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine in 2018. He had seen discussions about the BDS movement rising on social media, was curious about Palestine being called a “divisive subject” even in “so-called progressive or left spaces”, began reading about Palestine, and attended London’s Canadian Palestinian Social Association’s (CPSA) Run for Palestine in 2022. Since then, he has remained in the ever-building, global revolution for Palestinian freedom. His convictions are sharpened by discussions with friends, fellow activists, scholars, Jews who oppose Israeli occupation, and CPSA’s informative newsletters.
Last summer, he visited Western University’s student encampments, which were full of speeches and rallies demanding that Western University divest from genocide.
“Hearing the speakers articulately call out Western's complicity and seeing the dedication of activists both on and off campus made the facts clear. The demands for Western to disclose and divest from investments in apartheid and genocide were reasonable, sharply articulated, and peacefully delivered,” said Cooper. “The response from Western, meanwhile, escalated over time from visibly increased policing, to the demands to dismantle the encampment, and then to the suppression of any campus protests that aren't cleared in advance. This should be of great concern to all faculty and students - we are at educational institutions to learn from each other, and campus activism is a vital and traditional part of that experience.”
Cooper emphasized that the enthusiastic welcomes he received from protesters outside Canada Life Place warmed him.
“Something the mainstream press rarely covers are the moments of camaraderie between activists, students and faculty members of conscience who stand together, even when the administration or surrounding community is disinterested or actively hostile,” said Cooper. “The press and the administration do not always want these moments shared, because they are the moments that give us the courage to keep standing up for peace. As long as we have the freedom to speak, we should do our best to use it without fear.”
***
WESTERN TAUGHT ME CRITICAL THINKING THEN TRESPASSED ME FOR USING IT TO PEACEFULLY PROTEST, reads a banner held onstage on June 12th, the convocation day for Social Sciences and King’s University College.
The banner references how university administration issued criminal trespass sanctions to student protesters, a violation of due institutional process that obliges adherence to the university’s code of student conduct.
Guy, a Western University student in the convocation audience, said the banner brought “overwhelming applause.”
The graduating student had walked slowly, holding the banner to the crowd, turning it to Shepard, then back to the crowd again. Cheers escalated with his stride, a tidal wave climbing so rapidly that it paused the lineup of graduates, stilled the procession facilitators, and froze the dutiful stage in an undeniable command of power. The crowd, riding this momentary crack in order, cheered and applauded with wilder ferocity.
This footage, too, was largely suppressed in official Western University convocation streams.
“Wonderful,” Shepard had interrupted, taking the mic. “Just to repeat, can I ask people please not to inject politics into this beautiful ceremony. I can’t tell if you’re booing or cheering. It doesn’t matter. I still feel the same way. Thank you.”
Shepard was greeted with boos and applause. Guy heard yells from the crowd - “DIVEST”, “CEASEFIRE NOW”, and “FREE PALESTINE”.
“We just yelled,” said Guy, noting that support for Shepard’s interruptions waned over the days. “You could notice that less people started applauding for Alan and more started applauding for whoever went up and started actually speaking up against Western’s complicity.”
Guy had entered Canada Life Place with a keffiyeh hidden beneath his trenchcoat. The security guards noticed it, asked him to remove it, and gave him a ticket number to present to guest services to retrieve his keffiyeh after convocation.
“They did not give a reason why,” said Guy. “They said ‘you’re going to have to leave it with guest services’. One guy had to pat me down. They monitored the guests. If they had a keffiyeh, they’re gonna take it. I wonder if we had an Israeli flag in there, if they would have taken it, too.”
Canada Life Place policies list items that are prohibited in the venue. Keffiyehs are not listed. The policy states that “prohibited items also include any items that in the judgment of facility management pose a safety hazard or diminish the enjoyment of an event by other guests.”
Guy protested outside Canada Life Place with the sign WESTERN SUPPORTS GENOCIDE. Though some people yelled and cussed at Guy, he wished everyone he saw “a good day” and congratulated graduates as they exited.
“It kind of humanizes the pro-Palestine people because they always see us as animals in the media. If we congratulate them, acknowledge that it's their big day while also doing this, we get everything we want,” said Guy. “We raise awareness - which, sadly, we still have to raise awareness, that's the bare minimum. Any positive interaction is a bonus.”
A white car with an Israeli flag drove by the protesters; two people on the sidewalk yelled in support. Guy - donned in a Palestine necklace and keffiyeh - looked around, yelled “Free Palestine!”, and was immediately met with cheers from those around him. The two people turned back and stared at Guy, who felt less fear than when he was on Western’s campus.
“I was not as scared at convocation wearing a keffiyeh than I was on Western’s campus. It felt a lot more dangerous, a lot more hostile. I definitely felt a lot more bad energy on UC hill than I ever did on the three days of convocation.”
He believes that public perceptions of protests for Palestinian freedom fall into three categories: 20% of people empathize, 20% are vocally against them, and 60% are “just uncomfortable.”
“We just don't know how to tap into that 60% because these are the people who are the most, I’d say, dissociated. The majority of people - they don’t know and they don't care. That’s the type of people that I believe to be the least empathetic towards anything,” said Guy. “60% being nonchalant is absolutely abhorrent.”
Guy calls the ties between Western University and Israel “very sneaky.”
“How did I become aware of Palestine? Western’s complicity. The encampment. I didn't even know Western was complicit, I didn't know most universities were actually complicit in this genocide until I started listening to everything that’s being said at the protests,” said Guy. “It’s very sneaky. It’s there but no one really knows it's there. If you look for it you'll find it, but if you don't look for it you're never going to see it.”
Guy looked through Western University's investments and saw its economic complicity for himself.
He read about Western University’s ties with Israel’s Ben Gurion University, which includes sending students on a “business trip” to Israel. These trips include visits to Israeli military sites.
In 2018, Israeli Colonel Dany Tirza gave students a tour of Israel’s “separation wall” that encloses Gaza and the West Bank. The wall’s construction was led by Tirza and construed as a “security” measure. It was declared illegal by the International Court of Justice in 2004 for being “tantamount to de facto annexation” of Palestinian territory; on the Palestinian side, the wall is filled with vibrant resistance art. In 2013, students were taken into an Israeli army bunker in Israel-occupied Syrian Golan Heights, where Israel continues to build illegal settlements. Western University’s website, last updated in 2023, stated that it was planning a 2024 “Ivey-Israel Business Trip.” The official page for the Ivey-Israel business trip appeared to be taken down after a January protest on campus, but protesters point out that another partnership exists between Western University and Israel’s Hebrew University of Jerusalem: an exchange program to Israel open to all students across programs.
“As an international student who pays a significant amount of money each year, who actually cares about his education and where his money goes - towards the people on his campus - he is not happy that his money is being used to invest in military companies or to send students to genocidal regimes for the sake of ‘education’ or ‘commerce’ or ‘business’,” said Guy. “That’s when I started protesting.”
***
On June 13th, the last convocation day, the space outside Canada Life Place was bustling with a rush of regalia, heeled shoes, curled hair, hugs, joyfully posed photographs framed by purple and white balloons, and signs - THE PERSONAL IS ALWAYS POLITICAL, RESPECT EXISTENCE OR EXPECT RESISTANCE, YOUR INACTION WILL BE STUDIED BY YOUR GRANDKIDS. A convocation booth nearby sold red and yellow roses.
“l feel very passionate about Palestine, Congo, Sudan, Haiti, Yemen, Lebanon. I feel that this movement has traction and I feel that this can’t go away,” said Cheryl, a community member protesting outside the venue. “You can't put this cat back in the bag. No one who knows what I know now could ever just say ‘oh I just want to get on with my life’. Because what I know is so scary that if I ignore it, my children and my grandchildren will be so adversely affected by it… I’m radicalized by empathy - why aren’t you?”
Cymbals and upbeat music from nearby restaurants drifted into the protest space, punctuated by car horns blaring support to chants of “FROM THE RIVER TO THE SEA, PALESTINE WILL BE FREE!”
“This week has been very intense,” said Sheri, another community member protester. “Cheryl and I are losing our filters slowly and learning that we have privilege and we need to use it, and let these students use us - or whoever, the Palestinians - use us as voices, or whatever they want us to do, because it's things that we can get away with that they can't. Cheryl talks to the cops a lot.”
One student protester was given a $65 trespass fine by London police for entering Canada Life Place.
“Come with me, who gave you this?” Cheryl said to the student. “Who gave him that?”
She approached the cop who fined the student. A circle of protesters gathered around her.
“What happened? Why does he have a ticket?” She yelled. “His family are being slaughtered and he’s peacefully protesting, and you gave him a ticket? That’s abhorrent!”
“Why are you yelling?” the policeman said.
“Dude, I’m so upset about 60,000 (Palestinians including) children being killed, I’m gonna yell the rest of my f-ing life so get used to it!”
“I’ll just fight it in court,” said the student who was trespassed.
“It’s a badge of honour,” Cheryl said to the student. “You should frame it.”
“I have the other Western one, the big yellow one,” the student says of Western’s trespass ticket. “I have it at home, I’m gonna frame it with this one.”
Cheryl learned about Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine through Instagram, where journalists in Gaza post live footage of Israel’s genocidal attacks.
“I just happened to be on Instagram in November 2023 and was just overwhelmed with a rush of information that I had then to go research and find out that we have been lied to our entire lives about everything,” said Cheryl. “I find out my world is not what it was. We can't trust our media. We can’t trust our government, they’re doing the wrong things, they are breaking international and domestic law. So they will not do the right thing until we make them.”
A July 2025 report titled “Exposing Canadian Military Exports to Israel” — written by the Palestinian Youth Movement, World Beyond War, and Arms Embargo Now Campaign — reveals that Canada has sent at least 438 military shipments to Israel since October 2023. The shipments are a flagrant violation of Canada’s legal obligations as a signatory to the Geneva Convention and Arms Trade Treaty, which instruct signatories to “prevent and not be complicit in genocide, and must ensure that its actions, including arms transfers, do not facilitate serious violations of international law.”
For 47 of these shipments, the report shared “detailed commercial shipping records uncovered from manufacturers in Canada.” These included tables of air, land, and sea routes through which military-related components were sent to Israeli weapon companies through cities Montréal, Halifax, Ottawa, Vancouver, Calgary, the Greater Toronto Area and Waterloo between October 2023 and July 2025.
The 47 shipments required over 100 flights. Some flights contained military aircraft parts for assembling F-35 fighter jets used by Israeli forces to commit genocide: “Each F-35 is capable of carrying nine tons of bombs and missiles which are used to level neighbourhoods and execute assassination missions in densely populated urban areas or refugee camps, including designated “safe zones” across Gaza.” Other flights contained cartridges, units of “small-arms ammunition, composed of a metal case, a propellant charge, a projectile or bullet, and a primer.”
Over half the flights used for these shipments had civilian passengers: “Notably, 64 of these flights were commercial passenger flights, meaning that military-related cargo was transported alongside civilian passengers.”
In September 2024, then-Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly had stated that Canada had ended arms exports to Israel: “our policy has been clear since January 8 (2024), we and I have not accepted any form of arms export permits to be sent to Israel.”
In a July 2025 article by Toronto Today, Rachel Small, Canada lead of global nonprofit World Beyond War, said the arms report “exposes what must be one of the biggest propaganda campaigns in Canadian foreign policy in many decades.”
Earlier this month, current Foreign Minister Anita Anand stated that the arms report is “misleading.”
“I am distressed that there isn't enough attention being paid to this, and I think if we knew the truth, we would all be,” said Cheryl. “We do need journalists, independent journalists, that can tell us things that our news is not telling the rest of these people, because (if they knew), they would be with us as well.”
Despite Western University administration’s current insistence on political neutrality, they divested from apartheid in South Africa in 1985 following community consultation.
“Previous instances of divestment took years,” said a member of Western Divestment Coalition (WDC). “The (convocation protests) were just one battle in the long fight to get the administration to concede. WDC isn’t going anywhere and will continue that fight into the next year.” ♦
Last summer, Western University students and community members similarly protested at graduation convocations and held a vigil at the encampments in honour of Palestinian students killed by Israeli forces; see June 2024 article “Under the rubble of our dreams”: Vigil honours university students killed by Israeli forces, as Western University graduation ceremonies unfold.
Written using files received from Guy, Cailin Gallinger, and other protesters. The names of some students and protesters have been excluded for their safety. Some protesters were consulted about this article prior to its publication to ensure the protests were safely covered.
A version of this article appeared in The Antler River Media Co-op on August 11, 2025:
*NOTE: on August 8th, 2025, the following changes were made:
The following sentence: “It does not appear to be when exercising rights beneath Western’s Freedom of Expression policy, which the administration opposed with the widely-condemned, and now paused, procedure 1.1 that restricted campus protests.” was changed to “It does not appear to be when exercising rights beneath Western’s Freedom of Expression policy, which the administration opposed with the widely-condemned, and now modified, procedure 1.1 that restricted campus protests.”
The following portions were added: "Despite Western University administration’s current insistence on political neutrality, they divested from apartheid in South Africa in 1985 following community consultation.
“Previous instances of divestment took years,” said a member of Western Divestment Coalition (WDC). “The (convocation protests) were just one battle in the long fight to get the administration to concede. WDC isn’t going anywhere and will continue that fight into the next year.”
“The official page for the Ivey-Israel business trip appeared to be taken down after a January protest on campus, but protesters point out that another partnership exists between Western University and Israel’s Hebrew University of Jerusalem: an exchange program to Israel open to all students across programs.”