Students gathered outside Dalhousie University’s Student Union Building on the first day of school to protest a disciplinary hearing against a Palestinian student, Yousef A., who is facing accusations of harassment towards a faculty member over the summer.

The incident, which occurred on July 29, took place outside the Israel Exchange program office. Yousef says he was protesting the program when a faculty member confronted him in the hallway.

“The founder of the Israel Exchange program came out of his office, which the door was also wide open— and he came and started to scream at me and saying, ‘this is harassment,’” Yousef says.

 Yousef says he believes the complaint was filed because the faculty member heard a student speaking Arabic in the hallway.

“That apparently scared him,” he says. “And shook him to the core.”

The Watch reached out to the faculty member for comment but did not receive a response. The faculty member is now on sabbatical until August 2025.

After the disciplinary hearing, Yousef says Dalhousie University decided to move forward with the complaint, a decision he condemns. 

“I wonder, why has Dalhousie University gone through with a complaint where the main base to it is ‘this Arabic student spoke Arabic, and it scared me,’” he says. “It’s obviously a racist complaint.”

Dalhousie did not respond to requests for comment from The Watch.

Dr. Ajay Parasram, an associate professor of international development studies and history at Dal, weighed in on the issue. 

Though he did not witness the incident, Dr. Parasram talks of the dangers of faculty members blowing an altercation out of proportion. “The racialization of threat is something we need to be concerned with here,” he says.

“A person’s language is not a threat.”

Dr. Parasram says many students have disrespected him and protested the content he teaches. “Never in my life have I ever thought to file a complaint against a student,” he says.

The incident took place during the final hours of a pro-Palestinian encampment that occupied the Studley quad over the summer. The encampment, which began on May 12, lasted 78 days before its removal on July 29.

Yousef says he hopes his legal counsel will win his case. The investigation will continue over the next few months. Yousef maintains that he did nothing wrong and only left the scene out of fear for his safety.

“I heard him screaming on the phone, ‘there is a brown man here harassing me.’ When I heard that – I don’t know if he was calling Dal security or the police, but being a racialized person, I got scared,” he says. “Because if the police came, they would fuck me up and they would take his word for it.”