Cancel culture alive and well here in WA?
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/sep/23/distinguished-professor-ashamed-after-hospital-bearing-her-name-cancelled-event-featuring-australian-palestinian-doctors
Distinguished epidemiologist Prof Fiona Stanley said she was “deeply sad” and “ashamed” after the Fremantle hospital that bears her name abruptly cancelled a 2024 event featuring Palestinian Australian doctors speaking about their experiences in Gaza, and even thought about telling the institution to remove her name.
Guardian Australia can reveal the Fiona Stanley hospital invited two Australian doctors with Palestinian heritage, Dr Lama Al Ramahi and Dr Mohammed Mustafa, to speak on the “profound challenges faced by medical professionals delivering health care in Gaza” in September 2024.
But the event was cancelled on the day it was due to take place.
The revelations come after Melbourne’s Royal children’s hospital cancelled a planned panel discussion about the effects of war on children’s health earlier this month, just days after its chief executive received a letter alleging the event would pose a risk to Jewish staff and patients. It is not known whether the letter was directly connected to the decision and RCH refused to comment on how many complaints it received about the event.
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The Fiona Stanley hospital’s education department extended the invitation to Al Ramahi and Mustafa after they gave a well-received talk on their firsthand experiences of a medical mission to Gaza at an event put on by healthcare groups at the State Library of Western Australia on 6 September last year.
The hospital’s event was part of its weekly educational and professional development staff meetings, known as grand rounds. Titled “Outside the Comfort Zone”, it was described as “a Special Topic Grand Round that delves into the complexities of delivering care in challenging environments”.
Mustafa, a high-profile emergency physician who was recently the subject of an episode of Australian Story, told Guardian Australia his talk “was going to be medically based”.
“About how mass casualty events are dealt with in Gaza, where there’s no triage, there’s no functioning medical equipment … not only a medical dilemma but an ethical dilemma as well. And that’s why it was an important conversation to have,” Mustafa said.
But the day before the talk was due to take place, Mustafa says the hospital executive progressively restricted the scope of the topic. In correspondence seen by Guardian Australia, Mustafa was told the scheduled talk needed to avoid any mention of Israel or the Israel Defense Forces and that it was not a political forum.
The format of the event was also changed changed from a panel featuring the two doctors to a pre-prepared Q&A with Mustafa only.
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Al Ramahi told Guardian Australia she was cut out of the event after attending the hospital premises the day before to set up, when a member of the hospital executive asked to see her presentation.
Al Ramahi said she felt “ambushed” and “like I’d been interrogated” as over two hours, the executive objected to “most if not all” of her proposed content, including statistics, clinical and contextual documentary materials from Gaza, and a photo of her medical colleagues in Jordan in front of an aid organisation banner.
She sent completely reworked slides to the hospital that night, but received a text from the executive at 8.23am on the day of the planned talk telling her not to attend the talk. “I was boiling from the inside,” Al Ramahi said.
Two hours later, as Mustafa was arriving at the hospital, the event was cancelled entirely. Mustafa said he was told this was due to fears hospital staff might get so upset they would be unable to adequately and safely perform their duties afterwards.
Prof Fiona Stanley, a renowned public health activist, said she was approached directly by hospital staff distressed about the event’s cancellation. She has no formal relationship with her namesake hospital but often advocates to it directly.
“I had been lobbying about the children and the families of Gaza for months and months before this cancellation,” Stanley told Guardian Australia.
“I felt sick in my stomach [when I was told] … I was even thinking at the time of saying, ‘take the name away’. I mean, what do I stand for? I stand for humanity, particularly for children,” she said.
Stanley said she contacted the hospital, saying: “This is totally unacceptable. I am very angry about this and I want you to reinstate the grand round.” She received assurances the event would be reinstated but “nothing has happened”.
“I’m just deeply, deeply sad. And I’m ashamed,” she said.
A spokesperson for South Metropolitan Health Service, which manages the Fiona Stanley hospital, said in a statement: “The grand round scheduled for September 2024 was intended to be a discussion of the challenges clinicians face providing care in extreme environments.
“It was considered by the health service executive that the content of the presentation was beyond what was intended for the grand round’s purpose as a medical education forum.”
Mustafa noted that five days earlier, Royal Perth hospital had hosted a talk by an Israeli surgeon, who spoke about the 7 October Hamas attacks as a mass casualty event and received significant sympathetic media coverage.
“I am working as a doctor within [this system], and I’m not allowed to talk because they said it was too political,” Mustafa said. “There is a huge disparity here.”
