A mob of pro-Palestinian protesters won a dismal victory at Durham University last week, exercising a ‘heckler’s veto’ to force cancellation of a debate about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The debate, titled “This house believes Palestinian leadership is the biggest barrier to peace”, was scheduled for Friday 7th June, but was called off at the last minute, with protesters banging on the windows and doors of the chamber, chanting “from the river to the sea” and preventing attendees from leaving (Telegraph).
Natasha Hausdorff, from UK Lawyers for Israel, David Collier, an investigative journalist, and Lance Forman, a former Brexit Party MEP, had been invited to defend the proposal at the Durham Union Society. Chris Doyle, the director of the Council for Arab-British Understanding, Dr Peter Shambrook, a Middle Eastern historian and Mohab Ramadan, founder of the University’s Israeli-Palestinian Resolution Society, had agreed to oppose it.
Durham has since faced criticism for its decision to postpone the debate rather than allow the police to remove the blockading protesters.
Ms Hausdorff told the Telegraph: “Around a dozen students were preparing the chamber for the debate when a mob formed a human chain blocking them inside. They were stuck inside the debate chamber for more than two and a half hours. The police took no action because the university refused to give them a mandate to take action.” Many students were “devastated” by the cancellation, she said, adding that they expected the University “to have their back, but they sided with the mob”.
Echoing Ms Hausdorff’s criticisms, Mr Forman wrote on X: “The university caved in to a fascist mob and cancelled the debate last minute. Free speech died in Durham tonight. They’re afraid of hearing the truth.”
One of the opposing speakers, Mohab Ramadan, who has been involved with Durham University’s pro-Palestinian encampment since it began, also criticised the conduct of the protesters.
“Granting yourself what you’re denying to others is shameful,” he said. “To deny others the freedom to speak and debate when you yourself have encamped on Palace Green and been tolerated, allowed to speak and be heard by the entire University is unforgivable. I supported you and believed in your cause, arguing passionately for Palestine, but your actions have alienated the very people you seek to persuade.”
It is perhaps a measure of the type of protesters involved in forcing the cancellation of this event that when Mohab visited them at their invitation prior to the event to read them his speech, he was shouted at and called a “Zionist pig”, a “traitor” and told to “f*** off and never come back”.
Predictably, Durham Students for Palestine condemned the Union for becoming “a Zionist mouthpiece” [yawn] and openly admitted that the aim of the protest had been to “prevent their debate from taking place”.
“Paying £50 to go and make a timed speech in a tiny room is not democracy – this is democracy”, one pro-Palestinian protester claimed, the deictic marker presumably directing our attention towards the unedifying spectacle of a mob successfully deploying a ‘heckler’s veto’ to shut down the sort of debate that forms part of the lifeblood of public life in, er, a democracy.
In a statement, Durham University said: “The event went ahead with the full support of the university, in line with our code of practice on freedom of expression.
“We were expecting a protest at the event, having been made aware in advance… In response to further intelligence and advice from the police about a risk to public safety, the University regretfully took the decision to end the event.”
The University also suggested that “[w]hile disappointed, the Durham Union Society accepted the reasons for this decision”.
Maybe so, but that didn’t stop the president of the Durham Union Society, Matthew Brooker, telling the Mail that members of the group felt the University “has bent over backwards to accommodate the protesters”.
“Many students, irrespective of their opinion on the motion, are devastated that the debate was prevented from going ahead,” he said, adding: “They feel like free speech died in Durham last night. One student said ‘it felt like we were abandoned’.”
At the FSU we’re shocked by this cancellation… but not surprised.
We keep a league table of the universities which have the worst record of defending free speech and Durham is at the top. We’ve had to defend more students and staff at Durham than any other university in the UK. What happened at Durham provides yet more evidence that we desperately need the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act — which the FSU campaigned for — to come into force on 1st August as planned and impose a long overdue legal duty on higher education providers in England to uphold and actively promote free speech on campus.
You can read more about the Act, and why we believe it will go some way towards addressing the free speech crisis in English universities, here.
