University leaders are to be summoned to Downing Street amid growing government anger at their failure to crack down on antisemitic protests.
As reported by the Times, Rishi Sunak told cabinet on Tuesday that there had been an “unacceptable” rise in antisemitism on campuses and that ministers would be meeting vice-chancellors to “discuss the need for universities to be safe for our Jewish students”.
A spokesman for the prime minister said that Sunak expected university leaders to take “robust action” in dealing with disruptive pro-Palestinian protests. The report continues:
The comments come after students at Cambridge set up an encampment of about 40 tents on a lawn outside King’s College in a protest against the war in Gaza.
Inspired by similar protests in the United States, about a dozen sit-in protest camps have been set up on British campuses in the past fortnight.
Those taking part in the protests at Oxford have been asked to sign up to a radical pro-Palestinian manifesto that refers to the “right of colonised people to resist against occupation”.
At Cambridge, Palestinian flags were displayed on some of the tents and draped from an external wall of the college, along with sheets repurposed as banners displaying messages.
One of them read: “Cambridge Jews for justice in Palestine”, while another read “Divest from genocide”.
Asked what the prime minister’s message was to students involved in the protests, Sunak’s spokesman said the “right to free speech does not include the right to harass people or incite violence”.
“We expect university leaders to take robust action in dealing with that kind of behaviour and that will be the subject of the conversation in No 10 later this week to ensure a zero-tolerance approach to this sort of behaviour is adopted on all campuses,” he said.
Ministers are currently drawing up new guidance for universities on how they should deal with potentially antisemitic protests and prevent outside groups from infiltrating campuses.
Arif Ahmed, director for freedom of speech and academic freedom for the Office for Students (OfS), said: “Universities should uphold free speech within the law for everyone. But this does not, and cannot, include discrimination against or harassment of Jewish students, or any other conduct prohibited by law.”
Worth reading in full.
Since Israel’s military response to Hamas’s October 7th terrorist attack on its southern Kibbutzim, the FSU has regularly been asked where the legal line between free speech and ‘hate speech’ is drawn, specifically in the current context.
In response, we’ve produced two comprehensive set of FAQs on the issue for our members.
One relates to freedom of expression, the other on campus — outlining the relevant laws to be aware of and shedding light on that difficult ‘grey zone’ where the boundary is between lawful free speech and speech that may be construed as stirring up hatred or inciting violence. Click the button below to read the FAQs on the legal limits to online freedom of expression.
And the FAQs on the limits to freedom of expression on campus are below.
To join us and get access to these and the many other, similar documents we prepare for our members, click the button below. Without your support we wouldn’t be able to do the work that we do, standing up for the free speech rights of our members in the workplace and the public square. Membership starts from just £4.99 a month, and includes regular newsletters, FAQs and briefings, exclusive online content and free or heavily discounted tickets to our regular live events — link is below!
