University chiefs have been summoned to Downing Street over concerns with growing pro-Palestinian protests on campuses across the UK.
Vice-chancellors will meet with Rishi Sunak this week to discuss an ‘unacceptable’ rise of anti-Semitism at universities and discuss the need for campuses ‘to be safe for our Jewish students’.
It comes as a Jewish student at Oxford was denied admittance to a pro-Palestine encampment for refusing to sign a radical pledge condemning Israel.
The student, in his 30s, told the Mail he was barred entry after he would not sign a document condemning the ‘Zionist entity’, in a sign that the Gaza demonstrations sweeping university campuses are becoming increasingly authoritarian.
It follows Education Secretary Gillian Keegan’s warning to university chiefs that they must alert the police if ‘illegal hate speech’ or extremism is seen during campus protests.
University chiefs have been summoned to Downing Street to meet with PM Rishi Sunak over concerns with growing pro-Palestinian protests on campuses across the UK
Students from UCL in London take part in a rally outside Downing Street, to protest against the war in Gaza
Students at an encampment on the grounds of Cambridge University, protesting against the war in Gaza
Protests against the war in Gaza have been set up in several prominent institutions including Oxford, Cambridge, Warwick and Manchester.
Ministers fear that tensions over the war may see a repeat of the violence at college campuses in the US, where pro-Palestinian demonstrators have clashed with both counter-protestors and riot police.
While protests in British universities have largely remained peaceful, concerns remain in government over the safety of Jewish students.
Mr Sunak told Cabinet yesterday: ‘Our university campuses should be places of rigorous debate, but they should also be tolerant places where people of all communities, particularly Jewish students at this time, are treated with respect.
‘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.’
Students set up pro-Palestine camps outside University of Warwick campus piazza in Coventry, May 7 2024
Banners are displayed next to tents at The University of Manchester campus, as students occupy parts of British university campuses to protest in support of Palestinians in Gaza
Tents are pictured at a pro-Palestinian student protest encampment, demonstrating against the conflict in Gaza, outside of the Leeds University Union building in Leeds, northern England on May 7, 2024
Oxford and Cambridge University students are the latest groups to have set up pro-Palestinian encampments on campus lawns.
Their tactics include setting up tents and ‘occupying space’, while calling on their universities to divest from investments in Israeli companies.
Yesterday it emerged that anyone wanting to join the protest must be ‘committed to upholding the Thawabit’, a set of demands laid down by the Palestinian Liberation Organisation in the 1970s.
The Thawabit calls for Jerusalem to be recognised as the ‘capital of Palestine’, the right to self-determination and ‘the right of colonised people to resist against occupation’.
The obligatory sign-up procedure told visitors: ‘The University of Oxford is complicit in the genocide of Palestinians. With strong ties to companies supporting the Zionist entity (like Rolls-Royce and Raytheon) and academic ties to Israel, Oxford continues to uphold Israel’s apartheid regime.’
A University and College Union (UCU) spokesperson said: ‘We are clear that anti-Semitism and Islamophobia have no place on our campuses or in our society, but freedom of speech and freedom of assembly within the law are fundamental human rights and civil liberties which must be upheld.’
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