The Prime Minister has summoned the vice chancellors of several universities to Downing Street to read them the riot act over pro-Palestine protests taking place on their campuses. But this meeting will need to have more impact than Rishi Sunak’s ineffectual gathering of police chiefs in February over public order – which has led to far too little improvement in the situation.
Tomorrow’s meeting could not be more timely, with the campus protests in the UK now at a turning point. Last week, in a new low, the senior leadership of Goldsmiths, University of London surrendered to the lion’s share of demands by their pro-Palestine student protestors. Even the university’s recognition of the gold standard IHRA definition of anti-Semitism is under threat.
Free speech does not include is the right to harass, threaten or intimidate
There are many questions to be asked about the events at Goldsmiths. Firstly, how, in a sector supposedly on the edge of financial crisis, is a single mid-sized university able to afford to prioritise over £100,000 a year for Palestinian scholarships? Jeremy Hunt would be well within his rights as Chancellor to raise this matter with the Universities UK advocacy group next time they ask for more taxpayer funding or higher fees.
More fundamentally, though, is why did Goldsmiths senior management feel it necessary to take the steps they did? Were any Jewish staff or Jewish representative groups consulted before these decisions were made? And how could a university currently undergoing an independent inquiry into anti-Semitism possibly decide it was appropriate to call into question the normative IHRA definition of anti-Semitism?
We should have no doubt that Goldsmiths’ striking capitulation will only embolden protesters elsewhere. Encampments have already been established in at least 14 universities across the UK. More may well follow.
The wider education sector also has serious questions to answer. In this week’s parliamentary debate on the new Bill to prevent public bodies engaging in boycotts, divestments and sanctions, Lord Willetts and Lord Johnson of Marylebone both advocated for the preservation of university autonomy. But universities are primarily publicly funded – and have been happy to dance to government’s tune on admissions, equality law and other progressive causes for many years.
Autonomy is good. But what happens when autonomy is compromised and becomes an inadvertent charter for one-sided injustice in the radically changed circumstances of the post October 7 world? As we have seen in other sectors, laws passed by elected politicians are the ultimate safeguard against takeover by one factional interest at the expense of the wider public good.
Though Jewish students are the ones feeling the brunt of this, we should recognise that this affects many others too. Last week anti-Israel protestors sought to disrupt open days at the University of Cambridge. How many 17-year school children from ordinary, unpolitical backgrounds will have been deterred from going to Cambridge as a result of these disturbing actions? Or will feel they have to change their opinions to conform?
Too many universities are disingenuously pretending this is somehow an issue of free speech. It is true that there can sometimes be ambiguity about when certain forms of speech cross the line into being unlawful. But the truth of the matter is that in most cases with these campus protests we are not dealing with questions of free speech.
The right to free speech incorporates the right to be offensive, controversial, or even just pig-ignorantly wrong. What it does not include is the right to harass, threaten or intimidate. Still less does it include the right to trespass, disrupt other students’ education that they have paid for or occupy lecture theatres and administrative facilities. The Free Speech Act of 2023 is about speech, not actions.
Ben Sasse, the president of the University of Florida drew this distinction sharply, unequivocally condemning the protestors and saying:
We will always defend your rights to free speech and free assembly—but if you cross the line on clearly prohibited activities, you will be thrown off campus and suspended.
Similarly, free speech does not oblige universities to negotiate with protesters, to celebrate or ‘commemorate’ their actions, or aid and abet that speech by failing to enforce standard campus rules on obstruction and the use of university buildings. Does anyone doubt that if far right protestors were chanting ‘Go back to Africa’, or displaying symbols of the Ku Klux Klan, universities would – rightly – show no hesitation in using the full force of the powers available to them to condemn and shut the protests down?
Even when bans are not the answer, universities should be doing far more to actively contest and condemn the repugnant views set out in too many banners and chants seen at the pro-Palestine protests. There is an unwillingness to point out that boycotts and divestment would not just harm Israel, but would also harm the UK.
When Rishi Sunak meets with the universities’ vice chancellors, there are several points it is imperative they discuss. First, both the government and Universities UK must unequivocally recognise the clear distinction between words and actions – and that the right to free speech does not include the right to disrupt. The higher education regulator Office for Students (OfS) should publicly write to universities on this matter, following the letter to the chairs of governing bodies written by the OfS’s chair in March.
Second, every university where protests are occurring should be asked to formally consider and publish a statement on how their stance towards these protests is in compliance with public sector equality duty (PSED) legislation. Is allowing protesters to take over portions of campus at will really the best way to ‘foster good relations between people who have a protected characteristic and those who do not’, as the PSED dictates?
Third, university leaders must publicly set out how they will use the full force of sanctions at their disposal against those who persistently transgress the university’s rules – including those who threaten others, disrupt university life or trespass upon communal property. For every university, this should involve a clear and transparent set of escalating sanctions, up to suspension and expulsion. Government and the OfS should make clear, publicly, that they will actively support universities in this, including those who need to reform their ordinances to do so.
Fourth and finally, a better means of compensating students – whether Jewish or otherwise – who have had their studies disrupted by protestors needs to be established. The strikes last year, and Covid, showed the existing mechanisms for compensating students for lost teaching are woefully inadequate. Government should work with the Office of the Independent Adjudicator complaints reviewer to establish a swift and simplified compensation scheme. Under it, for every lecture, lab or tutorial missed – for strikes, protest, illness or other reason – and not rescheduled within two weeks, a university must pay each student a proportionate amount of compensation. Such mechanisms exist in other services, such as rail, and students should expect nothing less.
The Prime Minister has said he expects ‘robust action’ from universities. If they do not deliver, they should face the consequences in the next spending review. This would send a real message to universities that these are not micro-aggressions, they are macro-aggressions – and anti-Semitism remains the most enduring macro-aggression of all.
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