October 7th, Israel / Palestine, antisemitism, protest and universities in the UK

Leadership, conflict and campus cohesion

Hamas’ attack on Israel on 7 October 2023, and the Israeli military response, continues to have profound consequences on our university campuses and communities. The massacre was the biggest single attack on Jews as Jews since the Holocaust, leaving more than 1200 dead and with more than 200 others taken as hostages. Israel’s response has been overwhelming with millions of Palestinians displaced and more than 60,000 dead including several thousand Palestinian children, many as a result of what may be the most destructive bombing campaign in history. All our university communities had connections to both Israeli and Palestinian victims of this tragedy and a battle around the meaning of this conflict has been fought on our campuses ever since. What follows is a personal perspective on attempting to navigate through this terrain, and especially around dealing with antisemitism and protest activity, as a university leader (and Holocaust and genocide scholar). It describes my own thinking (and the degree to which it has changed over the period) in a way that I hope is helpful to thinking through these issues in the sector. What follows does not take an interpretative position on this Israel / Gaza war – although I do acknowledge that many will see my efforts to steer a neutral course as an interpretative act in and of itself. 

Establishing institutional approaches to antisemitism

Before 

Thinking about how to deal with antisemitism on our campuses did not begin on October 7th, and my first involvement in the issue as a university leader came with helping Northumbria University formulate its response to the then Secretary of State’s instruction that all institutions should adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism in 2020. I led a series of conversations with colleagues across our community about the IHRA definition, in which there were predictably polarised views - ranging from the majority that thought that to adopt the definition and particularly its examples would be to place intolerable limits on academic freedom and freedom of speech; to a significant minority that believed it would be an appropriate act of solidarity with Jewish members of our community.  

The IHRA definition is not without its problems, but my recommendation was that the university should adopt it – not least because it makes clear that context is all important in evaluating whether actions or discourse is antisemitic or not. Ultimately, I don’t think that the argument that the definition potentially undermines academic freedom or criticism of the actions of the state of Israel is particularly compelling. Indeed, practically speaking the constant presence of protest and criticism of Israel on our campuses over the last two years has rather borne this out (something I discuss below). To give an example of where the IHRA definition is useful, particularly its emphasis on context: articulating the political conviction that Palestine should be free is in and of itself not an antisemitic act – but writing the slogan ‘free Palestine’ on a Jewish building, or attaching it to an online celebration of a Jewish festival (both of which imply the unique responsibility of Jewish people for the actions of the Israeli government) may well be.  

Adopting the IHRA definition also had an important practical impact for us at Northumbria – as we did so at or around the time that we were developing our online reporting portal for unacceptable behaviour. What the adoption of a definition of one form of racism made clear is that we needed to be able to distinguish between different articulations of racial hatred, in order that we could both follow up on individual cases and to understand what the data we were able to derive from reporting was really telling us about the issues that we faced within our community. As such colleagues and students are able to identify when reporting using our portal the typology of racial incident they are highlighting, including antisemitism. I am not wholly convinced that we would have introduced that change without the pressure that we were put under to adopt IHRA (as all institutions were). It is an obvious weakness that we do not yet have a working and agreed definition of other racisms (Islamophobia, anti-black racism etc) but again that negative is not a very compelling reason not to accept an agreed definition of antisemitism. Ultimately it also seems appropriate that we allow victims of racism to define what that racism is, and adopting the IHRA definition was a recognition of that within our community.  

I should be clear that I find some of the examples of the IHRA definition problematically worded. I would personally take issue with two of them, but I don’t ultimately believe they are disabling – even if they do point to the complexities of this discourse. The fourth example states baldly that ‘denying the … intentionality of the genocide of the Jewish people’ could be an example of antisemitism. This seems to deliberately prioritise a particular interpretation of the Holocaust as the result of ideological intention, when other interpretations have been a feature of our efforts to understand the Shoah since the end of the Second World War (where so-called functionalist or structuralist interpretations have absolutely denied the intentionality of the genocide of the Jewish people). But the context in which these interpretations are framed is all important – and if they are part of a deliberate effort to understand the reality of the emergence of genocide rather than an effort to minimise the reality of Jewish suffering, then it seems to me that they could not reasonably be argued to be antisemitic. Similarly, one of the examples suggests that ‘drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis’ can constitute antisemitism. And indeed, crude characterisations of Israel as the simple equivalent of the Nazi state, especially when motivated by bad faith, might well be antisemitism pure and simple. But other forms of comparison might not be, when one considers the context. For example, the idea of genocide is itself inherently comparative and to identify the war in Gaza as constituting genocide, or historically the Nakba as constituting genocide, does at one level involve a comparison between Israel and the Nazi state, just as saying that Hamas promotes a genocidal ideology does. I don’t think that this form of comparison can reasonably be understood as an act of antisemitism, not least because it is framed within a legitimate academic discourse that finds the interconnectedness of acts of mass violence (not their equivalence). And nor do I think that actually the IHRA definition, because of its insistence on context, could encompass those kinds of scholarly acts.     

At Northumbria, identifying antisemitism as a particular form of racism also impacted our submission for recognition under the auspices of the Race Equality Charter, in that we were able to explicitly acknowledge combating anti-Jewish racism as part of our action plan for combating racial inequalities in our community. As I understand it, Northumbria is relatively unusual in that regard in that many race equality charter applicants / participants do not explicitly identify how they will address antisemitism as a particular form of racism. In many ways this is not surprising, but it is (especially in the current context) something that needs addressing. It is not surprising because of the historic difficulties of dealing with ideas of Jewishness in the post-war West. In the immediate aftermath of the Second World War the desire to reject Nazism ensured that the idea that Jews constituted a racial group was overwhelmingly rejected, leading to an enduring ambivalence of thinking about Jews (and anti-Jewishness) when thinking about racism. Add to that the conviction of the anti-colonial left that Zionism, as an expression of Israeli or Jewish nationalism, might constitute a form of racism in and of itself (and the attendant conviction that it is now difficult to separate anti-Zionism from antisemitism) then it is easy to see how universities have got themselves into a space where Jews can at times be absent from conversations about racial equality. But if our antiracist work is about making our communities safe places for all to express their identity then that self-evidently must include our Jewish colleagues and students. And since October 7th we have been told repeatedly that Jewish members of our communities feel particularly unsafe on campus – and to not acknowledge that within work on inclusion must be considered a failure.

Navigating conflict, protest and inclusion post‑October 7th   

After 

The Hamas attack on Israel on October 7th and Israel’s response in the subsequent war had a very real impact on members of our community, as it did in all universities. At Northumbria colleagues and students lost friends and relatives in the Hamas attacks, other colleagues lost friends and partners as a result of Israel’s campaign, and of course partner Universities were destroyed in Gaza. Others’ families were impacted by subsequent Israeli action in Lebanon. The wars in Gaza and the wider region have revealed the absolute reality of the truism that our campuses are global communities in microcosm in the most tragic of ways. But what it has also revealed are the faultlines in those communities – the very real disagreements between us, and the points at which the expressions of our beliefs, our values and our very identities can be points of tension.  

In the weeks after October 7th, and periodically since, we faced calls for public statements that especially condemned Israel’s response. Ever since, the question of the language that ‘the University’ uses around the war in Gaza has been a constant source of controversy and tension. In the first instance, we chose not to make any definitive statement, including calls for a ceasefire, on the basis that it was unlikely to affect anyone but members of our own community. We knew that people had been impacted in different ways and that members of our community took different views on the conflict, often because of their own personal experience, and as such to take a definitive position would have risked alienating already grieving colleagues and students. Rather than issue a performative condemnation, we sought to open up space for grief, and for dialogue and to remind our community of, first and foremost, our obligations to one another.  

Of course for many, such a response was not good enough, and indeed the language we used was subject to great scrutiny – for example objections were raised to references to ‘conflict in the middle east’ as insufficiently acknowledging the asymmetry of power between the state of Israel, Hamas and Gazan civilians. Reminders to our student population of the very real legal limitations on their speech especially around expressing support for Hamas, a proscribed terrorist organisation, also drew criticism. For some this seemed to suggest that support for the Palestinian cause was proscribed (which is not the case) while support for Israel could be openly expressed – which is somewhat ironic when one considers how widespread expressions of Palestinian solidarity are on UK campuses. This has become all the more complex since the identification of the organisation Palestine Action as a terrorist group (and the subsequent legal challenge to this position). Ultimately like many institutions we were concerned that students understood the implications of their actions (which for international students could include the cancelling of their visas) and had to advise them not to express support for proscribed organisations – which to many felt like an expression of condemnation for views with which they were sympathetic.  

Throughout, where the University has communicated around these issues we have chosen to concentrate on the practical support that we can give colleagues and students. However, I freely acknowledge that this will not be enough for some. It is not enough because it does not begin with a fundamental recognition of the source of pain and fear. If the University does not explicitly condemn (for example) the state of Israel for its devastating response to the October 7th attacks and if the violence of that response has either threatened or indeed destroyed the well-being and lives of your relatives, colleagues and friends, then I can see why you might feel that the University does not stand with you. But of course, the University also needs to stand with students and colleagues who take a different view, and who have different experiences. Colleagues who, for example, as Israeli citizens would feel that to condemn Israel was to deny the legitimacy of its self-defence; or who as Jewish students or colleagues feel that overt critique of Israel from university leaders (whatever those individuals relationship with the state of Israel) makes their lives on campus more difficult and more uncomfortable.   

Indeed, whatever view we take of the war and Israel’s conduct of it – we must acknowledge that one of its most profound implications for UK campuses is that our Jewish staff and students have been made to feel less welcome. There has been an increase in antisemitic incidents, and staff and students routinely report that they find outward expressions of their Jewish identity more challenging. As UK universities are uniformly committed to antiracism, this must give us pause for thought.  

In part, this feeling of exclusion has been created by constancy of protest on our campuses in relation to Israel since October 2023, and some of the ways in which that protest has been manifested. This was most visible in the summer of 2024 when tens of universities in the UK had solidarity encampments for many months on their campuses, but it has been a constant back drop across the period – ranging from the disruption of events particularly careers fairs and graduations; occupations; criminal damage against buildings and more peaceful actions such as vigils and rallies and marches. On the one hand as universities we absolutely wish to encourage freedom of speech and critical thinking (on which more below) and we should encourage our students to engage with the world. Protest might be the natural expression of that. But some of the language that has emanated from that protest, directly challenges other members of our communities feeling of belonging. In some ways debates as to whether phrases such as ‘from the river to the sea’ or ‘Zionists not welcome’ constitute antisemitism miss the point, because such language does not to have to cross that threshold to be a direct and obvious challenge to inclusivity.  

Events over the last few months have ensured that such discussions about language have moved from being theoretical to being actually bound up with violence itself. During the encampments of 2024, some commentators pointed out at the time that some of the language emanating from them was the language of violence - especially calls to ‘globalise the intifada’ and entreaties to join the ‘resistance’. Yet the encampment movement, despite numerous examples of criminal damage, was largely peaceful and as such we in universities spent some time debating the meaning of such words and satisfying ourselves that such language was not inherently violent. And of course those discussions had to be filtered through our obligation to promote freedom of speech. My own view, and this is a judgment on myself as much as anyone, is that our conclusion that such language was not necessarily the language of violence was a mistake. When in December 2025 a Manchester synagogue was attacked, or when Australian Jews were murdered at a Hannukah celebration on Bondi Beach, the world could no longer ignore what ‘globalising’ the resistance meant – it means attacking Jews as Jews in response to the actions of the Israeli state. And we wonder why our Jewish staff and students report feeling unsafe.  

This is not just a question of language but of behaviour too. Some protests on campus have strayed into criminal damage, something we have witnessed at Northumbria as a particular partnership is targeted because of perceived links to Israel. Such damage is inflicted on buildings, but it is part of a wider culture of intimidation that can lead to members of our community feeling unsafe. I personally experienced such intimidation in the summer of 2024 when a session I was speaking at (ironically on freedom of speech and inclusion) was disrupted by a group of masked protestors – some of whom were our students although that was not entirely obvious at the time. They succeeded in essentially shutting the session down, which in and of itself is a good example of the delicate nature of our discussions on freedom of speech – in this case the manifestation of this particular speech, and actually the university’s commitment to allowing that speech to be manifested, did indeed succeed in directly curtailing another form of speech. But as I now reflect on that event, again after Manchester and Bondi, we (and I) were insufficiently outraged at the way that speech was performed – it bears repeating what happened, a group of masked protestors (some of whom were carrying representations of dead children) shut down an event, making a very large amount of noise in a small space. It is not an exaggeration to say that these individuals were, intentionally or otherwise, cosplaying as terrorists and as such this has very little to do with their freedom of expression. We as university leaders should condemn such behaviour.  

But of course we are, and are required to be, as universities, committed to academic freedom and freedom of speech, and as I said above we absolutely should be committed to encouraging criticality in our students. It is literally our primary function. But I do increasingly wonder at times how far we are really creating communities in which a diversity of views is encouraged (and here I do not just mean by university leadership teams). How many of us would walk around our campuses and be able to see visible displays of Palestinian solidarity? I suspect the answer is all of us. And this is not to question the justice of the Palestinian cause, but just to ask a question about the cultures we are operating in. How many of us would be able to walk across our campuses and find visible displays of solidarity with Israel? I am sure the answer is markedly fewer. Again that is not to say anything about the validity of such a position – but if we curate a visible environment in which one viewpoint (in a necessarily polarised debate) is visible and one is not, what impact do we think that has on colleagues and students and their ability to voice their views? In such environments which viewpoints are conformist and which are radical or alternative? When our students and staff disrupt events, or wave Palestinian flags as they cross the graduation stage are they committing acts of critical thinking, of non-conformity or are they actually performing in line with the cultures that we have all created in our universities? If you simply see these debates as a zero-sum game then you will respond that those people protesting against Israel are just on the right side of history, but I hope that I have shown that the judgments we as university leaders are called upon to make around these issues are more complex than that.  

Leadership responsibilities in a deeply divided environment

When I began writing this piece I had hoped to end by observing that the uneasy ceasefire held in the war in Gaza, and that we could hope for a route out of some of the horror and we could return as universities to doing some practical things to support the recovery of Gaza, not least in providing a route out for Gazan students and scholars through existing schemes and by rebuilding relationships with Israeli universities and scholars too. But of course the context for writing has shifted dramatically over the last few weeks because of the USA and Israel’s war with Iran and increasing Israeli attacks on Lebanon. Once again, we are reminded that we are global communities, and these events reverberate around our campuses as staff and students worry about loved ones; students are unable to travel home or indeed get back to us to study. Protests become louder once again and antisemitic violence has again been seen in the UK.  

On our campuses protests will undoubtedly continue and calls to boycott relations with Israeli institutions will, I suspect, become even louder and may increasingly become the target of those protests. As protests do continue, my reflection on the experience thus far is as leaders we should be very clear about the expectations we have as to how those protests are articulated and clearer about our expectation that it is all our responsibility to create inclusive communities. We might begin by thinking about how this situation interacts with, and challenges, our wider commitments to examining the racial inequalities in our universities. 

Professor Tom Lawson Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Northumbria University and incoming Vice-Chancellor at the University of Hull, and a scholar of the Holocaust and genocide

Other contributors to this series are:

• Prof Osama Khan, Deputy Vice-Chancellor at Aston University and incoming Vice-Chancellor at the University of South Wales, writes with personal honesty about Islamophobia, human dignity and the lived experience of exclusion, while insisting that academic freedom and free speech are not peripheral concerns, but integral to the same ethical landscape. 
• Prof Dibyesh Anand, DVC at the University of Westminster, challenges institutional comfort more directly, arguing that inclusion requires not only celebration but confrontation, and that freedom itself must be reclaimed as a condition of democratic and inclusive participation.