Why might senior Jewish academics write to the Secretary of State for Education objecting to the decision of the Union of Jewish Students (UJS) and the Board of Deputies to support her move to “pause” the implementation of the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act, signed into law a year ago?
No, we are not a huddle of radical-left haters of Israel, though our views of what is happening in Israel and Gaza vary. We include four fellows of the British Academy, the national academy for the humanities and social sciences; and eight Oxbridge professors.
Some of us can literally see what is happening out of our own office window: encampments, marches but also criminal damage such as defacing the Senate House in Cambridge with red paint.
We believe that the UJS and the Board have made a catastrophic error in supporting a decision that will hinder, not help, the already difficult position of Jewish students on campuses. Why does the Board of Deputies think it speaks here for the whole Jewish community, or for Jewish academics?
There has been concern about the slowness with which several universities have adopted the IHRA definition of antisemitism. But we have to understand what that document is: an extremely brief working definition followed by several suggested examples, only a few of which concern Israel. In other words, it offers guidelines, sufficient for us to be able to accuse the so-called comedian who joked about this newspaper placing its online material behind a paywall of making an antisemitic statement.
Yet the IHRA document is not legally binding; it is a litmus test. When violence is threatened against Jews or discrimination occurs, legal mechanisms already exist, as in the appalling case of the death threats against the Leeds Jewish chaplains (for which the university bizarrely rewarded them by cancelling their email addresses). Holocaust denial, contrary to the assumptions of the UJS, is covered by existing legislation.
The naivety of those who support the pausing of the Act – a decision that is being challenged at law by the doughty warriors of the Free Speech Union – is made plain when one realises that a smokescreen has been created. Still embarrassed by Corbynista antisemitism, the Labour government is trying to flatter Jews, while calculating that it must also win back votes from another, much larger, community.
Foreign Secretary David Lammy’s abandonment of British objections to the decision of the International Court of Justice to consider whether what is happening in Gaza amounts to genocide, and the withdrawal of opposition to charges against Netanyahu, are clear attempts to offer something simultaneously to British Muslims. This will probably be taken further with legislation against Islamophobia.
So often paired together, and both highly reprehensible, antisemitism and Islamophobia are not in fact directly comparable. All racism stinks; but racism is about ethnicity. For some, like Diane Abbott, it appears to be mainly about skin colour but, as we know, Jews, predominantly white, have also experienced it. Religion is not a suitable defining feature.
Although attacks on Muslims and mosques have an undeniably racist aspect, there are other south Asian communities, including Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists and Parsees, often of similar ethnic origins, as well as Indian Jews, who all deserve the right of protection, which is already provided by existing legislation.
Legislating against hostile remarks about one religion, vile as those comments are, would result in blasphemy laws that oddly do not apply to the established religion of this nation, quite apart from Judaism and other faiths.
Bridget Phillipson has emphasised that universities must do more to address antisemitism. Vice-chancellors need to recognise that universities, institutions created to encourage the open exchange of ideas, have been corrupted by antisemitic hate speech in public and in private. The aim of the Act is to ensure that the claims of activists can be openly countered by, for instance, speakers who wish to defend Israel or discuss other contentious issues such as biological gender or the history of colonialism; and the Act provides that the university, not the organiser, has to cover the cost of security, making it impossible to argue that an event was cancelled because of security concerns. Universities that fail to uphold these principles will be subject to fines. The Act is intended to help universities recover their role as places where open discussion is practised in search of the truth, in a climate where mutual tolerance is expected.
Cataclysmic ignorance about why Israel came into existence, not to mention the often fraught history of the Jews, has spread like wildfire.
Yes, ignorance as well as knowledge can spread, and the Act provides a platform for those of us who wish to speak for the Jewish community and for Israel. Jews can only flourish where there is free speech.
David Abulafia is emeritus professor of Mediterranean history at the University of Cambridge
