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I’m a non-Jewish academic. British universities are racist

A UK professor, who wishes to remain anonymous, explores first-hand the bigotry that has infected higher education

December 5, 2024 16:30
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A demonstration in support of Palestinian people at University College London (UCL) main entrance (Photo by BENJAMIN CREMEL/AFP via Getty Images)
4 min read

As a non-Jewish lecturer at a major university, I can confirm that British academia is structurally racist against Jews. The penny finally dropped as I was second-marking a piece of undergraduate writing in which Jews were openly compared to scurrying vermin, spreading disease.

The student’s illiterate use of grammar, nonsensical punctuation and mixed metaphors would surely have embarrassed Goebbels. But Hitler’s arch propagandist would just as surely have approved of the spirit of the piece. Not that this was a uniquely awful specimen of the kind of “work” I’ve had to face as first and second marker of a large cohort of students since the horror of October 7.

A different piece, produced by a student in the same year group, accused its readers, in the foulest language, of complicity with “genocide” and of “sleeping” while the IDF killed innocent civilians for target practice.

The obvious Jew-hatred of these pieces of writing were one thing. But then there were the comments of the first academic who had marked them, which praised the “Jews-as-vermin” piece as a moving indictment of Israeli “colonisation” that displayed a fine philosophical turn of phrase and a carefulness of language. As for the “genocide” piece, my colleague reassured the student that his message was deeply important.