In 2023, Goldsmiths appointed senior barrister Mohinderpal Sethi KC of Littleton Chambers to lead the inquiry.
The barrister, who has previously examined sexual abuse in athletics and racism at Yorkshire County Cricket Club, was tasked with determining if Goldsmiths breached its duties under the Equalities Act, failed to follow its own anti-racist policies, or failed to support Jewish students and staff who have experienced antisemitism or to deal with their complaints adequately.
But on Thursday, nine organisations announced they had lost “confidence” in the inquiry, accusing it of marginalising Palestinians, adopting an approach which discriminates against them, and appearing to “target those who criticise Israeli policies and Zionism”.
In a joint statement, the groups complained of “a lack of transparency as to who and what is being investigated by the inquiry”.
The organisations accused the investigation of failing to take into account how the “social and political context where unfounded accusations of antisemitism are used to silence Palestinian voices and those who stand with them”.
The groups also complained that the inquiry had not specified whether it was adopting the “discredited” IHRA definition of antisemitism in its assessment.
“This is a crucial question because criticism of Israeli government policies and actions, and anti-Zionism are frequently weaponised and misrepresented as antisemitism,” the groups said.
Forensic Architecture, a multidisciplinary research group based at Goldsmiths, is one of the organisations which has withdrawn its engagement from the inquiry.
Between 2016-2022, the group received €1,996,830 (£1,680,442) from the European Research Council to fund its projects.
It has compiled and published numerous investigations about the Middle East conflict, including “No traces of life”: Israel's ecocide in Gaza 2023-2024 and A Cartography of Genocide: Israel’s conduct in Gaza since October 2023.
In November, the JC revealed that a film shown by the group, When it stopped being a war: The Situated Testimony of Dr Ghassan Abu-Sittah, wrongly blamed Israel for the explosion at Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City in October 2023, which was the result of a misfired Islamic Jihad rocket. The film was described by media watchdog Camera as “intended solely to spread disinformation”.
At the time of writing, it was unclear what the nine organisations meant by stating they had withdrawn “engagement” from the inquiry.
A call for evidence was opened on May 18, 2023 and closed on August 18 that year. The chair of the inquiry then called people for interview based on the submissions. On completion, a report will be published on Goldsmiths’ website.
In 2021, Jews complained they were banned from a student meeting at Goldsmiths that discussed “defending Palestine”, which was reportedly strictly limited to students who were “African, Arab, Asian, Caribbean and other black communities”.
In 2022, Hirsh, a senior lecturer in sociology, was accused of having an “explicit racist history” by the then-SU president after he had expressed concern about antisemitism in “university campaigns to ‘decolonise’ education”.
Dr David Hirsh, a senior lecturer in sociology at Goldsmiths, was accused of being a “far-right white supremacist” by the then-student union president in 2022[Missing Credit]
At the time, the president was supported by the Goldsmiths branch of the UCU – the staff trade union of which Hirsh is a long-time member, and one of the groups which has now withdrawn engagement from the inquiry.
Speaking to the JC, Hirsh said: “The union has all sorts of questions to answer, and the union has said now that it's refusing to answer them.
"They've decided that it's better to try to delegitimise the whole process, but then the risk is that people will see that there is an independent inquiry and will conclude that the refusal of the staff and the students to engage with it is, itself, symptomatic of the antisemitism problem."
In June 2022, Goldsmiths adopted the IHRA definition without the listed examples of antisemitism, the alternative Jerusalem Declaration definition of antisemitism, and the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on British Muslims’ definition of Islamophobia.
In the same statement, the Vice-Chancellor of Goldsmiths, Professor Frances Corner, offered public support for Hirsh. “We are supporting Dr Hirsh after unwarranted messages about him were posted on social media which I believe are utterly without foundation. These kinds of behaviours are completely unacceptable and will always be challenged,” she said.
In May 2024, following the occupation of the Professor Stuart Hall building by student activists from Goldsmiths for Palestine (G4P), the university published a set of commitments it would make to the pro-Gaza campaign group.
One commitment was that the university would review the impact of adopting the IHRA definition, the Jerusalem Declaration and the All-Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims’ definition of Islamophobia.
The university also committed itself to the installation of an exhibition wall in the Professor Stuart Hall Building, to memorialise the student occupation, and announced its support for a proposal to rename one of the lecture theatres after Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh who was killed in 2022 while reporting on the conflict.
In November, the university said it would remove the names of Candida and Zak Gertler from one of its galleries and its donor board, following a months-long boycott of the Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art (CCA) by anti-Israel activists.
The gallery had been named after the Gertlers, who had previously donated to the institution.
Candida, a co-founder of the Outset Contemporary Art Fund and a major Jewish arts patron, shortly after resigned from all her voluntary positions within UK arts institutions over the “alarming rise of antisemitism” and “the tacit normalisation of hate” in her sector.
Hirsh told the JC: “All will come down to the clarity of the report and the willingness of the university to take it seriously. They must resist the anti-Zionists' attempt to make the report into just one side of an endless to and fro.”
A spokesperson for Goldsmiths, University of London, said: “Our understanding is that the independent inquiry is concluding with a report of its findings to be published in due course."
The JC contacted Goldsmiths Students Union, Goldsmiths UCU executive xommittee, European Legal Support Centre (ELSC), British Society for Middle Eastern Studies (BRISMES), British Committee for the Universities of Palestine (BRICUP), Palestine Solidarity Campaign, International Centre of Justice for Palestinians (ICJP), Muslim Association of Britain (MAB) and Forensic Architecture for comment.
