Opinion
As a Jewish grad, I hope the NUS can function for Jewish students again
The new report into the NUS describes in minute detail how Jewish students have been failed by the NUS
January 12, 2023 16:17
3 min read
The new report into the NUS describes in minute detail how Jewish students have been failed by the NUS
January 12, 2023 16:17For three years, I was a Jewish student. I started out not caring about student politics. Who were those people who spent their lives caring about motions, elections and procedure? I went to university, I thought, to get a degree and make some friends.
Why should I care about any of this?
And then, I got involved. A catalyst was my time as JSoc President. All of a sudden, my Students’ Union began to start to matter to me. I began to think about who was elected to key student roles, and their track records in areas that were important to me. But there was always something a bit further away – the NUS. Friends who had ever tried to get involved told me that it was inhospitable; a den for the far-left and those who hate Jewish students like me, however much they disguised it in ‘criticism of Israel’. One friend went to an NUS Conference and came out of it shaken at how she was treated. I decided to steer well clear – why should I put myself through that?
As I began to become more involved in UJS and the Jewish student world, the NUS became more and more present. May 2021 was a difficult and challenging time to be a Jewish student, and our national union could not be relied on to even stand in solidarity with us; antisemitism would always be trumped by political activism.
Procrastinating my revision, I sat in a library one day listening to a UJS hustings for NUS President. One candidate came adorned in Palestinian flags, and proclaimed that they could not be an antisemite, for they stood in solidarity with the Palestinian people, who are of course Semites too. I sat in disbelief. I knew that the NUS was bad, but this bad?
Three weeks later, I’d been offered a job at UJS. Sat in a library again, I got a phone call, and an hour later I was in a car on my way to Liverpool for the NUS National Conference 2022. I’d heard over the past few weeks about Lowkey’s invitation, about Jewish students being told to go another room during his performance, and about the track records of those who were contending to become of next NUS President. I felt a sense of trepidation; I was heading straight into the lions’ den.
Rebecca Tuck KC’s report into antisemitism in the NUS describes in minute detail how Jewish students over decades have been failed by the NUS. The testimony in the report is difficult to read, with students describing how they were left in states of extreme distress and their physical safety was threatened while in NUS spaces.
What had they done to deserve this? We hold it as a given – a precept of modern society – that people should not be targeted based on their characteristics. Activists in the National Union of Students have repeatedly and vehemently targeted Jewish students for the simple crime of being Jewish.
To read the experiences of my predecessors in student politics, whose complaints were dismissed, ignored, and taken as bad faith, is simultaneously shocking and moving. Perhaps I was lucky to have been scared away from the NUS before, such that my experiences were never as traumatising or distressing as theirs. Perhaps I let down others by shying away during my early years as a student, and leaving them to face the abuse by themselves.
One thing that I can hope is that my successors in student politics will not face the same dilemma. The recommendations that Tuck makes in her report will likely ensure that Jewish students can slowly yet surely begin to feel confident in student politics, able to thrive and champion what they believe in, beyond their status as a Jew.
Jewish students will be able to once again vehemently disagree and debate the issues that they care about, and the National Union of Students can begin to function once again, as I so deeply hope that it had during my time at university.
This report is not the end of a process, but instead marks a crucial step in this process. Student politics can perhaps be something that the Jewish community once again stops having to fight about, and instead those who want to can roll their eyes and ignore it, and those who care can once again champion what they believe.
