On the morning of the attack, Dr Nicola Perugini wrote on X: ‘Context: Palestine is brutally colonised’
August 1, 2025 16:50One of the academics behind a radical new Edinburgh University-commissioned report, which recommends scrapping the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, sought to justify Hamas’ killing spree on the morning of October 7, the JC can reveal.
In a message posted just after 7am – as news broke about the terrorist rampage in southern Israel – Dr Nicola Perugini wrote on X: “Context: Palestine is brutally colonised.”
Hours later, he posted: “Colonialism is indiscriminate by definition.” He also posted: “Dehumanising people under siege for 16 years does not work”.
Following the publication of the report, Edinburgh University is considering abandoning the internationally accepted IHRA definition, a move that Jewish groups have urged against.
Perugini and Dr Shaira Vadasaria, two of the lecturers behind the “Race Review” – a document commissioned by the university in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement – have previously campaigned against the IHRA definition.
The academics both taught for several years at al-Quds University in east Jerusalem and last year addressed an anti-Israel rally in Edinburgh, where they spoke against “imperialism, settler-colonialism and epistemic violence.”
In the days that followed October 7, Perugini, an International Relations lecturer at Edinburgh, referred to Hamas’s political standing in another X post: “Remember that the EU punished Palestinians also when they democratically elected Hamas in 2006. Democracy or violence, what the EU wants is a politically obedient Palestinian society.”
Since then, he has co-authored a paper with the United Nations special rapporteur on the Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese, accusing Israel of “legitimising genocide in Gaza”.
He has also reposted material on X from the Hamas-affiliated Quds News Network and said Israeli soldiers are engaged in “colonial savagery”.
Long before the publication of the “Race Review,” Perugini had a documented record of attacking the IHRA definition.
In 2022, he wrote on X that the definition was “weaponised to silence critical conversations on Palestine” and condemned the university for not including “Palestinian staff and scholars of Palestine” in discussions about antisemitism.
The JC understands that Dr Vadasaria, a lecturer in race and decolonial studies who has suggested in her academic work that the Palestinian “liberation struggle” cannot be addressed through “liberal" approaches, has also been involved in campaigning against the IHRA definition.
The “Race Review” now recommends the “un-adoption” of the IHRA definition, which the report claims "precludes free academic and public conversation about the University of Edinburgh’s legacy in Palestine.”
This demand appears to be under consideration by the university, whose chancellor is Anne, Princess Royal.
In comments to the Guardian newspaper, Edinburgh University Principal Sir Peter Mathieson claimed that the IHRA definition – adopted by the university in 2020 – is “contentious” and “already under review”.
The Union of Jewish Students have criticised any rumoured departure from the IHRA. Louis Danker, the president of the UJS and a recent Edinburgh graduate, told the JC: “Jewish students at Edinburgh were upset to read of a Race Review that rejects the definition of anti-Jewish racism supported by the vast majority of the British Jewish community.
“We remind the academics who authored this review that the principle of self-definition applies to all minorities, including Jewish people. UJS will continue to hold the University of Edinburgh to account, calling on them to protect the IHRA definition and ensure antisemitism is treated with the same severity as all forms of discrimination.”
The outgoing president of Edinburgh’s Jewish society (Jsoc), Nicky Helfgott, said the recommendation to drop the definition was “contemptible”.
“Critics say that the IHRA definition stifles criticism of the policies and actions of the Israeli government. It does not,” Helfgott said.
Citing the opening line of the IHRA definition (“Criticism of Israel similar to that leveled other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic”) Helfgott went on: “Feel free to criticise the Israeli government vociferously. I was the President of Edinburgh’s Jsoc during the previous academic year and our community was a space for diverse perspectives, including robust and forthright criticism of Israeli policies.
“Each minority group gets to reasonably and rightly decide which definition most aptly protects them. There is no acceptable explanation why this shouldn’t extend to Jews, too,” he added.
Referring to the wider framing of the review, Helfgott went on: “The Edinburgh-based depiction of Israel / Palestine is strikingly self-absorbed. It disregards Zionism apart from the university’s perceived involvement, ironically reflecting a colonial and imperialist attitude by virtue of its distance and to the region.
“The report depicts Zionism as simply another cog in Britain’s imperial machine, without considering what Zionism represents to its Jewish advocates,” Helfgott said.
A different former president of the JSoc who wanted to remain anonymous told the JC the “vast majority” of the university’s Jewish students support the IHRA definition.
“Despite certain academics pushing very hard to abolish IHRA, the university has always been very good at including Jewish students in the discussion and listening to our perspectives,” the student added.
The “Race Review”, written by the Research and Engagement Working Group (REWG) – which Vadasaria and Perugini sit on along with several other academics – recommended that the university adopt a definition of racism that guides a so-called "corrective vision”. It is not clear if this definition would include antisemitism.
Other demands included in the review call for the university to divest from companies linked to Israel, establish a Palestine Studies Centre to teach about “anti-colonial resistance, decolonisation and reparations” and offer scholarships to students based on Palestinian heritage.
Central to the report was an interrogation of Arthur James Balfour, the former British Foreign Secretary who signed the 1917 declaration supporting the establishment of a "national home for the Jewish people" in Palestine – and who was one of Edinburgh's longest serving chancellors.
The report claimed Balfour played a key role in “a century-long process of imperial and settler-colonial rule in Palestine”. This, the report alleges, resulted in “one of the longest standing colonial occupations and apartheid regimes in modern history”.
It also referred to the Edinburgh University robes worn by Balfour when he inaugurated the Hebrew University.
The report went on to cite “the territorial realisation of modern political Zionism as a settler-colonial nation-state".
A lengthy appendix to the report claimed that the university’s “lack of acknowledgment or naming of the genocidal violence which Palestinians have been subjected by Israel since October 7, 2023, puts a spotlight on Balfour’s legacy of harm and how it shapes UoE’s present.”
The appendix claimed that the university "remains complicit in this legacy of harm with respect to the crimes it finances through its direct and indirect investments.” This, the appendix alleges, means the university is “a perpetrator of Palestinian erasure.”
The report called for the university’s finances to be divested from companies it said were linked to Israel, including Amazon, Google and BlackRock.
According to the Guardian, Perugini and Vadasaria said their focus on Balfour was a “direct response” to pressure from anti-Israel protests on campus after October 7.
The appendix claimed that university leadership “deployed a ‘conflict agnostic’ approach” to the Gaza encampments and denied “the Nakba and its settler-colonial afterlife.”
The appendix further alleged that in the academic year 2023-24, the university “became an active site of political struggle,” which was focused on “a multiracial and multiethnic wide-based student and staff coalition standing in opposition to UoE’s ongoing investments in Israeli genocide and other war crimes in Palestine.”
It cited “UoE’s ongoing direct and indirect complicity in the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, the settler-colonial structure of Israel and the epistemic conditions at our institution which sustain Palestine’s erasure.”
University of Edinburgh Graduation Day
— WeGotitBack 🏴🇬🇧🇺🇸 (@NotFarLeftAtAll) July 15, 2025
Some Graduates walkout after 🤡 chants “free .. free Palestine” pic.twitter.com/M1JbPJbw2x
The recommendations came after graduations at the prestigious university were disrupted by dozens of Gaza protesters who unfurled Palestine flags and stormed out of graduation ceremonies.
Responding to the JC’s request for comment, a University of Edinburgh spokesperson said: “The Race Review is an independent, academic-led examination of the University’s connections to enslavement and colonialism. In 2024, following growing interest in the colonial history of the Middle East, the decision was made to include research into the historical links of the University to the region, particularly with Arthur Balfour.
“In response to the findings and recommendations, the University has set out a series of immediate actions and long-term commitments. Efforts will be spearheaded by a Response Group which will engage with the University community, embracing diverse perspectives to strengthen involvement.”
Dr Perugini and Dr Vadasaria were approached for comment.