A student at a London university locked himself in the chaplaincy room for fear of his physical safety as pro-Palestine student protesters tried to force the door open after a conflict-resolution event, the JC understands.
The King’s College student, who preferred not to be named, said that he felt “extremely unsafe” and thought the intention of the activists was to “beat the sh*t out of me”.
The incident at the university last Thursday came as it hostd a discussion, “From Conflict to Connection: Israelis and Iranians in Dialogue”, featuring Iranian researcher Faezeh Alavi.
But around 25 minutes into the event, a female pro-Palestine protester with a megaphone interrupted Alavi, shouting: “There has been a genocide happening for 15 months. How are you not going to talk about that?”
She then began chanting “Free, free Palestine” as other members of the audience joined in.
The JC understands that members of Students For Justice For Palestine (SJP) — a KCL pro-Gaza group — had registered with the event in order to disrupt it.
Alavi, a Muslim woman completing a PhD in sustainable development in St Andrew’s University in Scotland, left Iran aged 25 years due to the regime’s oppressive policies, the lack of freedom of speech and poor job prospects.
She approached the King’s Geopolitics Forum suggesting a talk in which she would “echo the voice of the Iranian people, their sufferings inside the country, their view for changing the regime in Iran”, she told the JC.
Video footage shows security ushering Alavi away from her position at the front of the room as pro-Palestine activists chanted.
Speaking to the JC, the student described how he had exited the lecture hall to usher in security, who proceeded to tell Alavi “to leave the room because it’s no longer safe for her”.
The student then locked himself in the nearby chaplaincy room, which he has access to after-hours, when around four or five pro-Palestine protesters attempted to follow him and get inside.
“I can hear their ID cards on the beeper getting declined… and I can hear conversation outside among them, something along the lines of, ‘Why is my card not working? Why can we not get in?’ They started getting physical with the door and trying to push it open,” he told the JC.
“I felt extremely unsafe. I was just distressed. I went into the room to get away from it all, but when I saw them trying to get in, I went into another room inside that room, to hide. That's when I knew that something was going to happen and there was malicious intent,” he said.
He began sending messages to the King’s Geopolitics Forum WhatsApp chat, writing in capital letters: “Where are you all, come to the chaplaincy room, come now, come now, come now, they are outside!”
He told the JC: “It's like October 7th, the similar messages. ‘They're here, in the kibbutz, they are screaming, they are shooting, they are outside.’”
Asked why he thought the students tried to follow him into the chaplaincy room, the student said: “There was one reason as to why they wanted to follow me in there, and that was to beat the sh*t out of me.”
From his hiding place, he began texting Alavi, who later joined the student alongside security within the room after an attempt to re-start the event was foiled by the protesters’ continued disruption.
The London university has attracted controversy after the JC revealed that a lecturer on Middle Eastern history had distributed a Hamas propaganda document during a seminar to encourage her students to view the terror group as a “liberation movement”.
Hamas is a proscribed terrorist organisation in the UK.
Pro and anti-Israel groups clashed in demonstrations outside the entrance to KCL last month over the university’s continued employment of the academic.
After the speaker event was cancelled on Thursday evening, Alavi wrote on X: “Tonight at King's College, I felt as if I were under Islamic regime occupation again.
“At an event where I, as a Muslim Iranian, voiced Iranians' will for regime change, a pro-Palestinian mob shut it down when I mentioned Iran Lion & Sun flag.”
Speaking to the JC, Alavi said she was interrupted by the heckler just as she had begun to speak about how, after the Iranian revolution of 1979, the country’s “lion and sun” flag was co-opted by the regime and changed, but that today Iranians are using the original flag in their protests.
“Right after that, they started just screaming at me and shouting,” she said.
“It's really sad that we cannot hold an event like this, based on the experience of Iranians, both non-Muslims and Muslims,” she added, noting that freely criticising Iran is not always possible in Western academia because of covert support for the regime and people are worried they might lose out on jobs.
Another student in their first year at KCL, who preferred to remain anonymous, described how the pro-Palestine protesters attempted to re-enter the lecture theatre when an attempt was made to re-start the talk after the initial disruption.
“The protesters tried to come back in the room, all of them, so the security had to literally make a human shield [to stop them]”, she said. The students eager for Alavi’s talk to continue were then led back out by security and asked to disperse because “they couldn’t guarantee our safety,” the student said.
“It was terrifying. I was properly shaking for the rest of the night,” the student told the JC.
“It's free speech being stopped in the name of free speech, which makes no sense, especially because it wasn't a Jewish or Israeli event, it was the King's Geopolitics Forum. The whole point was to foster debate, to foster talking.”
The organiser of the event added: “As it says on the tin, it was an event to promote dialogue and foster conversation between two uncommon allies, which the public don't often hear about.
“The talk was going to be on peace, dialogue, conversation, [and on] understanding what the fabric of Iran is: what the people are thinking, [and] what they are going through.
He went on: “The end of it was going to show that the Israelis have no one, the Jews have no one, and the Iranian people have no one. But we all have each other. That was going to be what transpired out of it.”
In a statement about the incident, the president of the pro-Palestine student group, SJP, said he was “completely shocked” and “disappointed” when he learnt of the disruption. He said that he did not encourage any members to try to shut down the event and did not endorse their conduct which, he added, was not representative of the wider society.
“We had encouraged members to attend and voice their concerns peacefully through direct engagement with the speakers by asking meaningful questions,” he said.
“At no point did we encourage shouting, disruption, or trying to shut down the event, though unfortunately, that is what transpired due to a group of students – largely externals without any affiliation to KCL let alone SJP – who were somehow present at this event and shut it down."
He added that he had personally contacted the event’s organisers and Alavi in an attempt to rectify the situation. Responding to the students who felt concerned about being attacked, he said: “I have not heard about anyone’s physical safety actually being harmed and I am very glad to hear this.” Regarding the incident outside the chaplaincy room, he said he was not personally present at the event and had no reliable source to confirm or deny the account.
A spokesperson from King’s College London told the JC: “We are investigating the disruption at a student society event last week in line with our policies and procedures for protest.
“We fully support and are committed to upholding the right of freedom of speech and of protest within the law, however the safety and wellbeing of our community and visitors to our campuses is our absolute priority.
“Since October 7 we have engaged with our Israeli, Jewish and wider student societies, to listen to any concerns and provide extensive pastoral support. In response to concerns for safety, both on campus and across London more generally, we have enhanced security measures to keep our community safe on campus.”
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