Soas accused of breaching free speech rules over requirements for Israeli professors

By extension – and where applicable – academics should declare whether research papers have been “conducted on land that is: traditionally owned by Indigenous peoples (in settler colonial contexts) or under foreign military occupation in violation of international law”.

These requirements are not limited to Israeli academics, but extend to all authors and participants “working and studying at an institution located on land appropriated from Indigenous peoples by settler colonial regimes”. The areas in question are said to additionally include Canada, the US, Australia and New Zealand.

The policy points in particular to those “institutions established on land appropriated by a foreign occupying power, in contravention of international law, such as in Occupied Palestinian Territory”.

Tel Aviv University is identified as an example of an institution whose delegates would be asked to issue a “land acknowledgment in the case of settler colonies”.

A further condition demanded by the policy is that academics from Tel Avi who are submitting a paper to its conference must state that the campus is built on the site of the Palestinian village of Sheikh Muwannis.

They should acknowledge that the area was depopulated during the Nakba – Arabic for “catastrophe”, referring to the mass displacement of some 750,000 Palestinian Arabs during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.

However, according to a letter co-signed by the Committee for Academic Freedom, Alumni for Free Speech and Academics for Academic Freedom, Soas’ policy contravenes free speech regulations.

The organisations claim that the conditions imposed on these academics are “incompatible with Soas’ statutory duty to secure freedom of speech”, breaching the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023.

Soas infringes on its very own institutional commitment to “ensure free speech within the law is promoted and secured for [their] students, staff and visiting speakers,” they claim.

The letter was addressed to senior leaders at the university, as well as Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson and Skills Minister Baroness Smith of Malvern.

The authors allege that, under the act, Soas is directly responsible for upholding academic freedom and free speech at events held on its premises – especially those that concern its staff and student body.

They also point to the fact that both Arab and Jewish people were displaced during the 1948-49 conflict, asserting that “violence, dispossession, and tragedy therefore marked every stage of the process”.

The letter adds that the “historical record is widely recognised as far more intricate than the ideological claim that Israel was simply established by invasion and theft”.

And it claims that “treating it as fixed or beyond question, and requiring its endorsement as a condition of participation, risks suppressing legitimate scholarly disagreement”.

The signatories insist that the university undertake an immediate review of the terms on which the Brismes conference is being hosted, ensuring that “no condition of participation requires, directly or indirectly, the expression of any political or moral opinion”.

A spokesman for Soas said: “Each year Soas hosts hundreds of its own events, as well as many events organised by external organisations, and welcomes a plurality of views across a wide range of subjects restricted only by the law.

“As Brismes makes clear, its policy on land and territorial acknowledgement is the position of Brismes and not the position of our university.”