London universities hosted a series of controversial speakers in the first months of the current academic year, including one who had tweeted that “Jews are evil”, a counter-extremism group has revealed.
A report by Student Rights released on Friday included a list of 30 events held between the start of the academic year last September and the end of January at which it said “extreme speakers” had appeared.
That represented a rise of nine on the total number of similar events in the same period the previous year.
In November, London South Bank University hosted an event featuring Abu Bakr Islam, the founder of the Roadside2Islam media channel.
Mr Islam had posted a tweet in 2011 in which he wrote “Jews are evil” before linking to an article about claims Israeli settlers had attacked Palestinians in the West Bank.
The following month, on December 17, UCL in London hosted Ismail Patel, the founder of the Leicester-based Friends of Al-Aqsa group.
Mr Patel was a leading supporter of blood libel cleric Sheikh Raed Salah who won an appeal against being deported from Britain in 2012.
Friends of Al-Aqsa has published work by Holocaust denier Paul Eisen and antisemite Gilad Atzmon.
Mr Patel himself has previously said Hamas is not a terrorist organisation and said he “salutes” the group for “standing up to Israel”.
Student Rights called on universities and other academic institutions to devise procedures to increase balance at events featuring extreme speakers, while protecting freedom of speech.
Rupert Sutton, director of Student Rights – which is part of the Henry Jackson Society think-tank – said: “University action has not been good enough.
“While it is important universities protect freedom of expression, it is simply not enough to state after receiving criticism for allowing unbalanced events to go ahead that no laws were broken on-campus.
“Institutions must ensure at the very minimum that any extreme speakers invited onto campus face balanced platforms and robust challenge.”