UK to Protect Provocative University Speech Surrounding Israel and Palestine

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Facts

• Arif Ahmed, the UK's new Director of Freedom of Speech and Academic Freedom within the Office for Students (OfS), has announced that students will be allowed to make controversial statements regarding the Israel-Palestine conflict, with colleges and universities facing fines for restricting such speech. Allowable rhetoric includes supporting a 'global intifada' against Israel and slogans like 'from the river to the sea.'¹
• Ahmed clarified, however, that speech related to 'illegal harassment,' stirring up 'racial hatred,' or 'calls for genocide' would not be acceptable 'under any circumstances.'²
• The revised speech code, published Thursday, comes after a group of Oxford professors filed a motion to the local University College Union calling for 'intifada until victory' — the motion was canceled by the university over legal fears.²
• Under the new protections, students will be able to file complaints if they feel they've been penalized for exercising free speech, and they will also cover visiting speakers whose invitations are canceled.¹
• Ahmed argued that students and teachers must 'be allowed to hear and discuss a whole range of views, including ones that they might find controversial or offensive, or distasteful or shocking.'¹
• Complaints filed to the OFS won't be reviewed until Aug. 1, 2024, the start date of the new program. Once it begins, the higher education watchdog will list the names of colleges and students' unions found to have violated the dictate.²

Sources: ¹Guardian and ²The telegraph.

Narratives

• Pro-Palestine narrative, as provided by The wellesley news. Pro-Palestine protesters should be allowed to speak freely on campus and anywhere else their message needs to be heard. While some governments and universities are beginning to understand this, others, particularly in the US, are still silencing student speech while simultaneously allowing Palestinian activists to be doxxed, threatened, and harassed. The real issue at hand here is Israel's brutal treatment of Palestinians — a debate our institutions aren't allowing to happen, and pro-Palestinian speech is often unfairly conflated with hate speech.
• Pro-Israel narrative, as provided by The telegraph. While pro-Palestine activists claim they're simply asserting their right to question Israel and defend racial minorities in the West, what they've actually done is categorize their racial counterparts as an enemy to be defeated at all costs. This has led Hamas sympathizers, under the protection of today's polarized political climate, to live peacefully in cities like London while Jews face the worst attack on their people since the Holocaust. Antisemitic speech can never be tolerated under any circumstances.

Predictions