Palestine Activism on Campus: Suspended Students Speak Out

Haya Adam, on behalf of The SOAS Liberated Zone 09/12/2024

Imagine being taken to court by the University of London (UoL) to file for an injunction that criminalises protest on campus. Imagine being told that you are a danger to the community at SOAS. This is the stark reality for a SOAS student on campus who speaks up for Palestine.

As a second-year student suspended for pro-Palestine activism on campus, and as President of the Palestine Society, I was beyond disturbed that I was deceived by SOAS as an educational institution. I had grown up during a time when SOAS was the hub for Palestine organising, having the oldest Palestine society in the UK. With now over 14 months of the ongoing genocide in Gaza, SOAS has relentlessly proven its fallacy as a so-called ‘decolonial’ institution.

Another student, Tara Mann, and I have been banned from campus for 6 months for simply trying to hold the executive board accountable by questioning their policies of complicity and partnerships funding settler-colonialism in Palestine. We are considered active threats due to our stance on Palestine; our presence is being targeted around SOAS and any UoL land. Abel Harvie-Clarke and Alex Cachinero Gorman were democratically elected to work in the Students’ Union (SU), yet were dismissed before even taking office. Imagine going to an institution that claims it upholds freedom of speech, yet denies Abel a chance to attend his graduation. Abel deserved to finalise his degree with dignity; instead, he was stripped of that right by his permanent exclusion.

This is not just an attack on individuals. The institution is trying to intimidate the student body by imposing draconian measures. SOAS is attempting to strip itself of its radical nature, which to prospective students, was its largest appeal. Management’s clear attack on the student body and the current sabbatical officers not helping our cases are a gross infringement on our student democracy. 

SOAS has long marketed itself as a bastion of progressive values. It boasts of being a space for championing the marginalised. Yet, when students manifest these ideals by standing up for Palestine, the institution abandons its principles in favour of political expediency. British institutions continuously censor pro-Palestinian voices on campus, as they are the original perpetrators of the Zionist ethnic cleansing project dating back to 1917. The British state has escalated its repression against the masses. Most recently with the attacks on Palestine Action and all those standing up for Gaza and Palestine, eight people were unlawfully detained. One of them is my best and greatest friend, regarded as a lifelong sister to me. 

The wider repression inflicted by Keir Starmer and the new Labour government is an abuse of power to crack down on our movement. Our universities believe they can imitate this through stifling our movement on campus and trapping students in their status quo of political thought and so-called ‘neutrality.’ Not to mention the truly abhorrent neglect of the welfare of Palestinian students and others affected by the genocide. 

As suspended students, we were sent emails stating: ‘You are a threat to the SOAS community.’ Tara and I are paying tuition fees just to access an online Moodle page. This comes with the fact that our tuition fees are drenched in Palestinian blood for as long as the university refrains from divestment. There is no greater hypocrisy coming from an institution that claims it affirms the right to freedom of speech when it halts students from continuing their education for speaking up against genocide.

I refuse, like my peers, to sit in lectures after reading Frantz Fanon and Edward Said, then be told by university authority that I cannot enforce their teachings in active practice. It is long overdue that Western academia stops co-opting the struggles of occupied peoples, and desists from spreading these teachings in class as mere theories. The struggle for liberation requires an active identity, never a passive one, and if SOAS continues to advocate for change-makers in the world, then why are there attempts to silence us?

We call on the student body to take action. 

Our brothers and sisters in Palestine are continuously enduring death and torture, yet remain steadfast through the darkest of times. So sign our petitions, protest, advocate for our political prisoners who have been falsely accused, demand SOAS to lift the suspensions, reinstate our sabbatical officers, and visit our encampment at Byng Place, which has now been standing strong for over 205 days.

To be silent through an injustice is to be complicit. We carry strength in our numbers. We have the privilege of maintaining a degree, while education has become a privilege in Palestine rather than a basic human right, which is why we must speak up and honour each of our martyrs.

A message to those who claim to run the university: you will never silence nor intimidate us, we are the majority, and we will always fight until real change is made in this world and at SOAS.