Britain’s universities are sewers of anti-Semitism

Finally, anti-Semitism on campus is beginning to get the attention it deserves. For too long, the vile abuse experienced by Jewish students at some of the UK’s leading universities has been ignored or, worse, condoned as just criticism of Israel. But following last week’s horrific attack on two men in Golders Green, and – before that – the killing of two people at a Manchester synagogue, the prime minister has had to do more than offer thoughts and prayers to the Jewish community. This week, Starmer announced that ‘every part of society’ has a responsibility to tackle anti-Semitism, including universities where it has been allowed to fester unchecked.

From now on, universities will be required to monitor and publish data exposing the scale of anti-Semitism, along with specific details of how they plan to respond to it. Starmer warned that there will be ‘zero tolerance for inaction’, although he did not spell out the consequences for universities that do fail to act. In addition, the government wants to see increased efforts to protect Jewish university staff and students, and will provide a £7million budget for anti-Semitism training for staff in schools, colleges and universities.

At the same time, Vivienne Stern, chief executive of Universities UK, also decided the time was right for universities to be expected to do more to tackle anti-Semitism. She said she had written to vice-chancellors to ask them to ‘review security arrangements in light of evidence of escalating violence’ and announced she was working with the Union of Jewish Students to promote its anti-Semitism training.

What’s astonishing is that such measures are not already in place. Jewish students have been raising the alarm about anti-Semitic abuse on campus for more than two years now. Every twist and turn of the war in Gaza became an excuse either to target Jewish students directly or to create a climate of hostility on campus where any expression of sympathy to Israel could prompt vitriol.

In March this year, the Union of Jewish Students published findings from a survey showing that anti-Semitism has ‘become normalised’ on British university campuses. It revealed that almost a quarter of students ‘of all faiths and none’ had witnessed behaviour targeting Jewish students because of their religion or ethnicity, and nearly half had encountered people justifying the 7 October attacks by Hamas. Half of the students questioned said they had heard slogans or chants glorifying Hamas or Hezbollah, and almost two-thirds said they had had their learning disrupted by protests. Perhaps most shocking of all was the revelation that one in five students would either be reluctant to, or would never, share a house with a Jewish student.

Why did these findings not prompt a government announcement about tackling anti-Semitism? It is impossible to imagine a survey showing that one in five students would refuse to share a house with a black or transgender student being met with such a muted response. Why did Universities UK not step up anti-Semitism training at this point?

Repeated failure to tackle anti-Semitism on campus has meant the problem has been allowed to escalate. This week, it emerged that a student at Cambridge University, Bradley Smart, received death threats after he returned from a think-tank-organised visit to Israel designed to help people better understand the Gaza conflict. Smart, who is not Jewish, posted photos of his trip on Instagram and, in response, became party to a group chat in which identifiable individuals from within his own college wrote, ‘I’m going to kill him’, ‘kill him’, and ‘he needs to die’. The chat included anti-Semitic slurs and degrading language, including people drawing comparisons between Israel and the Nazis.

Smart reported the threats against him to college officials, but was told to speak to welfare staff or consider moving rooms. Again, it is completely inconceivable that a student from any other minority group would be advised to move rooms if they had been the target of death threats. He writes: ‘For 31 nights after I saw the threats, I remained living in a room where the person who stated directly that I needed to die had unrestricted lift access to my room.’ Eventually, concerns for his own safety prompted Smart to move out of Homerton College.

Cambridge University has said it issued ‘formal warnings’ and ‘made it clear’ that ‘the behaviour in question’ – that is, sending death threats – ‘was entirely unacceptable’. As Smart says, this response is, ‘polite and procedural’ but shows the university was far more concerned with managing reputational risk than genuinely safeguarding its students.

We need to ask why it took the stabbing of two Jewish men on the streets of London for anti-Semitism on campus to be taken seriously. And while Starmer’s decision to act now is better than nothing, there is a real risk that his announced crackdown is too little, too late. Indeed, students and commentators are already mounting their defence, complaining that they are being blamed for attacks that did not happen on campus and that anti-Zionism is being conflated with anti-Semitism. That these criticisms are even getting airtime suggests there is a lot further to go to turn the tide on anti-Semitism in higher education.

Starmer can bluster about ‘zero tolerance’ all he likes. But having been allowed to fester for so long, tackling endemic Jew hatred on campus will take more than tracking and publishing data.

Joanna Williams is a spiked columnist and author of How Woke Won. Follow her on Substack: cieo.substack.com.