Statement regarding UAL’s response to the ongoing war in Israel-Palestine

Over the past several months, we have remained in constructive and respectful dialogue with student and staff groups regarding the ongoing war in Israel-Palestine.

Our staff and student body are from a range of backgrounds, some of whom have been directly affected by these appalling events. Our first priority remains the safety and wellbeing of our UAL community. We want to create a culture where everyone feels safe to express their opinions, whilst also recognising others' rights to be free from harm, which is why we wanted to clarify UAL’s position on several issues. We note that we haven’t always got everything right, but when we make mistakes, we try to learn from them and correct them.

Championing Free Speech

UAL passionately believes in upholding free speech within the law. We will continue to support our staff and students' right to peaceful protest and assembly. In practice, this means allowing our community to express themselves whether in academic terms, through their work, in protest, in counter-protest or in other ways.

In light of new Freedom of Speech Legislation we are working on codes of practice, consulting as widely as possible in the time available, and will have a first draft published by 1 August 2024 (a deadline that is set by our regulator, the Office for Students).

Like other universities, we strive to achieve a balance between absolute freedom of speech within the law on the one hand and fostering good relations within our university community and ensuring that people feel safe from harm, on the other. Most of the time these are not in conflict. But in the immediate aftermath of the October 7 attacks we had to make judgement calls, including on the use of the phrase ‘from the river to the sea’. We now understand that this is permissible under the law. Those protesting should be mindful that it is often interpreted as hate speech by some, but we have learnt, and it is no longer something we prohibit.

The same attitude to freedom of speech and academic freedom means that as a university, we won’t be issuing a ban on working with firms that do business in Israel or boycotting Israeli higher education institutions and academics. We will, however, keep partnerships under review using existing ethics and security policies on a case-by-case basis and members of our community are free to protest against them individually or collectively.

UAL's position on the University calling for a ceasefire in Gaza

Over the last two years we have thought deeply about what it means to be a social purpose university. Our core social purpose is to nurture and share the creativity the world needs through teaching, research, and how we operate as an institution. The work we have done with our community of staff and students has confirmed that we should aim to fulfil that purpose in line with our values. At times, we will want to campaign or advocate for change formally as an institution.

Nevertheless, this does not mean we can or should take a formal position on every issue that arises. A university is a community of thousands of individuals with a wide range of beliefs, experiences and ambitions that are often incompatible with one another. As part of our work on defining what it means to be a social purpose university, we have developed some tests which enable us to decide whether it is appropriate for us to speak as an institution on a particular issue:

1. We must have deep institutional knowledge on the issue. This could be through the expertise of our academics, our experience as a higher education provider, or our unique position within a coalition of actors, such as the creative industries.
2. There must be a satisfactory level of institutional consensus on the issue.
3. We must not breach our statutory duties, including to promote freedom of speech, and academic expression; and we must retain political neutrality.

We understand how passionately many of our staff and students want to see a ceasefire in Gaza. As individuals, the whole university community – including senior management – abhors the loss of innocent life.

However, this is not an issue where UAL has institutional academic expertise in the way described above, or where there is established consensus within our community. It does not therefore meet the tests for formalising an institutional position, although we recognise that individual academics do have expertise on these issues. As such we will continue to fervently support them, and all our staff and students, to express their own positions on the issue.

In querying our decision not to take an institutional position on Israel-Palestine, many people have asked us why we made a statement about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It’s a fair question, with a simple answer: if we had our guidance in place in February 2022, we would not have made that statement.

Definition of Antisemitism

For many years, UAL has used the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism, which has been adopted widely across the sector. It says “Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”

Underneath there are a series of illustrative examples which – depending on context – are used to help identify what is and isn't antisemitism. It's clear that many in our community are worried about the examples that focus on criticism of the State of Israel. UAL has no intention of preventing the criticism of Israel. Indeed, IHRA says “criticism of Israel similar to that levelled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic.” Such criticism has been made many times on our campus.

We have heard strong feedback from some in our community that the IHRA definition is an important form of protection against antisemitism and that it has consensus of support in the Jewish community. We’re also told that it reflects the nature and content of the discriminatory incidents that have occurred in the UK over recent months, including on university campuses.

We will include further discussion on how we define antisemitism as part of the evolution of our Freedom of Speech codes of practice.

Supporting Palestinian students, universities and cultural institutions

We are profoundly saddened at what has happened to Palestinian universities and cultural institutions. As a sector and an institution we have experience of supporting individual students, academics and institutions at times of conflict. For individual students affected by what is going on in the region we are providing mental health, wellbeing and significant financial support. This includes Palestinian students. We will continue to provide this support in the future for those Palestinian students who require it.