With the release of the Home Affairs Select Committee’s (HASC) much publicised report concerning anti-Semitism in the UK, campus tensions facing Jewish students have once more become a pressing issue of public discourse.
Amid the general rise of anti-Semitic incidents in the UK, the British press has notably covered alleged anti-Semitic behaviour within the National Union of Students (NUS) and Oxford University’s Labour Club.These problems have only been exacerbated in the months since February and March – and the HASC report is a welcome step towards combatting anti-Semitism within the student movement.
Unsurprisingly, the HASC report’s section on campus anti-Semitism refers to the well-known comments of NUS President Malia Bouattia, in which she described the University of Birmingham as a “Zionist Outpost.”The committee’s MPs have concluded that such behaviour – among many other incidents – smacks of outright racism. This is not to mention the scathing conclusion that Bouattia appeared not to have taken campus anti-Semitism “sufficiently seriously.”