Antisemitism: University Campuses

Steve Yemm Excerpts

Tuesday 30th June 2026 Westminster Hall

[Mike Reader (Northampton South) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir John. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds South West and Morley (Mark Sewards) for introducing this important debate.

I am fortunate to have had a positive relationship with the small but perfectly formed Jewish community in Northamptonshire for many years. The Northampton Hebrew congregation is a welcoming, open and very hard-working group. Through the work of Michael Necus and the trustees, Jewish students at the University of Northampton have a safe place to pray, to be part of our community and to connect with others.

Although antisemitic hate and crime is very low in my county and at my university, the experiences of those at my nearest JSoc at the University of Warwick have been very different. The stories I hear bring home how challenging it can be to be Jewish and attend a UK university and that we must continue to take every step possible to make sure our universities are safe for all students, no matter their religion. Through these stories, I have also heard how universities such as the University of Warwick and the University of Northampton are working hard to create inclusive spaces for all students.

In my contribution to this valuable debate, I will focus on the role of universities, because what we are seeing on campuses is not just down to bad actors but to how universities respond. At Warwick, there have been some clear examples of best practice. In the days after the 7 October attacks, several individuals infiltrated the freshers WhatsApp group of Warwick Jewish society and sent a stream of abusive antisemitic messages. At a time when members of the society were trying to get to know each other at a social gathering, they watched this unfold on their phones in real time. It was frightening. Jacob Lederman, the society’s treasurer, told the BBC and other media outlets that, alongside the immediate impact on students, it has put long-term safety and security pressures on the society that other societies at the university simply do not have to face.

The positive is that the incident did not slow the society down. It is still running weekly events with security in attendance, and the society praised the campus security team, saying that it could not be more grateful for the support it was given. Thankfully, the police were able to find the individuals responsible, who were not students. They were arrested and rightly prosecuted. That is an example of the kind of incident that universities have to deal with, and it shows the importance of a serious response, working with the police, acting decisively and treating the issue with the gravity it deserves.

Unfortunately, that is not the only experience of antisemitism that Warwick students have faced. In the summer of 2020, four members of the University of Warwick Conservative association were filmed singing and dancing to a Nazi propaganda song. That is completely unacceptable. The society was suspended, and disciplinary action was taken. Again, that is what a good response should look like: clear action, visible consequences and a message sent that such behaviour has no place on campuses. That is the reality: it is not just enough to say the right things and put policies and procedures in place; universities have to act, and those actions have to be applied consistently. When they do not act, the consequences can be quite serious.

[Steve Yemm (Mansfield) (Lab)]

I am encouraged to hear about the experience that my hon. Friend has recounted, but does he share my concern that Jewish students often have limited confidence in universities’ complaints procedures? Quite frequently, reports of antisemitism are dealt with rather slowly or without any form of consequence.

[Mike Reader]

My hon. Friend picks up the next point I want to make. Unfortunately, there have been cases, including at Warwick, where complaints of antisemitism have not been handled well and where those raising concerns have felt unsupported, and that creates a wider culture in which people hesitate to speak up. It may not even be about major incidents; it can be the drip, drip, drip of smaller things and their cumulative effect. Lecturers crossing the line in terms of their professional boundaries, protests that blur into hostility, or a sense that standards and processes are not applied equally to Jewish students—all of that feeds into whether a campus feels inclusive.

However, we should recognise what works. Warwick has developed a strong, outward-facing Jewish community, and perhaps it is not by accident that the newly elected president of the Union of Jewish Students, Raphi Leon, came through Warwick himself. His focus on building connections across campus, rather than retreating into isolation, is exactly the kind approach universities should be supporting.

We know from experiences at Warwick and other places what good practice broadly looks like. It means regular engagement with students and staff. It means clear and accessible reporting systems. It means proper support for chaplaincy and campus groups. Crucially, it means acting consistently and quickly when things go wrong. It should not be complicated, and there is guidance out there, including UJS’s recent “Best Practice Guidance” and “A Good Practice Guide”, published by Lord Mann and the all-party taskforce on antisemitism in higher education, which is supported by the excellent Antisemitism Policy Trust.

The expectations are clear: universities have a duty under equality law to provide a safe environment for all students and staff. The issue is not whether universities can get this right once; it is whether they get it right consistently. In the end, it comes down to leadership. Where leadership is clear, we see confidence and inclusion; where we do not have clear leadership, we see confusion and a loss of trust. Our universities, of all places, should not be environments where people feel like they have to hold back who they are.

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[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

It is a pleasure, as always, to serve under your chairship, Sir John. I say a big thank you to the hon. Member for Leeds South West and Morley (Mark Sewards) for introducing the debate, and I congratulate him on doing it so well. I thank all hon. Members who have spoken so far for their contributions highlighting the difficulties faced by our British Jewish communities and the work that needs to be done to protect them.

The StandWithUs UK “Voice of Students” report exposes a terrifying, deep-rooted national crisis across our higher education institutions. The traditional verbal hostility of recent years has escalated into raw intimidation, targeted harassment and physical violence against Jewish students.

I should have welcomed the Minister to his place, and I look forward to his contribution. I am sure it will be salient and will give us some reassurance, which is what we all seek from this debate.

It is no secret that I am a friend of the people and the nation of Israel—I have been all my life, and I continue to be. As I have said before and will say again, I recognise that Israel is not perfect, just as I am not perfect and nobody in this room is perfect. Israel does things that I have concerns about, but I stand by Israel whenever I get the opportunity, and today I will highlight the issue of antisemitism on university campuses.

When I visited Israel some two years ago, we had an opportunity to visit the Nova music festival site and the kibbutzim. If ever we needed to see man’s inhumanity to man and the hatred that the Hamas terrorists have for Israel, that was the day we saw it and that is why I am here to highlight the issue of antisemitism today.

As a Unionist, I believe fundamentally in the rule of law, the right to personal safety and the preservation of free inquiry, yet British universities are failing in their most basic legal and moral duties to protect a religious minority. Most damningly, academic staff are increasingly implicated in fostering, legitimising and actively participating in this marginalisation, which is the reason why we are debating the issue today.

I will highlight a few extracts from the testimony bringing this to light that most shocked me, and I am sure it will be shocking to every Member of the House. Forgive the terminology, but I am going to quote exactly the words used in a number of universities. These are direct quotes of the slurs being faced. Although they are disturbing, they must be put in the Hansard record. For that purpose, I will quote them exactly. At Royal Holloway, a student was subjected to jihadist threats to blow up the Jewish society and faced vile text messages calling him a “faggot Jew boy”. He was trailed by students taking photos to mark him out as a “Zionist”.

At the University of Birmingham, a lecturer told a student to shorten her name because it sounded “very Jewish”, while others performed Nazi salutes and created a group chat entitled, “No Jews allowed”. At King’s College London, a student faced a Kafkaesque punishment by the university to write a 1,000-word essay explaining why displaying an Israeli flag was wrong. He should come to my office, because I have one there and am proud to show that flag and let people know.

At City St George’s, a Jewish student was ambushed from behind and nearly pushed down a staircase, while campus protests featured Arabic chants calling for the literal killing of Jews. That is most outrageous.

[Steve Yemm]

I occasionally meet Jewish students at the University of Nottingham for dinner on a Friday evening, hosted by Chabad. Those students talk about being proud of their faith, but they frequently question whether they can be openly Jewish on campus. Does the hon. Member agree that no student should ever feel that they have to hide their identity on a university campus?

[Jim Shannon]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. That is another to add to the words of shame from some universities across the United Kingdom. I want to refer to Bangor University, where a professor physically confronted a Jewish student while screaming medieval blood-libel tropes and calling him a “baby killer”. If that level of targeted vicious harassment were directed at any other minority group on campus, the institutions would be shut down, funding would be stripped away and the perpetrators would be immediately expelled. That is what would happen if it were anybody else but, because it is Jews, what happens? When it comes to Jewish students, we see institutional paralysis and a culture of denial.

As an MP from Northern Ireland, I want to comment on Queen’s University Belfast and Ulster University, which are by no means immune to this toxic atmosphere. We have seen a deeply alarming trend where extreme political activism on these campuses has crossed the line from legitimate debate into outright intimidation and the exclusion of Jewish and Zionist voices. I have spoken personally to some of those Jewish students who have given me their testimony and told me their stories. They told me that on occasion they are scared to be active on their own campuses.

When Jewish students in Belfast or Londonderry feel compelled to hide their identity, skip lectures, avoid campus spaces out of fear for their safety, the leadership of those universities has failed fundamentally. Higher education in Northern Ireland must be a neutral, safe and meritocratic environment for everyone. Vice-chancellors in our Province must not remain silent or indifferent. They must apply the exact same zero-tolerance approach to anti-Jewish racism as they do to any other form of sectarianism or discrimination, ensuring that all universities remain places of learning, rather than hotbeds of radicalisation and exclusion.

The report rightly underscores that modern antisemitism has evolved into a toxic political framework. I challenge anybody to say otherwise. Cowardly, it hides behind the shield of extreme anti-Zionism, denying Jewish self-determination and calling for the destruction of Israel. That is a cynical abuse of free speech, designed to make campuses “judenrein”, the German for “Jew-free”. God forbid that day should ever come to this United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

We must draw a firm line in the sand, and I believe Members have done that today in this Chamber. These are my two asks of the Minister. First, the UK Government must state unequivocally that anti-Zionism, including calling for the destruction of the Jewish state, will be treated with the exact same seriousness and moral clarity as classical racial antisemitism. Secondly, we must follow the successful precedent set in the United States and summon vice-chancellors before a parliamentary Select Committee to look us in the eye and account for the catastrophic failures in all the universities I mentioned, and probably in many others, such as Nottingham. How many are there?

Our universities cannot remain safe havens for hate speech and terror sympathisers. I believe it is time to restore law, order and basic human decency to campuses. The first step must be the determination in this Chamber today to send a message that while the United Kingdom supports freedom of speech—I believe in that with all my heart and will stick up for it—we do not tolerate threats of violence. These examples show that the line has been crossed and that action must be taken. Let it start today.