Editing SOAS University of London (section)

=== Student politics===

==== Israel and Palestine ====
SOAS has a student body of which many are committed [[Anti-Zionism|anti-Zionists]].The SOAS Student’s Union was the first Student Union to carry out a referendum, in 2005, to support the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions movement for goods stocked in the Student Union,<ref>{{Cite web |title=Learn more on the BDS Referendum at SOAS |url=https://soasunion.org/news/article/6013/BDS-Referendum-at-SOAS/ |access-date=2025-02-25 |website=soasunion.org}}</ref> and in 2015, the SOAS Student Union held a referendum in which its members voted to adopt the [[Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions]] directions more generally in the university. In 2022, students occupied the management section of the university for nine days, citing the university's investments in Israel amongst other reasons, which led to the university spending £200,000 in their eviction.<ref>{{Cite web |date=2023-02-06 |title=SOAS: The School of Occupation and Apartheid Studies |url=https://soasspirit.co.uk/soas-the-school-of-occupation-and-apartheid-studies/ |access-date=2025-02-25 |website=SOAS Spirit |language=en}}</ref> After Israel's war in Gaza. university management suspended seven students protesting the university's investments in Israel and partnership with Haifa university, a university in Israel with three military colleges and a military base on campus.<ref>{{Cite web |date=2023-02-06 |title=SOAS: The School of Occupation and Apartheid Studies |url=https://soasspirit.co.uk/soas-the-school-of-occupation-and-apartheid-studies/ |access-date=2025-02-25 |website=SOAS Spirit |language=en}}</ref> These students stated that the suspensions were arbitrary and a "targeted act of political repression", whereas the university replied that the students were a "threat to the SOAS community".<ref>{{Cite web |title=London university students say they were 'targeted' over Gaza rallies |url=https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-palestine-war-soas-london-students-targeted-gaza-rallies |access-date=2025-02-25 |website=Middle East Eye |language=en}}</ref> In the same period, a lecturer reported that security had removed a poster with the Palestinian flag from her door. SOAS responded that the display of the Palestinian flag violated "safeguarding".<ref>{{Cite web |date=2023-12-11 |title=Policing Protest at SOAS: A Report on Recent Security Conduct |url=https://soasspirit.co.uk/policing-protest-at-soas-a-report-on-recent-security-conduct/ |access-date=2025-02-25 |website=SOAS Spirit |language=en}}</ref>

SOAS has an active Jewish Society which is explicitly anti-Zionist.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Jewish Society |url=https://soasunion.org/organisation/6673/ |access-date=2025-02-25 |website=soasunion.org}}</ref> In 2024, and in the context of university protest camps established around the world relating to Israel's war in Gaza, SOAS director Adam Habib hosted a high-level meeting about antisemitism on campus, extending an invite to various Jewish academics on campus, but excluding any representation from the Jewish Society. On April 19th, 2024, SOAS posted a job advert for a new Jewish Chaplain whose key responsibilities include supporting “the implementation of a Jewish Society within the Student Union,” therefore implicating that the existing Jewish Society would be replaced by a society organised from the top down.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Dazed |date=2024-04-25 |title=The Jewish students fighting for Palestine |url=https://www.dazeddigital.com/life-culture/article/62461/1/meet-the-jewish-students-fighting-for-palestine-university-antisemitism |access-date=2025-02-25 |website=Dazed |language=en}}</ref>

In December 2020 ''[[The Guardian]]'' reported that SOAS refunded a student £15,000 in fees after he chose to abandon his studies as a result of the "toxic antisemitic environment" he felt had been allowed to develop on campus.<ref>{{Cite web|date=2020-12-29|title=Soas repay student's £15,000 fees over 'toxic antisemitic environment'|url=http://www.theguardian.com/education/2020/dec/29/soas-repay-students-15000-fees-over-toxic-antisemitic-environment|access-date=2021-01-24|website=The Guardian|language=en}}</ref> Examples of matters he considered anti-Semitic are, according to the Guardian report previously cited, that being pro-Israel was described as "Zionist", the student body's public support of the BDS movement, and that his proposal to write a thesis on perceived anti-Israel bias at the UN led to a response that, in his words, "he was covering up Israeli war crimes and was a white supremacist Nazi". He additionally stated that he had seen "anti-Semitic graffiti" on campus, but did not specify what this was, leaving it unclear as to whether or not he considered statements for example in support of the BDS movement as anti-Semitic. Leading Jewish figures at the university have disagreed with his assessment, with stating that they felt "much more comfortable being outwardly Jewish, visibly Jewish, or having people know that I'm Jewish around SOAS students than I am in pretty much any other context in this country.”<ref>{{Cite web |last=Dazed |date=2024-04-25 |title=The Jewish students fighting for Palestine |url=https://www.dazeddigital.com/life-culture/article/62461/1/meet-the-jewish-students-fighting-for-palestine-university-antisemitism |access-date=2025-02-25 |website=Dazed |language=en}}</ref> Moreover, an opposition to Zionism has been upheld in the UK courts which SOAS falls under the jurisdiction of as "worthy of respect in a democratic society", and is not legally considered in itself an act of anti-Semitism.<ref>{{Cite web |date=2024-01-31 |title=Miller -v- University of Bristol |url=https://www.judiciary.uk/judgments/miller-v-university-of-bristol/ |access-date=2025-02-25 |website=Courts and Tribunals Judiciary |language=en-US}}</ref>