18 February, 2021
⢠YOUR newspaper needs to be congratulated for its principled defence of free speech.
Your readers will be pleased to hear that the Academic Board at University College London has urged the College Council to retract the adoption of the IHRA, International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, âdefinitionâ of anti-Semitism, which risks conflating legitimate criticism of the state of Israel with anti-Semitism, thus threatening freedom of expression on campus.
âBy blurring these boundariesâ, it states, âthe IHRA working definition risks undermining academic freedom.â
Education secretary Gavin Williamson has threatened to withhold funding from universities that do not adopt the definition.
The report by the UCL Academic Board says Williamsonâs intervention demonstrates âhow university autonomy is under threat.â