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Middle East Eye
5 days ago
- Politics
- Middle East Eye
Soas expels Palestine Society president Haya Adam after months of suspension
Pro-Palestine student activist Haya Adam has been expelled by the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies (Soas) after a disciplinary panel determined that she had breached the university's code of conduct. Adam, 21, is the president of the Soas Palestine Society, and was one of the most visible participants in a 15-month-long student encampment protesting the institution's alleged complicity in Israel's war on Gaza. The panel decision on Wednesday found that Adam breached the university's code of conduct over her appearance in a video posted on 16 January to the student encampment's Instagram page. In the video, which remains on Instagram, Adam criticises a Soas student union co-president, stating that her tenure had 'only served institutional oppression', and calling her a 'careerist'. The university disciplinary panel ruled that the Instagram video constituted harassment, despite the student union officer in question herself refusing to call the post harassment in a recorded panel discussion. New MEE newsletter: Jerusalem Dispatch Sign up to get the latest insights and analysis on Israel-Palestine, alongside Turkey Unpacked and other MEE newsletters Adam's case is the second instance of Soas expelling a pro-Palestine activist, following the expulsion of student Abel Harvie-Clark in December 2024. Prior to her expulsion, Adam had been suspended from campus for over a year over disciplinary charges relating to her pro-Palestine activism on campus. 'Soas have used me as an example to intimidate the rest of the student body' - Haya Adam A second-year law and international relations student, Adam had attempted to continue her studies online, but could not attend lectures and had limited access to university resources. 'Soas have used me as an example to intimidate the rest of the student body. But students will continue to rise up regardless, as there is a genocide going on,' Adam told Middle East Eye. 'To politically criticise an elected official is well within our rights to freedom of speech,' Adam added. 'It's absolutely ridiculous that criticising someone in a position of authority would result in an expulsion. That's a dictatorship at Soas - not democracy.' Legal case The Soas encampment is one of hundreds of student demonstrations worldwide protesting university complicity in Israel's war on Gaza, in which over 61,000 Palestinians have been killed since October 2023. Human rights groups, international law experts and a growing number of countries have labelled the Israeli campaign a genocide. Soas, which specialises in the humanities and social sciences, does not hold research partnerships with arms companies participating in Israel's war on Gaza to a similar extent as many other universities. How campus protests exposed the flaws in higher education diversity initiatives Read More » However, protesters have criticised the university's research links with the UK Ministry of Defence and Israeli universities, as well as its financial ties to banks accused of financing Israel's genocide in Gaza, such as Barclays. Soas took the student protesters to court in October 2024, obtaining a High Court injunction that prohibited demonstrations on university premises without the prior written approval of university management, creating legal consequences for non-compliance. Similar injunctions were filed by various UK universities, including the University of Cambridge and the University of Bristol. Adam was one of three named defendants in the university's court submission. Ejected from campus, the protest group now protests on a nearby pavement, where their demonstration has become the world's longest-running pro-Palestine student encampment. 'A grave mistake' Founded in 1916 to train British colonial administrators, Soas has in recent years gained an academic reputation as a hub of radical postcolonial thought. Since 2012, the university has housed the Centre for Palestine Studies, an academic department dedicated to studying Palestine. Adam says that she was initially surprised by the firm response to pro-Palestine activism she received at the university. Students launch 'Gaza40' campaign for Palestinian scholarship recipients who cannot enter UK Read More » 'I was under the impression that I'd have an anti-colonial education at Soas, and would have a place where I could speak out against injustices. 'I thought Soas would encourage their students to take action against these crimes against humanity - instead, they've chosen to punish their students.' Dr Grietje Baars, a Reader in Law and Social Change and an associate member of the Centre for Palestine Studies at Soas, told MEE that she believes the expulsion decision is a 'grave mistake on the part of the university'. But Baars added that she thought 'it won't have the effect the university is hoping it will have'. 'Our students are not afraid,' Baars said. 'They know that the genocide in Gaza and the situations in Sudan and the Congo are of the utmost importance and urgency and are intimately tied up with their chance of a liveable future: they're not going to be intimidated into silence.' 'I commend the students for their courage and perseverance,' she added. In solidarity with Haya Adam from @soaslibzone, I promised I would 🔥 my Masters certificate from @SOAS if she was expelled. They have chosen to unfairly punish her, so I don't want to be associated with a uni that markets decoloniality while punishing those who practice it. — Dr Asim Qureshi 🏞️➡️🌊🇵🇸🕊️ (@AsimCP) August 7, 2025 Adam told MEE that she plans to appeal the university's decision and continues to participate in protests at Soas. 'I will never stop what I'm doing, and the university will never silence or intimidate me because we're doing all of this for our Palestinian brothers and sisters,' Adam said. 'There is an intensifying genocide that has been going on continuously, so it's our responsibility and moral duty to speak up.' Approached for comment, a Soas spokesperson said: 'While we do not comment on individual disciplinary cases to respect student privacy, the past 19 months have seen hundreds of peaceful events, vigils, and protests take place on our campus that reflect a vibrant culture of free expression at SOAS. 'In a small number of cases involving serious misconduct - such as vandalism, exam disruption, and threats to staff - we have taken appropriate action to uphold the safety and integrity of our university. 'We remain devastated by the loss of life in Israel on 7 October and the ongoing destruction of Gaza, and we continue to call for an immediate ceasefire, as we first did in 2023.'
New Statesman
25-06-2025
- Politics
- New Statesman
The pro-Palestine movement's alternative campus
Photo by Guy Bell/Alamy Live News On 17 June, I visited the Soas Liberated Zone. It is a complex of tents occupied by Soas students, which has existed in multiple forms on and outside the School of Oriental and African Studies campus since 6 May 2024. This makes it the longest held of the student encampments that sprang up in Britain following the Gaza Solidarity Encampment at Columbia University, whose occupants were demanding their university divest from Israel. The day of my visit, Israeli forces had opened fire on crowds of Palestinians in Gaza waiting to receive crucial aid. They killed at least 70 people. Al Jazeera called it 'Gaza's deadliest day at aid sites'. Inside the large tent that serves as the living-cum-dining room for the encampment, I met Ayah, a Palestinian Soas alumna who recently completed her masters in comparative literature. We have returned to an attitude of silence, which serves to normalise an ongoing genocide in Gaza, Ayah told me. It has gone on so long that people are becoming numb or even apathetic in the face of the daily roll call of Palestinian people who have died under occupation. 'Encampments are a way of saying this is not normal and we will not go on with our normal lives,' she said. The current encampment has about 20 regular members who take it in turns to sleep outside, between a church and a row of pop-up food stalls, only a few minutes' walk from the university. It's a space that feels lived in and cared for: packs of biscuits and an ashtray on the table, a daily to-do list written on a whiteboard. This is their third location; the first two were on Soas property, the second removed by enforcement agents on instructions from the University of London. Ayah and other members of the encampment whom I would meet once they returned from a protest at BAE Systems Rochester have been here since the start. After the war on Gaza began, Ayah withdrew socially from the university because, she said, it offered her neither the support nor the solidarity she needed. Once the encampments began, she actually felt 'integrated into the community'. Those who had been at the protest outside BAE returned: Haya, a second-year student and political refugee from Egypt; Tara, a third-year student; and a fresher called Qasim who told me he joined the encampment after learning that Soas invests in companies linked to Israel and has a partnership with Haifa University. 'Once you find that out, you really only have two choices,' he said. 'Silence or do something about it.' Both Haya and Tara are suspended and prohibited from entering the campus for the rest of the academic year, at minimum, for their roles in pro-Palestine activity on campus. (A Soas spokesperson said that protest and dissent can take place at the university 'as long as it remains peaceful and does not undermine the safety and security of all within our community'.) Haya and Tara are two of the named defendants on an injunction the University of London had approved by the courts late last year, which has temporarily guaranteed that students cannot hold protests on university property unless they seek permission from the relevant authorities 72 hours in advance. 'But things happen overnight!' Ayah cut in. 'How can Soas continue to declare that it supports free speech and decolonial rhetoric when it's actively suspending students for doing those very things?' Tara asked. For the last year, student encampments like this one have functioned to expose the hypocrisies at the heart of universities as institutions. On Soas's website it says that its undergraduate degree is for 'those who want to re-examine preconceptions and not just accept the status quo'. And yet, it is choosing to suppress student protest unless management first ordains it. I asked Ayah what she now thinks university is for; she replied sardonically, 'A fancy degree!' To Tara, what is beautiful about the encampment is the way it has made free education possible. Not just financially, Tara clarified – they make the seminars and screenings held available for free online as well as free from censorship. What they learn here seems more transformative than what you might discover in the classroom: not just political theories, but the ability to apply them in practice. After the start of the war, Haya told me a lot of students were pro-Palestine but in quite a passive way. 'It's our responsibility to reach out to them, to get them to join us, to provide political education,' she said. This space has provided students with an alternative form of university experience: it is where they come to study, make sense of the world and discover how they might become forces of change – things they ought to have received from inside the university gates. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe In court during the injunction case, the students, as defendants, were reminded that they were still free to protest on social media. To Tara, this illustrated that the university is not threatened by online activism. Suspending its students is a university's attempt to cut them off from community and action. Instead, these Soas students have spent the last year constructing a sustaining, galvanising and educational community. The point of encampments is that they exist as obstructive, disruptive, physical reminders of institutional and societal failures when it comes to Israel's actions in Gaza. The Soas Liberated Zone has seven demands – along with divestment they include an end to the repression of Palestinian solidarity activism on campus. They tell me they will stay here for as long as necessary. [See also: Jeff in Venice] Related
