The University of Birmingham Friends of Palestine Society has been suspended by the Guild of Students, who justify the suspension because of an “unauthorized event” to commemorate the Nakba (the Nakba, or “catastrophe” is the period during 1948 when Palestinians were forcibly expelled from their homes or killed after the war that established the state of Israel). The ostensible reason for suspension decision, made on 3 June, was that proper permissions for the event had not been granted before it went ahead. The sequence of events detailed by Friends of Palestine in a recent Instagram post, tells a different story. Delay, imposition of conditions, last minute changes and removal of funds are all described in the lead-up to the date requested.

The Guild’s tactics, which never included an outright refusal to grant permission, but made it difficult or impossible to hold the event, resemble tactics that either the UCU or members it represents encountered when there were requests to hold protests or teaching sessions related to Palestine last year. These and a new Code of Practice on Freedom of Speech—which aims to stifle expression because it threatens a virtually unlimited set of university activities with administratively impossible controls—are used to suppress genuine free speech by controlling the mechanisms of permission. To cite a specific example, the Friends of Palestine describe a demand that students remove all promotional materials pending event authorisation, which is nearly identical to the demand that law faculty remove watermelon emojis from promotional materials for a teach-in on international law and events in Palestine (that event was never held; the university says it was “delayed”).

The conditions faced by Friend of Palestine for their event and their suspension from the Guild are in striking contrast to a motion in support of Palestinian solidarity passed by the student body, but blocked by the Guild Board of Trustees. They are completely in tune, however, with the university’s willingness to spend student fees on lawyers to evict a peaceful protest encampment from the Green (renamed Gaza) Heart and the university’s heavy-handed use of disciplinary procedures to threaten the degrees of students who helped to organize Palestine protests (procedures that were later dropped—the same students were subsequently elected to prominent guild positions by the student body). Put beside each other, all of these efforts, including those directed at the UCU, show that the university is willing to go some distance to silence protest at UoB, while all the time insisting that it promotes free speech and open discussion.

It is easy to think that our local environment has little impact on the larger political and international realm. Current events tell us we do not have that luxury. The conditions that the students were protesting—systematic denial of food and water, destruction of hospitals, schools and universities, forced removal of people on repeated occasions and a death toll that includes a least 11,000 children and at least 56,000 people (other estimates are higher) could not be more dramatic. Recent events in Iran show that we are entering an even more violent and unstable phase of conflict. In that context is the most important thing to suppress the voices of students who find this situation appalling?

Events from the US, where universities are very clearly under attack (many over the same issue—protests calling for peaceful resolution to the war in Gaza) show that we cannot be complacent about our position. Attacks against the university sector in the US may begin with Gaza, but they are mounted across a wide range of issues including equality and diversity, access to medical care, climate change and the conduct of open inquiry in scholarship and science itself. Protest, organization and speaking out are essential safety mechanisms for democratic and social institutions in serious crisis. We cannot pretend that we are far away or immune. The same forces are here and now.

BUCU committee expresses its solidarity with the Friends of Palestine Society. We ask the Guild to re-instate them as a society, and we encourage the Guild to promote a genuine environment of debate, education and protest. That element of education, which is fundamental to real citizenship and solidarity, is one that we may all depend on in due course.