Mick Hartley

From the JC:

The National Union of Students has been branded a “hostile environment” for Jews in a damning independent report into antisemitism at the organisation stretching back more than a decade.

The report (which can be read in full here) by Rebecca Tuck KC found that the NUS had consistently ignored and dismissed antisemitism, often demoting complaints because of bias over the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

Ms Tuck detailed accounts from Jewish students who felt “reduced to being only ‘the Jew’ in the room” and that they were “treated as a pariah at NUS events”.

They were “answerable for Israel, responsible to call out any antisemitism, seen to represent every single Jew in the student population, and stripped of any other characteristics”, she wrote.

The report said while NUS staff have challenged Jew-hate on the far right, they often failed to tackle or recognise antisemitism among pro-Palestinian activists. In that context, complaints of antisemitism among students came to be viewed as being made in “bad faith” and the report detailed numerous accounts of staff failing to challenge outright Jew-hatred or investigate allegations made by Jewish students….

Ms Tuck said were occasions on which Jewish students had been subjected to harassment related to their race and or religion as defined by the Equality Act 2010, with Jewish students experiencing “an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment”.

Joel Rosen, President of the Union of Jewish Students, said: “The report shows how NUS has failed generations of Jewish students. It is a searing indictment of anti-Jewish racism at the heart of student politics. It confirms that Jewish students faced harassment and discrimination and that complaints of antisemitism were dismissed and disregarded.”

The NUS itself described the 100-page report as “a detailed and shocking account of antisemitism” and has pledged to implement the KC’s recommendations in full.

Hmm. We'll see. There's some history here.

This is the eighth report into NUS antisemitism since 2005, with many of the ensuing recommendations not implemented in full….

The NUS was found to have a short institutional memory and, in many cases, records were only kept for only 18 months, which significantly hindered the investigation.