Mick Hartley

A couple of items from the Times this morning, at either end of our glorious educational system:

Jewish students ‘faced Hitler jokes’ at London university:

Jewish students were subjected to Hitler jokes and threats from other students at a major London university, it has been alleged.

A letter sent on behalf of Jewish students to Queen Mary, University of London (QMUL) by the law firm Mishcon de Reya details dozens of allegations of antisemitism which it says the university has failed to respond to.

They include an incident in which students joked about getting a “Hitler reboot card” on the chat function during an online lecture attended by 500 students. In the same lecture, a participant in the chat group made jokes about Hitler’s “gas bill”.

Additionally, the letter says Jewish students have been threatened with violence. One student was sent a video quoting the Quran overlaid with images of war wreckage in Israel….

The Jewish society at the university received messages accusing its members of being “animals”. One online comment received by the society said: “You’re all terrorists. Keep playing victim but you’re all going to end up in hell burning.”

The law firm’s letter alleges that QMUL had failed to respond to antisemitic incidents and was not using the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism, meaning incidents could not be fully investigated. It describes the university as a “prolifically hostile” environment for Jewish students.

It said campuses have become “so toxic that Jewish students fear for their physical safety, avoid campus, feel intimidated not to attend lectures, have to navigate physical environments festooned with hostile and violent material, require increased security for their events and for themselves personally and are scared to travel to and from events”. The letter adds: “This is happening at QMUL. Time and again the university’s administration has been made aware of these issues, has paid them lip service, has prevaricated and, in the end, has done nothing.”

A student society at QMUL also hosted Moazzam Begg, the former Guantanamo prisoner who leads the controversial charity Cage, at an event on Tuesday night. Since the Hamas attacks on October 7 Begg has claimed that Israel killed the hostages and denied that Hamas fighters had killed children or committed rape. Begg was invited to speak at the Queen Mary Islamic Society, at a talk titled Hidden Realities.

Are we surprised?

Moazzam Begg spreads vile antisemitic nonsense at a university, while Jews are subject to abuse and harrassment, and…that's fine. No one bats an eyelid. Now if a pro-Israeli  speaker was invited, or a "transphobic" speaker…

Meanwhile:

The organisers of “school strikes for Palestine” have been urging pupils to write speeches about genocide and ­suggested that Britain is a racist country, a report has found.

Thousands of children across the UK have abandoned lessons in recent weeks to march through city centres demanding a ceasefire in Gaza.

The Times revealed last month that the national movement is being co-ordinated by the Stop the War Coalition, a controversial campaign group accused of having anti-western values.

That's putting it mildly.

The musician Brian Eno, 75, is its president. He is a critic of Nato “expansion”, which he blames for provoking Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. He has appealed for people to “look at the situation from Russia’s point of view”, claiming the West’s strategy has been “keep poking them until they react and then use their reaction as evidence that they’re hostile and can’t be trusted”.

Andrew Murray, its deputy president, is a former communist and trade unionist and ally of Jeremy Corbyn, another deputy president.