Mick Hartley

Dear @ucu,

I was a founder member of UCU and I was a member of AUT before that, but I am resigning today.

UCU has been, consistently over that time, by far the most toxic, bullying, antisemitic space I have ever been in.

For many years now I have been afraid to speak at… https://t.co/9fSOpSKTbk

— David Hirsh (@DavidHirsh) July 10, 2025

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For many years now I have been afraid to speak at meetings because I knew what kind of responses would come my way.

I have obeyed every strike call during that time, and every other call for solidarity with my colleagues, even when I thought they were counterproductive. But UCU has not offered any solidarity at all with Jews, who have been working in an increasingly institutionally antisemitic environment on campus.

Well, of course it didn't, because UCU was a pioneer and a legitimizer of that antisemitism, so it would make no sense to imagine it could help in addressing it.

When the campaign to exclude Israeli colleagues from our campuses, journals and conferences was treated as legitimate in the union, it brought with it waves of antisemitic rhetoric, anger and exclusions. When I spoke out against some of that, I was excluded permanently from the union online discussion. Much of that story is told here: Fraser v UCU: tribunal finds no antisemitism at all | Engage

When I was denounced by the President of our Student Union as a 'far right white supremacist', and after she referred my work as a 'Zionist Goldsmiths academic’s explicit racist history', my UCU branch turned up on Twitter to offer 100% solidarity to her, but zero solidarity was offered to me. They were content that a union member and an expert in antisemitism was being denounced as a Nazi and they were siding with the person who had done that….

The UCU was last heard of by those of us outside academia when, instead of backing Kathleen Stock as she was hounded out of Sussex University by braying gender activists, gave their full support to the trans mob.