A second university has voted to disaffiliate with Britain’s national student union following its election last month of a controversial president who is facing accusations of anti-Semitism.
Newcastle University Students’ Union (NUSU) said on Thursday that it will sever ties with the National Union of Students (NUS), just days after Lincoln University announced that it will also be breaking away from NUS. The body last month elected Malia Bouattia, who among other things has called for boycotts of Israel and support for violent Palestinian “resistance,” and opposed condemning the Islamic State.
According to NUSU President Dominic Fearon, students at Newcastle believe that NUS “no longer represents their views, does not prioritise correctly, and is not effective at achieving change.”
“The current discontent amongst students, nationally, can be measured in the number of unions considering holding referenda on their membership. We hope the NUS will acknowledge their shortcomings and will work to become the national union that students deserve and can identify with,” he added.
According to The Telegraph, in the wake of the disaffiliation votes at Newcastle and Lincoln, other university student unions, including those at Oxford and Cambridge, are considering putting their continued ties with the NUS up for a vote.
The NUS controversy comes on the heels of an investigation into allegations of anti-Semitism at the Oxford University Labour Club. The allegations emerged when the club’s co-president, Alex Chalmers, resigned his post in February after observing that many members of the club and the student Left in general “have some kind of problem with Jews.”
In addition to the election Bouattia, delegates at the NUS convention last month entertained arguments that the Holocaust should not be commemorated. The enthusiastic reception these arguments received drew rebukes from members of Parliament. Labour MP John Mann said that the comments and the reaction to them were “inappropriate, offensive, and point to a disturbing wider ignorance about anti-Semitism” within the NUS.
After her election last month, Eylon Aslan-Levy reported on Bouattia’s record of controversial statements and activities for The Tower:
Bouattia has been widely accused of peddling conspiracy theories in her capacity as the NUS Black Students’ Officer. She is on record blaming the “Zionist lobby” for the British government’s “Prevent” anti-radicalization strategy. She has also been filmed accusing “Zionist-led media” of oppressing the global south. In the same video, subsequently removed from YouTube, she called on Muslims to support violent Palestinian “resistance” and dismissed Israeli-Palestinian peace talks as “strengthening the colonial project.”
Bouattia previously provoked national controversy in late 2014 when she opposed a resolution to condemn ISIS because “condemnation of ISIS appears to have become a justification for war and blatant Islamophobia.” The union’s subsequent rejection of the motion and endorsement of the anti-Israel boycott movement was later criticized by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
[Photo: madraban / Flickr ]