Written by Cameron Baillie
Senior faculty and staff have written to LSE’s Council Chair and School Secretary expressing “deep dismay” regarding a senior Council member’s public aggression towards peaceful pro-Palestinian protesters.
A letter signed by two-dozen members of LSE’s community on 20 December 2024, since shared with The Beaver, accuses School Council-member Stuart Roden of “troubling” conduct and language, and violating multiple behavioural responsibilities.
Roden is video-recorded “screaming as he points repeatedly and aggressively at demonstrators” outside the Labour Party’s conference in October 2023 and exhibits “highly belligerent body language as he engages the demonstrators”, the letter alleges.
The signatories request an “investigation into whether Roden’s conduct meets the standards for ethical conduct expected by the School” and an assessment of Roden’s fitness “to serve as a Council member and member of the Finance and Estates Committee”.
The signatories from eight different departments accuse Roden of violating LSE’s ethics code, bringing “the School into disrepute”, and breaching purported norms of “institutional neutrality”.
They further claim that Roden’s behaviour, alongside his senior position within School governance, “raises important questions in relation to the rationales Council and SMC gave for their decision not to divest from entities implicated in international law and gross human rights violations in the Occupied Palestinian Territories earlier this year”.
This references Council’s decision on 25 June 2024 to deny widespread demands that LSE divest its reported £89 million from companies complicit in crimes against Palestinians, as well as those involved in financing arms and fossil-fuel industries.
Calls came from current students, staff and faculty, Jewish members of LSE’s community, and School alumni, consolidated by last year’s record-turnout student referendum in which 89% of LSE students voted for divestment.
Signatories doubt Roden’s ability “to fulfil his duties impartially … in light of his very public positioning on this highly sensitive question”. They also question Roden’s role in ongoing ESG Policy revisions concerning School investments following his public display of partiality.
Alongside positions within LSE, Roden is founding chairman of Hetz Ventures, a venture capital fund for Israeli tech startups, joint-founded by active Israeli special-forces soldier Judah Taub and top Cameron-era Conservative peer and ex-Party Chairman Lord Feldman. Other Hetz leadership team members also served in elite Israeli military-intelligence units.
Hetz’s website illuminates “How Israel’s military became a hotbed for tech startups”, funded by companies like Hetz, and credits its employees’ role in “volunteering with the [Israeli] war effort nationally with food packing, donations, and farming”.
Among the UK’s 500 wealthiest individuals, Roden is one of Starmer-Labour’s biggest donors, and “voted actively against” Jeremy Corbyn as leader, according to a video interview he gave to the Spectator. Roden is also principal funder of Zionist education initiative I-gnite, which suggests responses to criticisms of Israel, such as accusations around Israeli settlements, colonialism, apartheid, occupation, and military disproportionality.
The letter summarises that Roden accused demonstrators of murder; accused them of celebrating murdered civilians; equated calls for Palestinian liberation with antisemitism; goaded protesters into attacking him; and sought to impede protestors from exercising their rights to freedom of speech and of assembly.
Roden was recorded shouting “attack me like you attacked them”, “you’re murdering people”, and “you came into a country, you murdered children” at the peaceful demonstrators, alongside calling various assembled people “disgusting”, “cowards”, and “stupid”. The video has been viewed over 127,700 times on Times Radio’s YouTube channel.
The letter questions whether Roden, in his public outburst, treated “others with respect and dignity”, displayed “tolerance of different viewpoints”, behaved inclusively, or respected “the right of others to express and protest freely”. This is particularly challenging for LSE’s Council, given that as “a School governor, director, and trustee, Mr. Roden is in a position of high public visibility”.
The signatories express that Roden is “entrusted to represent the School. We ask whether his behaviour is a breach of that trust and whether it damages the School’s reputation while he remains a Council member.”
One signatory shared that “concerned staff await Council’s action against unacceptable conduct from this senior member of the School community” — like that taken swiftly against the LSE_7, since acquitted — “unless it will instead seek to defend Roden’s behaviour”.
Stuart Roden did not respond to a request for a statement as of the publication date.
An LSE spokesperson said:
“Last month LSE received a letter from a group of faculty regarding an encounter which took place on 9 October 2023 outside the Labour Party Conference, involving a member of the LSE Council and a group of protestors. We have looked into the incident. While it is a highly charged exchange, we do not believe any action is warranted.”
“The incident, a one-off event, occurred two days after the October 7 attack. Feelings were running high, and reactions in the moment were even more charged than usual on all sides. As we have tried to make clear, outside the classroom, the LSE Ethics Code and School’s Statement on Committee Effective Behaviour do not regulate lawful speech, even if it is controversial or may pose a reputational risk. That is the case for this exchange, as it was when we received complaints about speech from LSE faculty immediately after October 7.”
“Freedom of speech, including the right to protest, are of the utmost importance to LSE. Our free speech policy is designed to protect and promote peaceful freedom of expression on campus.”
“The LSE Council decisions relating to divestment last summer were reached by unanimous consensus in both the Finance and Estates Committee and in Council, which included faculty, student, and staff members. Council’s reason for its decision was that the School, as such, should not take positions on controversial geopolitical conflicts, including in its investment decisions. This conclusion applies to any and all such conflicts, and for that reason was not driven by the views of any Council members on this or any other particular controversy.”
Regarding investments, the spokesperson commented: “LSE is committed to strengthening our approach to responsible investment in line with our Environmental, Social and Governance Policy, Following recent discussions within the LSE community, a review of the policy consistent with Council’s decisions from last summer is currently underway.”
