By Cameron Baillie
Drawing on a long-standing, well-established history of campus activism, LSE saw more protests in the academic year 2023-24 than – quite possibly – ever in its history, amid continued, brutalising military assaults on trapped Palestinian refugees in Gaza by Israeli forces, now extended into Lebanon, and soaring West Bank killings.
Yet LSE’s purported ‘free-speech’ friendly stance, according to its management heads, is now under question, as seven individuals (dubbed the ‘LSE_7’) have been banned from campus under preemptive precautionary measures for over three months. Now barred from ordinary involvement in campus life, alongside possibly threatening six of the seven students’ right to remain in the UK, the LSE_7 protested against LSE’s ‘fiduciary’-led, or shareholder-profit-driven, investments among various other policies.
During a summer school registration, around a dozen students protested loudly, clearly, and peacefully inside LSE’s Old Building in support of Palestine and, they say, to educate incoming students about the School’s policies which they claim are ‘complicit’ in ongoing humanitarian catastrophes. Contrary to LSE’s reported stipulations about the protest, there was nothing extraordinary about this particular demonstration: it was not unlike dozens of protests throughout the past academic year, where keffiyehs and face coverings have been worn to protect protestors’ identities (a decision now seemingly vindicated, in light of the disciplinary actions) and megaphones used, both within and outside of campus buildings, including the Marshall Building occupation of May-June.
Yet LSE’s management went as far as to amplify comparisons between this protest and 2005’s horrific 7/7 Bombings upon suspending the seven students, which understandably, offended many. The two episodes bore no resemblance in their means or the scope of their intentions and consequences, except their date. If no harm was intended towards nor brought upon anybody present, how could LSE cede comparisons between peaceful protesters and such devastating attacks on London’s public nineteen years prior? What’s more, was the choice to suspend the seven students a targeted and/or politically motivated decision?
The School’s allegation of students engaging in “conduct or communication that will…bring the school into disrepute” (section 25.10 of the Conditions of Registration and Enrolment), indicates one answer: the perceived harm that these protesters could, and perhaps did, bring upon LSE’s reputation as the UK’s newly-crowned top university destination and free-speech bastion, by exposing what student protesters view as LSE’s institutional-level hypocrisy. Another answer might indicate allegations of institutional Islamophobia, extensively documented by LSESU Islamic Society, especially regarding plausible suppression of pro-Palestinian activism and rights advocacy. These answers paint a picture of apparent institutional failure in the school’s duty of care to its students, and severe gaps in the processes meant to provide independent and unbiased application of school policy.
Protest and Discipline
Like other students, staff, and faculty who exercised their right to assemble and protest academic ties to Israel’s destructive assault on Gaza on campus, the LSE_7 demonstrated to raise awareness among LSE’s high-paying summer school attendees of the School’s £89m of “egregious investments,” as detailed in the ‘Assets in Apartheid’ report. Researched by staff and students over six months across 2023–24, the report details LSE’s investments into companies complicit in crimes against Palestinians, alongside those involved in arms and fossil fuel trades, and financing such “egregious activities,” as listed by the UN, human rights groups, and environmental NGOs.
The LSE_7 maintain that they simply “held banners and chanted ‘Disclose, Divest! We Will Not Stop, We Will Not Rest!’ in the Student Service Center” and similar mantras about LSE’s policies. They exited calmly, and claim they received positive engagement from summer school students, who were unaware of LSE’s financial investments and wished to learn more. There was little about this protest which differentiated it from so many others throughout the academic year and early summer, which is corroborated by signatories to the LSE_7 petition who claim to have been present that day.
Yet two days later, on 9 July, LSE’s management issued a School-wide ‘community update’ email which labelled the protesters “harassing and frightening”, stated that students’ protest “actions involved tactics that intimidated fellow members of the LSE community and left them shaken and upset”, and threatened disciplinary consequences. Not only were the LSE_7 threatened – and seemingly made examples out of, given the myriad similar protests last year – but other would-be campus protesters were also deterred: “Activity of this sort, and any similar escalation going forward, will be met with disciplinary proceedings…no further concessions will be made.”
Disciplinary action shortly ensued, with LSE claiming that “escalated tactics used by protestors on 7 July included intimidating and frightening people, and a significant obstruction of LSE staff trying to perform their duties. Numerous individuals present described it as an extremely distressing experience.” LSE reportedly claimed to Heads of Department that this followed a ‘Risk Assessment’ regarding the protesters, but the LSE_7 maintain that they never saw any information on any such assessment, raising doubts about the transparency of certain internal processes. Incidentally, the School’s procedural transparency (or its lack thereof) has itself been a central protest demand.
LSE also clarified that 7/7 Bombing comparisons, which were quoted and amplified uncritically to provide the basis for serving the LSE_7 with precautionary measures, were made in a “witness impact statement by a member of the community who was affected by the protest”. Yet LSE evidently deemed the analogy unproblematic, and thereby worth including in the charges, despite now distancing themselves from the comparison. One suspended student has since disclosed that “As a Muslim student, the reference to 7/7 felt especially targeted”. LSE has declined to comment on allegations of institutional Islamophobia.
Seven Live Suspended
The seven students (roughly half of the protesters) were excluded from full university life, including entrance to campus buildings. According to one member of the LSE_7, the precautionary measures were eventually amended after extensive disclosure of personal circumstances to allow students to request explicit permissions for exceptions like GP appointments or counselling. The LSE_7 were not provided with evidence of their alleged conduct justifying the suspensions for around ten weeks, before eventual receipt of evidence for the various allegations, given barely a week before their disciplinary hearings. The ‘LSE Liberated Zone’ launched their public campaign on 4 October, stating that they felt “no other choice but to make the disciplinary proceedings transparent to the public, not only to ensure a fair process but to protect other students from further repressive action by the school.”
Most worryingly for the students, six depend on student visas to remain in the UK, meaning that their suspensions risk deportation and unimaginable life-upheaval. Given LSE’s pride in its ‘global community’, it seems particularly severe that management would willingly leverage plausible, implicit threats of deportation against its students over peaceful protests. LSE further denied the suspended students legal representation in their hearings on 8–9 October, according to the students, despite them facing examination by a paid barrister.
One suspended student told The Beaver that hearings were rescheduled three times arbitrarily, with no notice nor reason – causing students to “defer degrees, job searches, seeing [their] families”, thereby suspending their lives off-campus too – and that the barrister was also unexpectedly switched last-minute. Hearing preparations, legal meetings, and anxious expectations “have taken almost every waking minute’s energy for the last three months”, the suspended student shares. Furthermore, the LSE_7 cite concerns regarding LSE’s disciplinary procedures, currently under reform, given repeatedly mishandled sexual harassment hearings, as reported here.
According to the LSE_7 campaign, suspension documents “grossly misrepresented the protest”, portraying students as militaristic, quoting seemingly unfounded and plausibly Islamophobic 7/7 terrorism comparisons, and stating that summer school registration attendees “feared there was a further attack taking place”. Actual footage of the protest appears far from those horrendous attacks, leaving only the inference that LSE either fears protesters’ narrative challenge, or its management is in lockstep with mainstream British media and politicians’ Islamophobic tendencies in equivocating pro-Palestinian protests with Islamist extremism, or both.
Implications for Campus Life
Pro-Palestinian protesters being classified as extremists or radicals is not new, nor scarcely accurate – millions of citizens and students regularly demonstrating across the world indicates mainstream support. Evidencing widespread support for their demands within LSE’s community, the LSE_7 cite the “historic student referendum in which 89% of LSE students voted in favour of divestment, and multiple petitions representing over 3,000 voices including students, staff and faculty, Jewish staff and students, and LSE alumni.” Despite such manifest popular support, LSE’s Council voted against divestment on 25 June 2024.
LSE’s central challenge, according to the suspended protestors’ campaign, is squaring severe, knee-jerk protest suppression with newly settled Vice-Chancellor Larry Kramer’s purported commitment to “championing free speech” on campus, as lauded recently by the Sunday Times. Kramer stated that “we have not gone down the path of regulating speech and we will not,” giving the false impression that no students have been suspended under investigation for protesting. Kramer proudly goes on to state that LSE “will give you tools to help you engage”, despite the university’s repeated failure to engage with its community’s clear and widespread demands for divestment from companies complicit in egregious crimes.
UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Peaceful Assembly, Gina Romero, wrote directly to LSE expressing her concerns. She recommends a review of the School’s practices to ensure alignment with international human rights standards, and urges reconsideration of disciplinary sanctions against peaceful protestors. Romero alleges that the use of tactics which mischaracterise and silence Palestine-related protests especially is “not only a disproportionate response, but may indicate an underlying institutional racism against Palestinians, violating fundamental human rights”. She cites historic student protests’ significance for advancing people’s rights, including ending formal South African Apartheid and battling colonialism. Romero argues that universities must remain spaces for “free thought, speech, and academic freedom”.
Per the Sunday Times, Kramer determines that “There will be no ‘safe spaces’ at [LSE]…expect to encounter ideas you hate, that bite, that go to your identity.” Should this not equally apply to senior management’s legitimacy being challenged, if free speech is truly sacrosanct? Must they not also confront the ‘bite’? Otherwise, flaunting freedom of speech appears as merely another device in the managerial toolkit, allowing for so-called ‘institutional neutrality’ when it suits, while leveraging would-be detractors deemed too threatening to LSE’s brand reputation with repressive measures.
Protest Histories and Futures
The short protest in July followed many months of similar pro-Palestinian campus protests, vigils, and campaigning amid Israel’s destructive assault on Gazan civilians and their education system, and allegations of complicity being levelled against academic and other institutions globally. Against myriad protests, Most notable was the five-week-long Marshall Building occupation by hundreds of LSE students and staff, in solidarity with Gazans’ persecution, amidst the mass-movement spanning the worlds’ universities and streets.
The ‘Bloom Building’ occupation – named by students in honour of LSE’s suspended 1960s anti-Apartheid activist Marshall Bloom – resulted in lengthy talks with the university’s management on its official policies and financial investments. Eventually however, LSE became the first UK university granted a court order to evict students over the current wave of pro-Palestinian protests, before swiftly and unilaterally ceasing negotiations. LSE had previously made public promises “to student protesters to meet over a period of six weeks”, but reneged on this immediately following the eviction.
Like Romero, the LSE_7 recall histories of anti-Apartheid student activism and solidaristic protests, like that undertaken by Bloom. They especially highlight LSE’s concurrent history of suppressing such actions, then later crediting itself for the activists’ political spirits. Their campaign draws upon the pre-emptive support of one hundred academic staff who “wrote to the LSE administration expressing concern over the potential misuse of disciplinary action to censor speech and intimidate students”, especially given pro-Palestinian voices being quashed across the UK and elsewhere. Over 1400 (at publication date) have signed the newest petition condemning stringent disciplinary measures since the LSE_7 campaign launched on 4 October.
The LSE_7 further argue that precedents set at influential schools like LSE – including the court order and, now, suspensions – have consequences for higher education beyond its immediate reaches. An LSE spokesperson responded to The Beaver’s request for comment that “Freedom of speech and expression…underpins everything we do. Our free speech policy…protect[s] and promotes peaceful freedom of expression on campus.” Officially, LSE only penalises protest “which crosses the line into illegality, is threatening to individuals, or significantly disrupts the community”.
The LSE_7 inform The Beaver that they believe themselves justified in disrupting what one labelled “genocide-as-usual campus life at British universities”. One student alleges that “LSE prioritises its “‘fiduciary duties’ ahead of obligations under international law and human rights charters”, alongside alleging LSE’s dereliction of duties towards students to honour the “highest-ever turnout and overwhelming majority ‘Yes’ vote in May’s LSESU divestment referendum”. They also question the validity of “witness impact statements”, which they suspect security staffers on the university’s payroll wrote, and deem the charges as politically motivated.
Another of the suspended seven tells The Beaver that “It is incomprehensible that after a whole year of atrocities in Palestine we are now facing more severe consequences than our university management, who have decided to continue funding war crimes in Gaza and beyond…everyone that pays tuition here has the right to know that.” The student again defended their actions, writing that “Despite how LSE is portraying us, we sincerely care about improving our university. In fact, that’s why we are motivated to protest, negotiate, and research how the university we are part of can take steps to meaningfully cut its ties to systems of destruction and oppression.”
Ongoing catastrophes in Gaza – where there are no ‘safe spaces’ from Israel’s bombings, nor any universities remaining – and elsewhere are far beyond ‘distressing’ for the millions displaced, including many families who’ve suffered over dozens of loved-ones killed. Given this horrific context LSE’s communities might face “ideas [they] hate”, then in Larry Kramer’s words, which could naturally be an “extremely distressing experience.” With little recourse left remaining, since LSE’s management apparently refuses serious engagement, student protest is typically the default for encouraging action. But concerns are clearly arising that students are apparently being punished for demonstrating and making claims which challenge School policy.
LSE’s founding mission is to “know the causes of things”: the causes and financial basis of Israel’s ever-intensifying assaults on Gaza, Lebanon, and the West Bank are more clearly documented than ever, to which the LSE_7 and the Assets in Apartheid report rightfully lay claim in the School’s financial ties. Consistency regarding free speech surely means management using its ‘engagement tools’ with students, not leveraging arbitrary suspension and even possible deportation.
If Kramer et al. hope to maintain LSE’s image as the UK’s free-speech haven, they must allow space for protests, especially those which challenge their management’s policies. Until then, the fate of the LSE_7 and other would-be campus protesters at LSE remains – much like the students themselves – suspended.
Letter from Dr Andrew Young, LSE Chief Operating Officer:
Disclaimer this is LSE’s response and not the Beaver’s opinion
Dear Editor,
I was disappointed to read your article on the ongoing investigation into a student protest that took place this past summer. It contains many serious and distressing inaccuracies, which we could have corrected had you followed standard journalistic best practice by asking us for comment about the specific allegations before publication, which you failed to do.
In the interests of accuracy, I am responding to the article in full now.
The article refers to an ongoing investigation, which was begun after we received multiple complaints about alleged misconduct. The investigation is compiling a record drawing on multiple witness statements from people who were present, including the students against whom complaints were made, supplemented by extensive CCTV footage. These were all collected and are being used in compliance with data protection requirements, following policies that ensure that charges of student misconduct are dealt with thoroughly and fairly.
As we have said many times, freedom of speech and expression are of utmost importance to LSE. Our free speech policy is designed to protect and promote peaceful freedom of expression on campus. We will take measures against protestors only if a protest crosses the line into illegality, is threatening or harassing to individuals, or significantly disrupts the community. These principles guided our actions throughout May and June, and we did not initiate disciplinary proceedings in response to weeks of an unauthorised encampment and protests around campus relating to Gaza.
When the line is crossed, however, we have a responsibility to act. Our reasons for taking action in this instance had nothing to do with the content or substance of the protest, but pertain to allegations brought to our attention that, if found to be true, made it one that went beyond the acceptable boundaries of peaceful protest.
In particular, we received multiple complaints from professional services staff who had volunteered their time on a Sunday to register students — who also observed first-hand and heard from students seeking to register — that the protesters physically obstructed their work and efforts; used loud megaphones in an enclosed inside space; shouted in people’s faces; and behaved in a manner that intimidated and frightened people. We could not responsibly ignore these complaints and allegations, which required us to initiate an investigation and disciplinary proceedings, even if some who were present may not have been upset or may have a different perspective.
A certain amount of disruption can be inevitable with peaceful protest, but the tactics alleged to be used in this instance went beyond that, including claims of causing a major disruption of important School business. Summer School Registration had to be closed and moved to another building, and it was only due to the professionalism and quick thinking of Security teams and Summer School staff on the ground — who are as much part of the LSE community as the protesters — that we were able to relocate and support the new Summer School students arriving on campus.
The suggestion that LSE security staff invented witness impact statements is false, offensive and irresponsible, as are suggestions that this investigation is politically motivated or motivated by prejudice. As noted above, there were many instances of peaceful protest this past year that did not result in any such action from LSE, including several since the events at issue here, and we are sure there will be more in the future. We fully support peaceful protest as a legitimate and important part of campus discourse. We do, however, have a duty to ensure that everyone in the LSE community can work and study freely and without fear, as well as to deliver on our responsibility to support teaching and research. This, too, is essential to create an environment in which everyone can exercise their right of free speech within the law.
There are many other inaccuracies in the article. While not comprehensive, I will respond to some of the more serious ones below. As LSE was not given a right of reply on any of these matters before publication, we seek to correct the record now:
- The article says that the seven students were “excluded from full university life, including entrance to campus buildings.” This is inaccurate. An initial preliminary exclusion was made following standard procedures, commonplace in proceedings of this nature, to reduce risk to the LSE community while the investigation is ongoing. It was subject to appeal mechanisms and open to review and modification, as was done here. The students were allowed access to online and in person wellbeing services and, where needed, allowed to access the Library. Further adjustments were made for each of the students based on their requests and as needed.
- The article says LSE reneged on public promises to meet student protesters over a period of six weeks following the eviction from the Marshall Building. This is misleading. Negotiations were suspended in response to specific actions committed during the closing of the encampment—including injuring security personnel and aggressively harassing and seeking to intimidate LSE staff as they arrived at and left a session to negotiate with the students. As we explained in an open communication at the time, we did not regard these behaviours as consistent with negotiating in good faith.
- The article claims that students now risk deportation. This is false. There is no question of these students facing deportation. Again, if we were presented with these accusations, we could have said so.
- The article states that LSE’s Council voted against divestment. This is inaccurate. Council concluded that the School would not divest if the purpose or primary effect is to make a political statement but otherwise left questions about divestment to a review of the School’s Environmental, Social, and Governance policy. This review is just beginning and will take place during this academic year, with many opportunities for everyone in the LSE community to share views.
- The article states that LSE management amplified the witness impact statement that referenced the 7/7 attack. This is false. We shared the witness statements we received with the protesters, as we must for the proceeding to be fair to them. Someone else shared the content of the statement publicly and falsely attributed it to LSE. Sharing confidential statements from an ongoing investigation is itself deeply troubling, as it risks chilling the willingness of witnesses in other and future cases to offer candid statements of their experience. As for the attribution to the School, while we do not generally comment on the specifics of investigations, I can reiterate that LSE itself did not compare the demonstration with the 7/7 London bombings.
In closing, let me say that we want our campus to be a place where debate and discussion thrives. We want to protect and promote the right to peaceful protest, and we want all voices to be heard. For that to be the case for everyone, protests cannot become events that threaten or intimidate others or obstruct others from their own work or study. Whether the allegations that this occurred here are substantiated and amount to breach of a student’s Conditions of Registration and/or other School policies will be determined in, and through, the investigation and disciplinary process. Whatever decision is reached will be based on the evidence available, which is how such matters should and must be decided.
