The LSE has stained its own reputation with its conduct over pro-Palestine protesters

The following article is a comment piece from students at the LSE Liberated Zone

On 17 June 2024, after serving student protesters with an Interim Possession Order (IPO) during the festival of Eid al-Adha, LSE evicted students and staff from the Bloom Building.

The following day, the LSE administration unilaterally broke off negotiations with student protesters concerning their demands, reneging on previous public commitments in which they had promised six weeks of negotiation between students and administrators, regardless of the status of the encampment:

A pattern of bad faith and bad behaviour from LSE

The behaviour of LSE administration since the beginning of the Bloom Building occupation on 14 May demonstrates a pattern of bad faith and refusal to engage with students’ demands, particularly for divestment from crimes against the Palestinian people and disaffiliation from institutions complicit in violations of international law.

Students and staff have refused to accept business as usual in an institution materially complicit in genocide. Yet instead of faithfully engaging with this position, LSE administrators have attempted to end the student occupation through an escalation of measures that leveraged their extensive resources.

The school has made history here, as the first of the UK universities to evict a pro-Palestine student encampment.

This stain on their reputation draws into question claims of academic excellence and diverse critical thought. Crucial to the continued prestige of the institution is the consideration that this young generation is paying attention to the news and paying attention to systems of power, therefore will be deterred from attending a university in which their right to free speech is repressed.

Opposition from the school came in various forms:

Spurious claims, violent actions

Firstly, through spurious claims of a commitment to fire safety and student wellbeing (belied by their refusal to allow the Fire Brigades Union into the building).

Secondly, through legal means which both threatened to criminalise students and infringed upon their human rights to freedom of association and assembly.

Finally, through a refusal to engage seriously with safety concerns, culminating in outright violence as security shoved and pushed windows onto students’ hands in the course of decampment.

After this repeated pattern of bad faith tactics, the LSE administration then had the audacity to renege on promises they made to the student community regarding the continuity of negotiations regardless of the status of the occupation.

The actions of LSE administrators mark a serious breach of trust between the leadership of the institution and the rest of the school community, as well as a profound disregard for the democratic mandate behind the movement for divestment – as per a Student Union referendum, a record-breaking 89% of students voted in support of divestment:

A legal precedent

LSE’s decision to evict student protesters following a County Court ruling in favour of their application for an IPO also marks a dangerous precedent in which administrators have chosen to prioritise proprietary rights over the human rights to freedom of expression and assembly, as outlined in Articles 10 and 11 of the Human Rights Act of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).

The court ruling means that it is a criminal offence if members of the encampment return to the Bloom Building as protesters in the next 12 months. However, given that the court order applies to ‘persons unknown,’ even students and staff who were not part of the encampment – and indeed future students joining LSE in the new academic year – are at risk of being prosecuted for exercising their rights to expression and assembly.

Such a precedent undermines the entire LSE community’s right to protest, and will also have a chilling effect on the exercise of free speech in the university, belying LSE’s core values as an institution committed to dialogue and the exchange of ideas.

The LSE administration’s failure to uphold its duty of care is shaped by a pattern of institutional Islamophobia, exemplified by the fact that LSE administrators chose to evict students and staff during Eid al-Adha, one of the holiest festivals of the Muslim calendar, while knowing that a significant contingent of student occupiers are Muslim:

Ignoring students’ concerns

Throughout the occupation, LSE administration refused to acknowledge students’ repeated requests to take health and safety and surveillance concerns seriously. Specifically, the administration ignored our emails regarding the discrimination faced by Muslim students for 14 days and only responded after we repeatedly demanded a response.

Reported incidents included security staff forcing Muslim women entering the encampment to unveil, interrupting Muslims in prayer, and in one case a male member of security barged into the women’s restroom in the early morning and harassed an unveiled Muslim woman camping in the building.

The response of security on 17 June, guided by administrators’ mandates and the encouragement of senior security staff, is a continuation of the universities’ failure to uphold their duty of care to students and staff. This is especially concerning within the context of an established pattern of inaction on alleged sexual assault from those in positions of power at the LSE:

LSE has trashed its reputation

Ultimately, LSE’s actions demonstrate a callous refusal to engage with students’ ethical concerns regarding £89m the school has invested in crimes against the Palestinian people, fossil fuels, arms, and financing for these egregious activities, as per the student and staff-authored report Assets in Apartheid.

These actions also belong in a continuum of violence that finds its most extreme expression in the genocidal brutality exercised by the Zionist regime against the Palestinian people – a genocide that includes the forced displacement of Palestinians from their homes, the repressive curtailment of rights to protest and assembly, and the attempts destroy of all forms of Palestinian life.

Featured image and additional images via LSE Liberated Zone