What happened to regulation on antisemitism?

Back in February when Robert Halfon was the higher education minister, he proposed plans to introduce an antisemitism “quality seal” to ensure safety for Jewish students and staff on campuses in response to the increase in antisemitic incidents reported by the Community Security Trust (CST).

It would have required universities to make clear what they are doing to prevent incidents of antisemitism, the training they are doing to prevent antisemitic behaviour, how they are working with Jewish students, and ensuring effective complaints procedures are in place should students need them.

But then everything went quiet amid a legal challenge over its centering of the IHRA definition – and seems unlikely to be implemented in Halfon’s intended form.

We might have expected its proposed material to be fully incorporated into OfS’ Harassment and Sexual Misconduct duty – but that barely mentioned antisemitism.

According to the Community Security Trust’s (CST) most recent report there has been the highest number of antisemitic incidents in the first half of 2024 than in any previous year of the organisation’s operation.

CST recorded 1,618 incidents in the category of abusive behaviour in the first half of this year, more than in the first six months of any other year and an increase of 104 per cent from the incidents reported over the same period in 2023.

Of the rise, a significant number of anti-Jewish hate incidents occurred in higher education settings where the victims or offenders were students or academics, or involved in student unions, societies or other representative bodies. Of the 96 incidents, half were on campus or university property and another half were online. It is a sharp increase of 465 per cent from the same period in 2023.

Disproportionately compared to the details of incidents that occurred in non-higher education settings, an overwhelming majority of incidents related to Israel, Palestine and the Middle East (73 per cent compared to 52 per cent).

CST notes there is not a single reason for this disparity but postulates that because of the close-knit nature of university communities, “where discourse concerning politics, identity and contemporary affairs are encouraged and facilitated by the university structure itself” as well the “longstanding tradition of student anti-Israel activism” may contribute, according to the CST, to an environment where responses to these topics may manifest in an antisemitic way.

The OfS duty in England requires providers to take action to make a “significant and credible difference” to protecting students from harassment.

But there was an absence of information on what the regulator expects on other forms of harassment beyond sexual misconduct, or how it perceives these interacting with free speech duties.

The one mention of antisemitism was light on specifics and did not discuss the way any definition could be contested in practice. It mentions that the CST’s definition of an antisemitic incident uses a narrower definition than that of the law used by the criminal justice system, and merely notes that the CST recommends the use of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism as a guide to identifying different types of antisemitic language that could be used.

That is less than helpful for institutions (and or their SUs) with the IHRA definition of antisemitism in place that have been told that its usage, or at least many interpretations of it, could be contested.

Given both CST’s figures and wider concerns about race this past week, this is no moment for universities to be “muddling through” – DfE and OfS (along with EHRC) should put heads together to enable compliance in this space rather than just bury it in footnotes.