The Oxford Union debased

 Published in the Jerusalem Report, cover date 6 January 2025

   The Oxford Union is arguably the most prestigious student debating society in the world.  Founded in 1823, it has hosted some of the world’s greatest figures such as US Presidents Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter and Richard Nixon, countless British prime ministers and their Cabinet colleagues, and many of the world’s leading actors, musicians, authors and scientists.  Few are they, even among the most eminent, who refuse an invitation to participate in a debate in the Oxford Union, while to become President of the Union is the highest political achievement open to an Oxford undergraduate.  Most go on to enjoy noteworthy careers in politics and the professions.

            The current President is Ebrahim Osman Mowafy, an Egyptian Arab.  He decided to mount a debate on the evening of November 28 on the contentious proposition: “This House believes Israel is an apartheid state responsible for genocide."  Invited to lead the team opposing the motion was 44-year-old Jonathan Sacerdoti, a British journalist and TV producer, the son of a Holocaust survivor.  Sacerdoti is known as a campaigner against antisemitism. 

            Within minutes of the end of the debate an audio of what had occurred in the chamber when Sacerdoti stood up to speak was posted online.  The impression on the listener was of utter chaos.  Sacerdoti published his own account a few days later.

   “What unfolded on Thursday night,” he wrote, “was not a debate at all. It was an assault on the very principles the Union once claimed to uphold, presided over by organizers who behaved more like a mafia than custodians of an august society dedicated to free speech.”

He describes the motion chosen for debate as “a gross provocation” which in itself caused some people to decline an invitation to speak.  A worse charge was that the evening had been organized in a deceitful and dishonest way.  The chamber had been packed with pro-Palestinian supporters while, writes Sacerdoti, “Jews who might have attended were clearly too afraid to show up.  Many had written to me privately to tell me of their fears.”

Traditionally the President of the Union chairs debates, remaining neutral in order to uphold the perception of impartiality.  They do not normally participate in support of one side.  Exceptions have occurred during the Union’s long history, and the debate of November 28 was one such.  It appears that at some point prior to the debate one of the speakers booked to speak for the motion withdrew – perhaps, Sacerdoti speculates, intimidated by the strength of the team he had managed to assemble.  Mowafy informed Sacerdoti that a student would take his place to support the motion.  Only as the teams were preparing for the debate did he learn, as he puts it, “that Osman Mowafy himself would forgo the traditional impartiality of the chair’s role and speak against us.”

          Sacerdoti describes the audience as a “baying mob, openly hostile and emboldened by the president’s refusal to enforce the most basic rules of decorum.”  One of his team, Yoseph Haddad, an activist pro-Israeli Arab, was ejected from the chamber after dismissing audience members as “terrorist supporters”.

At one point Miko Peled, a relentless anti-Israel activist, described the atrocities of 7 October as acts of “heroism.”

It was this, on top of the clearly disgraceful proceedings generally, that led 300 senior academics to write an open letter to Oxford’s newly elected chancellor, Lord Hague, on December 4 condemning the “inflammatory rhetoric, aggressive behavior and intimidation” witnessed during the event.  Referring to Peled’s “heroism” comment, the signatories said: “We unequivocally condemn the incendiary remarks made by some speakers in support of Hamas and terrorist violence. Such statements are not only morally reprehensible but also in clear violation of the law.”

They should have been pushing at an open door.  There has recently been a series of attempts by Oxford students to bar figures with right-wing and gender-critical views from speaking.  Hague was elected Oxford University’s new chancellor on November 27.  Within a day he declared that he would end so-called “no-platforming.”

In a radio interview he was asked how he would deal with concerns about a “tendency among students not to accept points of view with which they disagree.”  He said: “Cancellation culture towards speakers that we disagree with is absolutely wrong.  I would encourage the Government to bring forward into law the Act that was passed under the previous government reinforcing freedom of speech in higher education, or if they think it is deficient, to come up with proposals of their own.”

   What, if anything, he proposes to do about the Oxford Union debate, which occurred after he had won the election for the Chancellorship, remains to be seen.  As for the debate itself, it is likely to be counted among the more notorious episodes in the records of the Oxford Union – not quite on a par, perhaps, with the debate held on February 9, 1933 on the motion “That this House will in no circumstances fight for its King and Country.” That debate, which was won by 428 against 275, polarized opinion across the country.  Next day the Daily Telegraph ran an article headlined "Disloyalty At Oxford.”  The debased debate on November 28, 2024 attracted, from the audience present in the chamber, 278 ayes as against 59 noes.  Sacerdoti described the evening as “the fall of the Oxford Union.”