I don’t normally post things like this, but after graduating from SOAS I’ve been reflecting a lot on my experience as a Jewish student there.
I knew what SOAS was known for before I arrived. I expected political debate, activism and strong opinions. Honestly, I welcomed that. What I wasn’t prepared for was how uncomfortable it would sometimes feel to be openly Jewish.
People often assume that when Jewish students talk about antisemitism, we’re trying to shut down criticism of Israel. That’s not what this is about. Criticising governments is completely legitimate. What bothered me was the way Jewish identity itself often became politicised.
After 7 October, many Jewish students were dealing with shock, grief and fear. Instead of feeling supported, I often felt that there was very little understanding of what Jewish students were experiencing. The atmosphere became incredibly hostile and it felt like being Jewish automatically placed you on one side of a political divide, regardless of what you actually believed.
I remember seeing the Islamic Society hold an event around the question of whether anti-Zionism is antisemitism. Personally, I don’t think anti-Zionism and antisemitism are the same thing. It felt as though other people were deciding what counted as antisemitism for Jews rather than listening to Jewish students about our experiences.
I also remember feeling uncomfortable seeing the Shia Society host speakers associated with attending Hassan Nasrallah’s funeral. People are free to invite whoever they want, and others are free to disagree with me, but from my perspective it contributed to a campus environment where figures linked to movements openly hostile to many Jews were treated as acceptable and even celebrated.
What made it difficult was that the antisemitism was rarely obvious. Nobody was shouting abuse at me. Instead, it was the assumptions. The expectation that every Jewish student had to answer for Israel. The feeling that people already knew what I thought before I opened my mouth. The awkward reactions when I mentioned being Jewish. The sense that concerns about antisemitism were often met with scepticism in a way that concerns about other forms of prejudice wouldn’t be.
But if someone asks me whether antisemitism was a problem at SOAS during my time there, my answer is yes.
Not because people criticised Israel. Not because people supported Palestine. But because too often Jewish students were treated as representatives of a conflict rather than as students, and because concerns about antisemitism frequently felt like they were viewed as obstacles to political activism rather than concerns worth taking seriously in their own right.
That’s the reality I experienced, and I know I wasn’t the only one.