UCL move defended
THE HEAD of University College London has defended the decision to restrict admission to a campus talk by a gay former Israeli soldier.
Michael Arthur, provost of the university, said security had been the primary factor in limiting entry to Hen Mazzig’s lecture to UCL staff and students.
A previous event featuring Mr Mazzig in 2016 had been halted by anti-Israel protestors with police having to escort the speaker and his audience to safety.
Dr Arthur said: “We wanted to be as precise as possible about security and preventing further disruption — and the advice I received was therefore to limit it to UCL staff and students only, where we clearly have a much better handle on who’s coming.”
The entry restriction had been criticised by Jewish students at other universities who had attended Mr Mazzig’s abandoned talk in October 2016, but were not able to see him return to UCL.
Dr Arthur said the decision to invite Mr Mazzig back was part of the process of reaching out to the Jewish community.
“We felt it was the right thing to do. I think we were disturbed that Hen couldn’t speak freely last time because of the disruption, and that therefore we hadn’t really fulfilled our responsibility with regards to freedom of speech.”
Ahead of the talk last Thursday, Mr Mazzig told the JC: “Everyone was asking me — are you afraid, are you stressed? You should be stressed! Until today I wasn’t really stressed.”
There was no repeat of the violent scenes of two years ago as around 70 pro-Palestinian activists and 20 counter-demonstrators conducted a peaceful protest outside the venue, watched by 20 police officers and security staff.