NUS leader defends student who called Jewish academic a racist

‘The suggestion that David Hirsh is in any way racist or a white supremacist is both absurd and disgusting’

THE National Union of Students (NUS) is embroiled in a fresh anti-Semitism row after its president defended a university student who called a Jewish academic a “far-Right white supremacist”.

The Government last week cut all ties with the NUS, meaning it lost future funding and its seat at Whitehall tables, as the universities minister said it had “anti-Semitic rot at its heart”.

Just days later, Larissa Kennedy, the NUS president, publicly leapt to the defence of a Goldsmiths Students’ Union president after she was referred for investigation by her university over alleged anti-Semitism.

Goldsmiths, University of London, last week asked the students’ union – a separate body – to launch an investigation into comments on Twitter by Sara Bafo, its outgoing president.

Ms Bafo had taken aim at David Hirsh, a Jewish senior sociology lecturer at Goldsmiths, because she disagreed with his tweet that claimed “there is an anti-Semitic edge to official, institutional, university campaigns to ‘decolonise’ education”.

Mr Hirsh said the “absolute ideology” of decolonising ignores other issues such as “de-Nazification and de-Stalinisation”. In response, Ms Bafo sparked a backlash from the Jewish community by tweeting: “D*vid H*rsh is a far-Right white supremacist. All you have to do is read his work and tweets and that’s all the confirmation needed.”

But when she revealed last week that she had been referred for investigation by university chiefs, the NUS president leapt to her defence. Ms Kennedy, rather than condemning anti-Semitism, tweeted that it was a “disgusting move from [Goldsmiths]”, adding: “Masses of solidarity to Sara Bafo and every activist facing these threats in our movement.”

The NUS chief claimed “black and brown” student activists were facing “concerted suppression” from the Government and universities and warned: “Let this be a message to every university and to government: the student movement will not be silenced.”

The intervention, coming days after the NUS was abandoned by the Government, has sparked fury from the Jewish community who have already expressed concern about allegedly anti-Semitic posts endorsed by the new NUS president taking up post in July.

Dave Rich, from the Community Security Trust, said: “David Hirsh is a world expert on anti-Semitism and there are very few people [who] have worked as hard as he has to tackle antiSemitism on the Left and in academia.

“The suggestion that he is in any way racist or a white supremacist is both absurd and disgusting. The fact that his own institution is failing to defend him against this spurious attack says everything about the state of anti-Semitism on our campuses.”

The NUS and Goldsmiths Students’ Union were approached for comment.