“What unfolded...,” 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 described 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, Sacerdoti added, “Jews who might have attended were clearly too afraid to show up. Many had written to me privately to tell me of their fears.”
Sacerdoti described 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, called the atrocities of October 7 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 responded: “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.” ■
