Palestine – Loughborough UCU

10th January 202510th January 2025

Leicester & District Trades Union Council Events

Your Rights, The Law, and Empowerment Event

Unite Community Leicester has organised an event “Your Rights, The Law, and Empowerment” on Sunday 19^th January 2025 from 11am – 4pm. Everyone is welcome to join them at: Secular Hall, 75 Humberstone Gate, Leicester (LE1 1WB).

Lawyers will give three presentations to update you on laws around protest and strike action, with each focusing on one of the following topics: “Unions”, “Palestine” and “Climate & Ecological Emergency”. The event is supported by Leicester & District Trades Union Council (L&DTUC). For more information, please see this flyer.

Organising the next Workers Memorial Day

The Health, Safety and Welfare (HSW) subcommittee of Leicester & District Trades Union Council (L&DTUC) will meet to start organising the next Workers Memorial Day event. The meeting will be on Tuesday 21^st January 2025 starting at 6pm and, it’s hoped, will not last much more than an hour. All trade unionists are welcome. You do not need to be a trades council delegate to get involved. The organising meeting will be held on Zoom. If you’re interested in contributing, please use this link to join the meeting.

8th January 2025

Week of Action on Palestinian Right to Education

In response to Birzeit University’s call for academics, activists, unions and solidarity groups to participate in the “Right to Education” Week of Action (November 23-30). Loughborough UCU (LUCU) organised an awareness-raising event amplifying the theme of “United Against Scholasticide”, highlighting Israel’s systematic destruction of Gaza’s higher education infrastructure and community.

On November 28^th, colleagues and doctoral researcher members of LUCU based on the London campus hosted a stall from 10AM-4PM. Printed resources from Scholars Against the War on Palestine (SWAP), including its useful toolkit, were made available, alongside flyers from other solidarity organisations. These set out the definition of scholasticide and the devastating statistics regarding affected educational institutions, educators and students. LUCU’s new Palestinian Solidarity Working Group, formed in response to a successful member-raised motion to support Loughborough Action for Palestine Coalition, also created and distributed a leaflet in printed and digital versions, highlighting British universities’ potential complicity in the genocide through collaborative research and development partnerships with organisations enabling Israel’s occupation, colonialism and apartheid.

At the time of writing (2/12/2024), SWAP’s tracker for scholasticide notes the following:

All 11 Gazan universities have been bombed
5,213 students have been murdered
90,000 university students cannot attend university
8,691 students have been injured.
370 schools have been damaged or destroyed, leaving more than 620,000 students out of schools
At least 239 educators have been killed
60% of bookshops and libraries have been destroyed

The stall and stallholders were met with an overall curious and positive reception from both staff and students. On the same day, Loughborough Action for Palestine Coalition endorsed and attended a rally hosted by other university coalitions and solidarity groups to protest the University of London’s injunction to criminalise protests in support of the Boycott Divest and Sanctions movement on campus.

Dr Angela Martinez Dy, LUCU Equality Officer, commented: “The ongoing destruction by Israel’s military of Palestinian knowledge, evident in the targeting of educators and students in the ongoing war, is a concern for academia globally. It’s great to see LUCU members responding to Palestinian scholars’ leadership, drawing attention and raising awareness about scholasticide amongst the Loughborough Uni community, and encouraging people to take action.”

Please consider signing the petition here, and contact LUCU Equality Officer Angela Martinez Dy to join the working group and progress future actions.

Thanks go to Iman Khan and the LUCU Palestinian Solidarity Working Group for writing this update.

23rd October 202423rd October 2024

Loughborough UCU Statement of Solidarity with Coalition of Loughborough Action for Palestine

In Oct 2024, Loughborough University UCU (LUCU) passed a motion in defence of students and staff speaking out in support of Palestine. We write this as a statement of solidarity with those in the University community who are speaking out, especially the Coalition of Loughborough Action for Palestine, an interdisciplinary student coalition made up of UG, PG, and PGR students across disciplines and both Loughborough campuses, with widespread staff support and links to national higher education activist organisations.

The war in Gaza, and continued violence in the West Bank has seen the physical destruction of every Gazan university, damage or destruction of around 90% of school buildings, arbitrary military detention and silencing of Palestinian academics, and the killing and wounding of academics, teachers and students. This is educide, the deliberate destruction of educational infrastructure, and epistemicide, the destruction of knowledge. As a higher education union, we condemn this. Loughborough University should as well.

Moreover, we stand for the protection of academic freedom and freedom of speech. Universities are legally bound to promote freedom of speech under their obligations through the Office for Students, even at the risk of causing offence. We believe it is important that both Loughborough University (LU) and Loughborough Students Union (LSU) allow student and staff protests and recognise the legitimate fears many have about revealing their identity, especially if they are not UK citizens. We also request that the University and LSU continue to facilitate ongoing discussions on the war, violence and occupation, as LUCU commits to doing as part of the motion passed. We are deeply concerned by multiple accounts of suppression by LU and LSU of pro-Palestinian sentiment, which we are prepared to discuss in more detail at a meeting, and we wish to have these investigated and addressed if substantiated.

Similarly, students should not be hindered in their right to boycott third parties, for example by being required, as part of their studies, to attend career fairs that include representatives from companies to which they object on political grounds.

Since the Coalition is made up of members of the University community, we believe it should be considered a legitimate channel for student and staff concerns. To that end, we request that key members of the University Executive Board meet and engage with representatives of the Coalition, and LUCU are prepared to attend and support such engagement.