Worried about freedom of speech? Then what’s happening at the Open University should terrify you | Owen Jones

Worried about freedom of speech? Then what’s happening at the Open University should terrify you Owen Jones The OU has capitulated to a pro-Israel lobby group about the use of the term ‘ancient Palestine’. The wider context is impossible to ignore T he west is in the midst of the most serious assault on free speech and academic freedom since the heyday of McCarthyism seven decades ago. For years, we were told the danger came from the left: oversensitive students, censorious activists, no-platforming zealots. Yet the most aggressive and successful campaign to police speech in our public institutions is being waged by cheerleaders of a state currently committing genocide. Consider a recent case. Last December, a pro-Israel lobby group, UK Lawyers for Israel , celebrated another apparent victory. It describes its mission as contributing “generally as lawyers to creating a supportive climate of opinion in the United Kingdom towards Israel”. In practice, this has meant lawfare, directed not only at pro-Palestinian activism, but at the public existence of Palestinian identity itself. The offence this time? The Open University’s use of the term “ancient Palestine” to describe the birthplace of the Virgin Mary, which UKLFI argued was “historically inaccurate”. More than that, they argued it risked erasing “Jewish historical identity”, potentially breaching the Equality Act 2010 by creating “a hostile or offensive learning environment for Jewish and Israeli students”. The OU’s Palestine Solidarity Group responded with a freedom of information request to see how their institution had handled the complaint. The reply from the OU was clear. “Ancient Palestine” was “academically appropriate”. The fifth-century BC Greek historian Herodotus used the term Palestine to describe a region broader than that acknowledged by UKLFI. While the lobby group insisted Mary was born in the “predominantly Jewish region” of Galilee, the university noted that there is no academic consensus that Ma...