Newsletter 13/02/26
Happy Friday dear friends and colleagues!
This is a very special newsletter. After two years of organising, research, advocacy, and sustained pressure inside our University, we are finally able to share material progress.
Today, we celebrate three major developments:
1. The publishing of the PSN Report
2. The University’s adoption of the JDA definition of antisemitism
3. The University’s adoption of a definition for Islamophobia
We also want to acknowledge that this news lands while the genocide in Palestine continues, and while people across the world are experiencing immense grief, anger, and loss. None of that disappears. But moments of progress matter because they remind us that institutions can be moved — and that collective action delivers results.
🇵🇸 OUR REPORT IS OUT TODAY (yay!) 🇵🇸
This has been a monumental effort, bringing together nearly two years of meetings, research, FOI work, and engagement with students, academic staff, and professional services across the University.
Thank you for bearing with us in recent months. Your ideas, expertise, and persistence shaped this document at every stage. This is a huge collective achievement we are so proud of!
👉 We are attaching a short executive summary to make it easier to read, share, and bring into conversations.
👉 The full report can be accessed and downloaded here.
👉 We need you: join the dedicated WhatsApp group for dissemination and impact here.
The report is strategic, rigorous, and powerful. It clearly sets out the contradictions between the University’s public commitments and its current practices, and it provides practical recommendations for positive change.
It may not read exactly like the document we would have written in other circumstances. Appeals to morality alone have rarely moved the institution, and at times have not even received a response. So we chose to write in a language universities recognise: governance, risk, reputation, credibility, finance, legality.
And that approach gets attention.
We have no doubt that the knowledge this report was coming contributed to the swift movement on definitions this week (more on this below!) — demands that have been on our list for two years.
🇵🇸 Muslim and Arab members of our community will be better protected through the adoption of a working definition of Islamophobia 🇵🇸
Until now, our University had none. The framework will evolve and should reflect lived experience, so if this matters to you, please take part in shaping it and help ensure that islamophobia and anti-Palestinian racism have no space on our campus.
The working definition: “A fear, prejudice, hostility or hatred of Muslims or non-Muslim individuals that transcends into religious or racial discrimination or intolerance, by excluding or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, of equal human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural, educational or any other areas of public life, both in the online and offline world”.
🇵🇸 We will be protected by the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism (JDA) 🇵🇸
This is a major step toward ensuring that criticism of Israel and advocacy for Palestinian rights cannot be misrepresented or used to silence lawful speech.
IHRA has not been removed. The University is presenting the JDA as a tool to interpret it. We will continue to push. We have made our position very clear in meetings with leadership: IHRA has to go.
Read the SUSSED announcement here.
🇵🇸 What happens next 🇵🇸
In the coming weeks we will circulate a dissemination pack with materials to help you bring the report into your departments, classrooms, student societies, committees, networks, social media etc.
But we do not need to wait.
Start now. Read it. Equip yourself with the evidence. Talk to colleagues. Share it widely. And PLEASE GET INVOLVED IN OUR IMPACT STRATEGY. We have strong plans and real momentum, but we simply need more hand on deck! Join the dedicated WhatsApp group here.
We have already seen that organised, sustained pressure delivers tangible wins for everyone. The adoption of the JDA and the recognition of Islamophobia did not happen by accident — they happened because people worked together and refused to let these issues drop.
If we want deeper change, stronger protections, and real accountability for the University’s complicit partnerships, this report must travel far and wide.
Palestine Solidarity Network 
