In the latest sign that the new Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act is beginning to impact university life, an event at the London School of Economics discussing sexual violence committed by Hamas during the October 7 attacks went ahead despite attempts by staff and students to have it cancelled for allegedly “trad[ing] in longstanding racist beliefs about Palestinian and Arab men”.
The event, “A Quest for Justice: October 7 and Beyond”, took place on October 16 under heavy security as pro-Palestinian protesters chanted outside, the venue having been leaked by an LSE staff member.
Inside, Professor Ruth Halperin-Kaddari of Bar-Ilan University spoke about the weaponisation of sexual violence in armed conflict and the importance of credible documentation when such crimes are denied or politicised. Professor Halperin-Kaddari co-founded the Dinah Project, established by academics and legal experts to document the atrocities committed on October 7 and pursue justice for victims of conflict-related sexual violence globally.
The project’s conclusions mirror findings from two United Nations investigations. A 2024 mission led by Pramila Patten, the UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict, found “reasonable grounds to believe” that rape and other sexual assaults occurred during the Hamas attacks and documented “a pattern of victims, mostly women, found fully or partially naked from the waist down, with their hands tied behind their backs and/or to structures such as trees and poles, and shot”. The same report noted that “at the Nova music festival and its surroundings, there are reasonable grounds to believe that multiple incidents of sexual violence took place and that victims were subjected to rape and/or gang rape and then killed”.
A later UN Human Rights Council inquiry confirmed that sexual violence occurred in six locations and formed part of a consistent pattern, concluding that Hamas fighters “targeted women, including by wilful killings, abductions, and physical, mental and sexual abuse”.
That evidence makes the reaction from some within LSE all the more extraordinary. Perhaps most strikingly, one of the groups calling for the event’s cancellation was a feminist society at the university. In an open letter titled “Open letter for LSE management to cancel the egregious Dinah event”, signatories denounced the Dinah Project as a “Zionist ‘Dinah Project’ report” conducted by “Zionist institutions” and declared that “LSE management” should not be “imposing this Zionist propagandist event on our community”.
According to the letter, the “claims made by the Dinah Project trade in longstanding racist beliefs about Palestinian and Arab men, casting them as inherently prone to violence”. The report, it said, “lacks academic rigor,” makes “unsubstantiated claims”, “presents several flawed assertions”, and “instrumentalis[es] sexual violence to manufacture consent for the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza”. It also cited “the Gender department, the Centre for Women, Peace and Security” and “other scholars of sexual and gender-based violence at LSE” as having “refused to be involved”. The groups calling for the cancellation further claimed that allowing the meeting to go ahead “undermines academic freedom”.
A source who attended the event and was aware of how difficult it had been to arrange told CAF that organisers had sought to invite Professor Halperin-Kaddari because of the report’s significance and her international standing, but had encountered resistance at every stage. Although LSE management was willing to contribute funding, the event required a departmental host – and no department agreed to take it on. It was eventually arranged under the auspices of the Centre for Women, Peace and Security, which is not technically a department. The centre’s head agreed to chair, though the unit itself had no formal involvement.
The event ultimately went ahead under heavy security, with the location shared only at the last minute with registered attendees. After someone inside the centre leaked the venue, protesters organised a demonstration. As a result, several Jewish students who had planned to attend in person said they opted to watch online, too anxious to be there physically.
Despite the protests, the fact that the event went ahead – with LSE footing the bill for security – suggests that the university is taking its new obligations under the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act seriously. The legislation, which came into force on August 1, places a positive duty on all universities in England to ensure that lawful events proceed. Guidance from the Office for Students (OfS) is clear: universities may not deny premises to a speaker because of their ideas or opinions, nor cancel an event in response to objections, however widespread.
A key legislative safeguard addresses what was once the most common form of ‘soft cancellation’: using security costs to price unpopular events off campus. Before the reform, universities often invoked such costs to avoid controversy. In 2023, Bristol University’s feminist society was told to pay for security at a women’s-rights panel and the event nearly collapsed. The same university charged its Jewish Society £500 for security at a talk by Mark Regev, then Israel’s ambassador, while charging nothing for a similar event by his Palestinian counterpart. At Lancaster, the Jewish Society was asked to pay £1,500 to host Mr Regev and, unable to find the money, had to cancel.
Under Section 1 of the Act, universities must ensure that, except in rare “exceptional circumstances”, the use of premises is not conditional on organisers paying for security. They are also required to update their free-speech codes of practice to include clear, objective and neutral criteria for when such costs may be charged. Those criteria must not depend on a speaker’s views, and must be framed “in such a way that ‘exceptional’ circumstances only arise very rarely”.
LSE’s Code of Practice on Free Speech, updated in July 2025, reflects those principles. It establishes a “strong presumption in favour of free speech” (s 3.1), prohibits denial of premises on the basis of belief (s 3.6), and limits security charges to truly exceptional cases, with the School expected to help from central funds if organisers cannot pay (s 4.6).
That the Dinah Project event went ahead suggests the new legal framework is already working. Staff and students remain free to protest against events they oppose – but turning those protests into a heckler’s veto will now prove more difficult. Universities can no longer pass the buck, outsourcing their statutory responsibilities to hard-pressed, resource-poor staff and student committees to ensure that controversial events collapse under their own logistical weight, without having to explain themselves to the OfS, a regulator now in possession of genuine enforcement powers.
This article forms part of the Committee for Academic Freedom’s monitoring of developments in UK higher education. To receive monthly updates and analysis on cases affecting academic freedom, click the link and subscribe to our newsletter.