The Open University is facing calls to retract commitments it made to UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI) following a complaint about the use of the term “ancient Palestine” in a first-year humanities module. An open letter signed by 350 academics – including CAF Director Dr Edward Skidelsky – demands an “urgent public retraction” of the undertakings, arguing that the decision to stop using the term in future teaching materials and to add contextual caveats to existing content raises questions about how universities should respond to third-party complaints under the UK’s new statutory free speech duties.
According to UKLFI, which published an account of the exchange on its website, the University set out its position in a letter dated 18 December. Responding on behalf of the University, Adrienne Scullion, Head of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, said the term “Palestine” had been adopted from existing scholarship and was not intended as a political statement, but confirmed that the University “will not use the term again in future learning materials”. She added that the University accepted UKLFI’s concerns about the term’s contemporary impact, and said existing materials would be “contextualised and caveated” with an explanation to students about the contested nature and history of the term, which the University described as now “problematic in a way that, perhaps, it was not when the materials were written in 2018”. A Freedom of Information request cited by the open letter’s signatories states that the undertakings set out on UKLFI’s website reflect the commitments made by the University.
The dispute arose in relation to the University’s entry-level humanities module A111: Discovering the Arts and Humanities, which includes teaching materials about the Virgin Mary. Course materials referred to Mary as having been born in “ancient Palestine”, described Aramaic as “a language widely spoken in ancient Palestine”, and included a map labelled “Map of ancient Palestine”. In a letter dated 30 November 2025 to the Vice-Chancellor, UKLFI argued that the terminology was historically inaccurate, noting that Mary is widely believed to have been born in Galilee in the late first century BCE, when the region was under Roman rule, and that the province was not renamed “Syria Palaestina” until around 135 CE, more than a century later, following the Bar Kokhba revolt.
The letter also raised concerns that such terminology could create a “hostile or offensive learning environment” for Jewish or Israeli students and “potentially” engage the University’s duties under the Equality Act 2010. It’s not immediately clear how, on UKLFI’s account, that risk would arise, since the Act’s definition of harassment requires not only a complainant’s perception but also an assessment of whether it was reasonable, in the circumstances, for the use of the term in teaching materials to have that effect.
The open letter calls on the University to “fully, publicly and urgently retract all commitments made to UKLFI”, arguing that the undertakings risk inconsistency with the University’s duties under the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023. The main duties of the Act on registered providers commenced on 1 August 2025, and require universities to take “reasonably practicable steps” to secure freedom of speech within the law and to protect academic staff’s freedom within the law to teach and research. In support of its position, the letter cites the Office for Students’ regulatory guidance on how the statutory duties should be understood in practice, which states that “[a]cademic staff should not be constrained or pressured in their teaching to endorse or reject particular value judgements”. The signatories add: “Proscription of an academically recognised term (“ancient Palestine”) as a result of external pressure not only constitutes downright censorship but could have a chilling effect on lawful speech and academic freedom.”
The same OfS guidance explains that the “reasonably practicable steps” requirement includes both a positive duty to take steps and a negative duty to refrain from taking steps that would restrict lawful speech, adding that, “in many circumstances the negative duty is likely to have greater positive impact on freedom of speech than the positive duty,” including where “if a measure affects lawful speech, it may be a reasonably practicable step not to take that measure at all”. In the present dispute, that framework potentially cuts both ways: while the Act does not prescribe how a university must respond to a complaint about teaching materials, it does contemplate circumstances in which refraining from introducing restrictions – such as discontinuing a term or imposing required caveats – may itself be a “reasonably practicable step”.
No further public statement has been issued by the University beyond the correspondence described by UKLFI. The open letter says that “repeated appeals from concerned members of staff for a public statement” have gone unanswered, adding that the University’s “continued public silence” has allowed “disinformation” about the episode to circulate in national and international media.
More broadly, the episode is symptomatic of the growing scrutiny faced by universities over contested language in teaching materials, and the practical question of how they will apply the UK’s new statutory free speech duties when complaints from third parties are framed in legal terms. It also raises a recurring issue in an increasingly managerialised sector about whether decisions concerning the curriculum should be treated as matters for institutional determination, or as questions that bear directly on the freedom of individual academics, exercising professional judgement, to present contested historical and political terminology in the classroom.
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.