Thrilled that today final approval was granted for the Students’ Association to adopt the @TheIHRA working definition of antisemitism. Grateful to @EdinburghJSoc for working with me this year to improve support for Jewish students at @EdinburghUni.

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In the past few years, Jewish communities across the UK have felt increasingly unsafe, and this has been especially true on university campuses. I hope that adopting the IHRA will be reassuring for our Jewish students.

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I also hope it will help set a precedent for the University to formally adopt the IHRA, as many other HE institutions have already begun to do. @UJS_UK and @CST_UK have been a great support in starting these negotiations already.

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By adopting IHRA, the SA will be embedding it into policies concerning staff and student conduct (Safe Space, Dignity & Respect at Work, Staff Disciplinary) so that if antisemitism is ever alleged, the IHRA is deferred to as official guidance for interpreting the incident.

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I wanted to do this thread because I think it’s useful to publicise changes like this, background to them and what implementation actually looks like. But for me this is also a huge win for the last 10 days of my term! I hope it never has to be used, but am glad it’s there.

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