144: Day 5: The Gaza Student Protest Crackdown

Aaron Walawalkar (Liberty Investigates, shortlisted with Harriet Clugston and in partnership with Sky News, Metro and The Guardian) investigated British universities’ harsh treatment of pro-Palestinian student protests, and how the institutions themselves cooperated with police.

For six days Page 94 is covering the extraordinary stories of the investigative journalists shortlisted for this year’s Paul Foot Award, before the winner’s announcement next week. 

Episode Transcript

Maisie (00:00):
Page 94, the Private Eye Podcast

Andy (00:03):
Hello and welcome to part five of this year's Paul Foot Award miniseries.
Let's find out whotoday's shortlist he is.

Aaron Walawalkar (00:11):
So I'm Aaron Walla Walker.
I'm a reporter at Liberty Investigates.
I worked on this investigationwith my editor Harriet Clarkston,
and in partnership with theMetro Guardian and Sky News.
our investigation revealed what ateaching union described as a worsening
crackdown on Gaza activism at UKuniversities, which included close
collaboration with the police useof private intelligence companies,
and a large number of disciplinaryinvestigations against students and staff.

Andy (00:35):
So how did this story first come to your attention?

Aaron Walawalkar (00:39):
So Liberty investigates our missions to plug
gaps in UK media coverage in an areathat we were looking to pivot into was
threats to the rights of protesters.
in April, may last year, Harriet andI were discussing the kind of shocking
images that were coming out the US of,protestors being tear gassed, academics
being handcuffed and tackled to the groundat the same time that the encampment

(00:59):
movement was spreading to the uk.
Harriet thought that we should be keepingan eye on this, and I suggested that
perhaps we could submit informationrequests to universities for their
correspondence with the police, and alsodig into kind of disciplinaries that might
be happening against students or referralsto the Prevent extremism program.

Andy (01:16):
Okay.
That's a, very clever way of doing itthrough freedom of information requests
for that specific correspondence.
and what did those requests reveal?

Aaron Walawalkar (01:26):
we submitted them to all UK universities and
we hadn't really submitted theserequests to universities before.
A lot of our reporting to datewas focusing primarily on police
forces and the home office.
and we found that they could generallybe quite obstructive with the kind of
information that we were requested.

Andy (01:41):
sorry.
Yeah, go on.

Aaron Walawalkar (01:42):
Yeah, we hope that universities might be a
bit more kind of forthcoming.
but it really varied fromuniversity to university.
and with the first investigation,which we published last summer with
the Metro, The kind of things thatwe found were quite close, cozy.
some would say, conversations betweencampus security teams and the police.
the close monitoring of students', socialmedia, pages, and emails, which kind

(02:05):
of conveyed the tone of seeing studentsas threats rather than, people that
they have a duty to look after, who areultimately paying a large number of fees.

Andy (02:12):
Yeah.

Aaron Walawalkar (02:13):
Yeah.

Andy (02:14):
and when, you say the close, scrutiny and monitoring of these
students, is that being conducted bythe police or by the campus authorities?
who's doing that?

Aaron Walawalkar (02:23):
It's a combination.
for instance, at the University of EastAnglia, an email that we uncovered, showed
the police flagging, the flying of aPalestinian flag in the student union.
which the police said that while notan offense, didn't look well on the
establishment, So that was instance ofthe police flagging it to university.
there are other instances where theuniversity had identified something
on social media and then, flag itto the police for advice such as

(02:45):
at Warwick University, where theywere concerned about, a talk by, a
Palestinian sort of, youth group.
so it's a combination.

Andy (02:52):
So I think one thing we should be clear about as well, 'cause it sounds
like you've done a lot of reporting onthe restriction of liberty to protest.
what, are these protests that,that you've been describing,
what are they consisting of?
Are they, for example, violent protestswhere suddenly people's opinions
of them might change a great deal?

Aaron Walawalkar (03:08):
the protests that we focused on, particularly at sort
of Newcastle University, they weredescribed by witnesses as, especially
at the beginning being nonviolent.
they are disruptive in many instances.
it could be an encampment oran occupation of a building.
Yeah.

Andy (03:21):
Yeah.

Aaron Walawalkar (03:22):
and yeah, the demands of the protestors.
generally they're calling for theiruniversities to be transparent, about what
their kind of investments are with regardsto, involvement in the conflict in Israel
and Gaza, to disclose those investmentsand ultimately stop those investments.

Andy (03:37):
think that's an important point to make.
'cause I think people's viewsof protests really differ
depending on what they consist of.
But I think the, the establishmentof a, right to nonviolent protest or
to find out what your university'sinvested its money in, will strike
many people as quite reasonable.
And the reaction of, securityauthorities at these universities seems.

(03:57):
quite brisk, I would say.
And you covered a really interestingorganization called the Association of
University Chief Security Officers, whichI'd never heard of, and I'm sure a lot
of listeners won't have heard of either.
Can you tell us about them and,their involvement in this story?

Aaron Walawalkar (04:10):
the kind of first phase of our investigation, which
we published with the Metro, anemail that one university released
made us aware of this little knownorganization, which you described.
We've been coming, it s so I'm notsure how best to pronounce the acronym.
Yeah, but it's a kind of professionalbody, for campus security staff.
most of the kind of, campus securityteams from across the UK have signed

(04:31):
up to it, and emails that we uncovered.
Showed this kind of forum where, campussecurity teams were trading updates
on encampments that had popped up ontheir, university kind of campuses.
doing a little bit of digging.
I noticed that the chairman, of theorganization had posted on LinkedIn that
he last summer, went to the US to visithis kind of counterparts, the police
chiefs there, as part of a conference,which I thought was quite curious.

(04:55):
particularly, 'cause theresponse in the US was so

Andy (04:58):
draconian heavy

Aaron Walawalkar (04:59):
Exactly.
Yeah.
So we thought, how could we findout a little bit more about what
these discussions involved and,that informed the next phase of our
investigation where we submit anotherround of FOI requests to universities,
specifically for correspondenceshared with and via this organization,
which, isn't actually subject to FOIitself 'cause it's not public body.

(05:19):
but we try to get around thatby going to the universities.
And then that, uncovered another sortof, email that, the chairman had sent
to everyone, the kind of lessons learnedfrom that conference that he attended.
and that essentially was the, US policechiefs were bemoaning, the reprimanding
that they faced, in response totheir kind of, draconian heavy handed

(05:41):
approach to protests, across the pond.
so that was last August.
And in anticipation of a kind of, anotherwave of, protest activity in the uk, with
the academic term starting, they weretalking of hosting joint workshops with
US counterparts, to prepare for that.
and also promoting the use of, A coupleof private intelligence companies.

(06:01):
One of them is called Dataminr,which has been used, to monitor
George Floyd protestors in the us,and another company known as Horace.

Andy (06:08):
that feels like quite a big step for British universities to be taking in terms
of active monitoring of their students.

Aaron Walawalkar (06:16):
it's a really Concerning development, which I
think many would think would havea chilling effect on individuals
and expressing themselves freely.

Andy (06:23):
there, there have been lots of real world consequences.
There have been lots of disciplinaryprocedures and so on for students as
a result of all this, haven't there?

Aaron Walawalkar (06:32):
Yes.
the data that we uncovered showedthat, between October, 2023 and August,
2024, 28 universities had launcheddisciplinary investigations, against
as many as 113 staff and students.
the data that we've got back, issomewhat incomplete in terms of the
very, the granular detail of that.
lot of universities wouldn'tnecessarily provide, very specific

(06:53):
reasons because they said thatcould identify individuals involved.
but we spoke to individual students and,there's definitely concerns as to whether
these disciplinary investigations, whichcan go on for months are proportionate.
in one instance, a student wassubject to months of investigation
for attending unauthorized proteststhat was at Leeds at Newcastle.
another protestor was disciplinedover a chance, which a senior

(07:15):
member of staff took offense to.
They were ultimately exonerated, butthey were subject to the kind of, yeah,
several months long investigation.

Andy (07:22):
Where do you think the story goes next?
Does it depend what the protestmovement in particular does next?
or is it more about how AOand, et al are gonna respond

Aaron Walawalkar (07:33):
in terms of where the story goes next?
So we're very much stilllooking into this, issue so
I'm not sure how much to say,

Andy (07:39):
No.
Fair enough.
No spoilers.

Aaron Walawalkar (07:41):
but you'll send off a huge number of FOI requests
and receive loads of documentsback, and you might uncover without
expecting to a particular element,which forms a new kind of like lead.
and yeah.
some material that we got back fromthe kind of latest round of fois has
prompted us to dig into another kindof lead a bit more systematically.
And

Andy (08:01):
How Interesting.

Aaron Walawalkar (08:02):
more stories out soon, I'm sure.

Andy (08:03):
Were there, legal challenges along the way?
what did any of the universitiesyou were writing to, did they
prove seriously obstructive?
Did they say this is, noneof your business basically?

Aaron Walawalkar (08:14):
yeah, certain universities being quite obstructive with
releasing information under the FOI act.
and that kind of prompted us to.
do a bit of reflection as well.
I think the universities that we focusedon, particularly in our first story, who
we, I guess we shamed in a way becausethey'd been transparent about the ways
in which they'd restricted protest.
Other universities such as Oxford,for example, which has been regularly

(08:35):
citing the law enforcement exemption toprevent disclosure of any of the kind
of, material that we had requested.

Andy (08:40):
So we should say there are various exemptions to
freedom of information requests.
One is, there one about commerciallysensitive information and there's one
about implications for law enforcement.
If this has effect on policeactivity, then actually they
don't have to tell you anything

Aaron Walawalkar (08:54):
Precisely.
Yeah.
So that's the most common leasesighted sort of exemption.
As well as the healthand safety exemption.
a number of universities have seen fitto disclose a lot of the material that
we asked for, but just redact those likeparticularly sensitive details, which they
can demonstrate will have some sort ofcausal negative impact on law enforcement.
but other universities, where there's beenlike notable, concerning sort of treatment

(09:16):
of protestors, they've just issued blanketrefusals and not released anything.
And, in a way they didn't receivevery much kind of focus in
our initial piece because theydidn't release much information.
we addressed that, with ourpartner Sky News in the sort
of story that we published lastFebruary by producing a table.
They produced a table, where studentsor anyone readers can go in and look up

(09:37):
every university that we ffo wide and seehow they responded, in a way holding to
account those who are less transparent.

Andy (09:44):
because otherwise they just don't appear in the story and then no one knows.
Yeah.
is this part of a broader chillacross, protest in the uk?
'cause there have been lots of legalchanges to the ways in which protesters
can be, arrested or even imprisoned.
things like the just stop oilprotest, that kind of thing.

Aaron Walawalkar (10:01):
Yeah, I think, although we haven't seen, In the
examples that we're looking at onuniversity campuses, use of the,
laws that have been passed under theformer government, and which, yeah.
there are the current governmentis still plowing ahead with,
I'm sure that it's setting the moodmusic to, influencing universities in
their approach towards protesting atleast amongst a number of universities

(10:25):
that featured in our report, rather thanseeing it something that they have a duty
to facilitate, which is part and parcelof young people going to university
and exploring their political viewsand, taking part in protest activity.
perhaps more seeing it as a nuisance,which, they're are more inclined to
have a kind of knee jerk reactionto and try and put a stop to.

Andy (10:41):
it's a terrific story and I'm sure there'll be plenty more
from Liberty investigators on it,so congratulations again, Erin.

Aaron Walawalkar (10:46):
Thank you so much.

Andy (10:47):
Thanks again to Aaron.
A really interesting story there.
We will be back again tomorrow withour final shortlist D. See you then.