UK universities coordinated to suppress pro-Palestine activism, Amnesty says

LONDON — British universities worked together to suppress pro-Palestine activism on student campuses, according to a report published by Amnesty International on Tuesday, 20 October 2026. The report is titled Silencing Dissent.

According to the report, which is cited by Middle East Eye, the findings are based on Freedom of Information (FOI) disclosures. The disclosures found that universities "were not acting in isolation when responding to Palestine solidarity protest, but are operating within a network which encouraged repressive responses," the report said.

The FOI messages showed university administrators discussing disciplinary measures. These included injunctions to stop protests and referrals of student protesters to the UK's Prevent counterterrorism programme. Emails released from the University of Northampton showed senior staff sharing tactics for containing protests. One administrator asked peers whether other institutions were "locking in" their student protesters, according to the report.

The report says the Universities UK (UUK) network, which represents 142 British universities, played a central role. UUK hosted weekly calls with vice-chancellors whose campuses faced pro-Palestine encampments. The report describes these calls as a "standard forum to share practices and align approaches".

The report also links these efforts to government. FOI disclosures from the University of Kent indicated that UUK worked closely with government departments and senior ministers. According to the report, UUK organised meetings between vice-chancellors and Downing Street and passed on government expectations to member institutions. As protests intensified, UUK also worked with the Department for Education and the Office for Students (OfS), advising universities on reputational risk, protest management and civil injunctions.

University security officers coordinated their responses through the Association of University Chief Security Officers (Aucso), the report found. Before national mobilisations, the Aucso South West chair circulated strategic briefings. The report says these advised universities to consult data protection officers and to apply FOI exemptions to shield internal security communications. Aucso also provided centrally drafted press templates for local use, the report said.

The report notes that at least nine universities received threat briefings from private intelligence firms. These included Horus Security Consultancy Ltd, Mitie Intelligence Hub and the risk specialist Global Situational Awareness (GSA). According to the report, intelligence updates often classed non-violent student actions as severe threats. In May 2025, student-led weeks of action were given a "high threat level" by the Global Security Operations Centre (GSOC), the report said.

The briefings also flagged peaceful slogans, including "From the river to the sea," as "escalatory rhetoric." They advised authorities to monitor social media channels of at least 15 university-based Palestine societies. The report names groups at SOAS, Leeds, Imperial College London and Glasgow.

Unconfirmed and missing responses

UUK did not respond to a request for comment at the time of writing, Middle East Eye reported. This report does not include any response from the universities, Aucso or the private firms named in it. Middle East Eye's report does not say whether any of the security firms or universities have disputed the findings.

Background

The report covers protests over universities' ties to Israel, which it describes as a war on Gaza. Pro-Palestinian student protesters held an inter-university march in London on 7 October 2025, according to a photograph credited to AFP in the Middle East Eye report. The Prevent programme is the UK government's counterterrorism strategy for public bodies, including universities.

All of the details in this story come from a single source, Middle East Eye, which reports the findings of the Amnesty International report. Amnesty's full report was not available for this story.