After a year-long open-ended suspension and multiple disciplinary actions related to pro-Palestine activism, the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) has formally expelled a student mid-way through her degree, a move believed to be the first of its kind at a UK university.
Haya Adam, a second-year law and international relations student, has been among the most vocal student activists at SOAS, speaking out since before the onset of the Gaza genocide, organising at the Liberated Zone, and leading the SOAS Palestine Society.
Haya stated that the email from the university cited the reason for her expulsion as “she met the allegations of harassment, abusive behaviour, and operational obstruction.”
She claimed she had been expelled for standing up against the “live-streamed genocide.”
Haya, who joined the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, in September 2023, said she believed “that I would receive an anti-colonial education while having a space to speak up against injustice.”
“But I soon came to realise that the so-called world university and its reputation are deeply flawed. Behind its decolonial façade, SOAS is revealed to be a tool of empire and imperialism,” she said.
The actions taken against her, which she describes as her “journey of repression,” began in June 2024, when she was disciplined for participating in an alleged “unauthorised protest.”
This was followed by a nine-month suspension for questioning Vice Chancellor Adam Habib regarding the university’s alleged complicity in genocide. Haya maintains that she was suspended merely for being in the vicinity of an incident involving the CEO of the Students’ Union, Irfan Zaman, in which she was not directly involved.
She has now been expelled, reportedly over a video that she says constituted political commentary.
Her expulsion, she alleges, followed a political commentary video, in which she criticised the Students’ Union, particularly representative Safia, whom she said “failed to uphold her political manifesto” and did not represent the student body, including Tara Mann.
Tara Mann has been banned from campus for 6 months for simply trying to hold the executive board accountable by questioning their policies of complicity and partnerships funding settler-colonialism in Palestine.
“Haya’s expulsion is a brutal reminder that SOAS, despite its facade, serves as a tool of empire and represses those who oppose it,” The SOAS liberated Zone said.
Haya has been on the frontline against the University’s campaign to brutalise and silence students, with multiple disciplinary actions taken against her and an open-ended suspension that has been, isolating her from her peers and impacting her studies, which the group termed as a measures as “attempts to silence the student body, using Haya as an example to scare students into silence and complicity, a blatant attack on the freedom of speech.”
In solidarity with Haya Asim Qureshi, the Research Director of CAGE International, an organisation that campaigns for justice for the oppressed, he burned his Master of Laws certificate from SOAS, declaring, “I don’t want to be part of a university that markets decoloniality.”
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