In the shadow of the University of London’s Senate House, behind a makeshift barrier covered in slogans, sits a row of tents. Inside a nearby marquee, where I’m due to speak to activist Haya Adam, there’s a “Free Palestine” scarf on the wall. We’re at the encampment for Palestine, also known as the Soas Liberated Zone.
Until August 2025, Adam was a second-year student of international relations and law at Soas, and the president of the university’s Palestine Society. However, following several years of activism, she was expelled this summer for breaching the university’s code of conduct—one of the first cases of its kind in the UK. Ninety-seven academics have since signed a petition calling for her reinstatement. One alumnus even filmed himself burning his master’s degree certificate in solidarity with Adam.
Adam, 21, speaks concisely and passionately, seemingly unfazed by her recent expulsion and calling it “a badge of honour”. She sports a keffiyeh scarf, and her watermelon earrings are framed by curly hair.
As a British student with Egyptian heritage, Adam grew up in a political household; both her parents are activists, and her grandfather fought alongside Palestinians during the 1948 Palestine war. For her, protesting for Gaza was “the most important thing,” she tells me.
The current pro-Palestine campaign at Soas began shortly after Adam’s freshers’ week in 2023, following the Hamas-led 7th October attacks and in response to Israel’s subsequent genocide in Gaza. The protesters called on the university to divest from companies that it says are complicit in the Israeli occupation—including through contracts with the government, supplying technology to the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) or investment in arms manufacturers.
Adam stayed in the tents two to three times a week, speaking at protests and leading chants. Of all the university encampments that arose in the summer of 2024, Soas’s is the longest standing, with students braving winter in the tents.
It relocated more than once, after being forcibly removed by the university authorities and bailiffs. A month before her expulsion, the university obtained an unprecedented High Court injunction banning Adam and two other students, alongside “persons unknown”, from protesting on the university’s private land.
Adam’s expulsion hinges around her providing a voiceover for a video in which she criticises one of the student union presidents for allegedly failing to uphold her political commitments. Adam called her a “careerist” who “served institutional oppression”. The panel at Adam’s disciplinary hearing judged that this constituted abusive behaviour and harassment and, alongside allegations of “operational obstruction”, was sufficient evidence to expel her.
Adam is appealing her expulsion and is planning legal action. “If you politically criticise or hold anyone in a position of authority to account, you could warrant a suspension, a disciplinary, or now an expulsion,” she says.
Though Soas was founded in 1916 as a university to train colonial administrators and officers for the British Empire, it has long been renowned for its anticolonial studies. “Everything they teach is just pure theory,” Adam objects, “and when students actually go out and enforce that theory into active practice, they’re silenced.”
Soas denies ever expelling or disciplining students for pro-Palestinian views or protests, and does not comment on individual disciplinary cases. Nevertheless, its critics see Adam’s case as part of a broader trend against free speech on campus. In June this year, Cardiff University obtained an injunction banning any protest without an application made to university authorities 21 days in advance, while some students have faced revoked visas following non-violent activism.
In the heat of the culture war, the right has decried a lack of free speech on campuses, claiming that a “woke mob” has taken over. Yet, to Adam and her supporters, stories like hers reveal a stark hypocrisy. “There is no freedom of speech at Soas university,” Adam says bluntly. In her case, the right is largely silent.
