MY earliest memory of feeling outnumbered comes from a classroom in upstate New York, 1989, where a professor of international relations described the intifada as terrorist in nature. On the first day of class. No mention of an occupation. I turned to look around the room and saw no discomfort. I said something; I don’t remember exactly what, something about occupation, because that was the only truth I knew about Palestine. I don’t remember his reaction. What I remember is the feeling: the privilege I had felt at being in that room came crumbling down. I dropped the class. I don’t regret leaving. The class I took instead was on media framing. And well — here I am.

I found my way to SOAS, and to a different kind of education. The School of Oriental and African Studies was many things but what I remember most is that Palestine was not a controversial subject there. Pro-Palest­inian students and academics believed in dialogue rather than censure. It sounds nai­ve in retrospect, but I do not remember ‘anti­semitism’ being deployed to shut down conversations. Things got heated but not ugly.

The clearest test of that during my time came when a talk featuring the then not-yet-banned student faction of Hizb ut-Tahrir, cancelled by LSE, found a........

© Dawn