A college that belongs to the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom has issued “formal warnings” to students who allegedly had threatened to kill a student who’d visited Israel, it said this week.
Homerton College told The Telegraph that, in addition to the warnings, college administrators had “made it clear that the behavior in question was entirely unacceptable,” the newspaper reported on Sunday.
The reprimand, which critics said was too light a response to a criminal offense aggravated by antisemitic hatred, was over death threats made in instant messaging platforms against Bradley Smart, 21, The Telegraph reported. It was over his trip to Israel and the Palestinian Authority, organized by the Pinsker Centre, a campus-based foreign policy think tank.
Students whose identity is known wrote: “I’m going to kill him”, “kill him”, and “he needs to die,” the paper reported.
Smart, who is not Jewish, said he feared for his safety following the threats and ultimately moved out of his college accommodation, according to the report.
The messages were posted in a student group chat and included additional abusive and antisemitic content, including comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany, The Telegraph reported.
Smart said he reported the threats through the college’s internal channels but was advised to seek welfare support or consider changing rooms. He later filed a complaint with the police, who he said declined to investigate, describing the matter as “academic.”
John Woodcock, a member of the House of Lords, the upper house of the British parliament, and a former government counter-extremism adviser condemned the college’s response as inadequate and warned that failing to take stronger action risks normalizing threats of political violence on campus.
The incident comes amid a broader rise in antisemitic rhetoric and attacks in the United Kingdom, including a recent stabbing of two Jewish men in London’s Golders Green neighborhood.
Homerton College said it has “zero tolerance for antisemitism and threatening behavior” and that the student had been offered support.
Smart told The Telegraph: “As a Cambridge student, I expected my university to be a place where opinions could be refined through dialogue. The reality, however, was that this trip was enough to trigger a campaign of cancellation, including explicit death threats and being banned from a college club.”
