Open University reverses UKLFI-influenced ‘ancient Palestine’ ban
The Robert Hooke Building at the Open University campus in Milton Keynes, spring 2013
Imran Mulla reports in Middle East Eye on 4 March 2026:
The Open University (OU) has appeared to reverse a commitment it made to pro-Israel lobby group UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI) to stop using the term “ancient Palestine”, Novara Media reported.
According to the report, on 30 November 2025, UKLFI wrote to the OU complaining that the term “ancient Palestine” could create a “hostile or offensive learning environment for Jewish and Israeli students”.
UKLFI claimed the OU could be breaching the Equality Act. An OU humanities module referred to the Virgin Mary as having been born in “ancient Palestine” and featured a map labelled “Map of Ancient Palestine”. UKLFI said the term Palestine was not applied to the region until “more than a century after Mary’s lifetime”, when the Roman Emperor Hadrian renamed it “Syria Palaestina”.
On 18 December, the university’s head of the faculty of arts and social sciences, Adrienne Scullion, replied to UKLFI saying she understood the term “ancient Palestine” had become “problematic in a way that, perhaps, it was not when the materials were written in 2018”. Scullion said: “We will not use the term again in future learning materials, and we will explain and contextualise its use in existing materials for current learners.”
UKLFI claimed victory on its website.
Last week, the Index of Repression, compiled by the European Legal Support Centre in collaboration with Forensic Architecture, described UKLFI as an “initiating” or “escalating” actor against acts of Palestinian solidarity.
After UKLFI publicised the OU’s response, more than 600 academics and public figures signed an open letter earlier this year demanding an “urgent public retraction” of “commitments” the OU made to UKLFI. The letter said: “There is a significant risk that these commitments could be interpreted as inconsistent with the OU’s statutory duties under the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023 (HEFSA).”