Times letters: Rishi Sunak’s zero tolerance for campus antisemitism

Sir, The prime minister is right: we must have zero tolerance for antisemitism (“Rishi Sunak: Hateful antisemitism has no place in universities”, May 8). Yet dismissing the urge to protest over the Gaza war as just an expression of “the very human angst that many of us feel about the terrible suffering of war” patronises the students — and lets politicians and the government off the hook. The terrorist attack by Hamas was abhorrent, and taking hostages was unacceptable. Israel, like any other country, has the right to be safe and to defend itself. But no country has the right to wage war in the way the IDF has since October, repeatedly breaching international humanitarian law, at a terrible cost to civilians.

We should not blame students for seeing what we cannot: our own hypocrisy and failure. Blind support for the killing, maiming, starving and displacing of Gazans, particularly children and women, has weakened the principles and protections of international law and human rights that we strive to defend elsewhere. No democratic government should support this in the name of its citizens. That is what the students are saying, and if we in parliament cannot hear or understand them we are utterly detached from the very people we are supposed to be representing.
Baroness Helic
House of Lords

Sir, It is stupid and counterproductive, not to mention deeply uncivilised, for pro-Palestinian protesters to make Jewish people feel unsafe in Britain. If Jews feel they can no longer live here, where do the protesters think they are going to go? If you are truly against the ongoing expansion of a security-oriented Israel into Palestinian territories, you should be making western countries as hospitable for Jews as possible. The necessity of the existence of a Jewish-majority state can be softened only by the existence of thriving, integrated and secure Jewish communities all over the world.
Simon Boas
Head of UN Food and Agriculture Organisation in Gaza 2010-12; Jersey

Sir, Eliana Silver’s feelings (Times2, May 10) are a tiny insight into the Jewish student experience since October 7. We have endured unprecedented levels of hatred and invalidation, from students and staff alike. For seven months we have had only two options: to isolate ourselves or to stand strong and fight for our very right to exist on campus. Both are unsustainable and detrimental to our health and our studies. I was recently in Israel for Passover, and saw from afar the vitriol of US campus encampments spread to the UK. Being removed from the situation allowed me to realise the terrifying reality of what we have been experiencing. Jews are being sent a clear message: we are not welcome. Having now returned to campus, all I am able to think of is the future. Do we have one here?
Gili Nachshen
Medical student in London

Sir, Eliana Silver should not rely too heavily on university authorities to defend her rights. At the gates of Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nuremberg there is a plaque saying “Here they burnt the books”, a reference to May 12, 1933, when books said by the Nazis to be of “un-German spirit” were piled on to bonfires. The same action was taken at universities across the Reich. It was not stormtroopers who did this, it was the students and their professors.
Patrick Malone
Bodmin, Cornwall

Students to see true entry grades

Sir, Over the past 12 months there has been an unprecedented decline in university demand and in entry rates for young people, neither of which has attracted much policy attention. Your interview with the new head of Ucas was a welcome exception (“Ucas lets students see true entry grades”, news, and “No Brainer”, leading article, May 10). To have already taken approaching £2 million in application fees from the poorest families in Britain this year is an uncomfortable position when aspiration among school-leavers appears to have fallen — removing the £28.50 university application fee is worth trying.

Ucas is also right to set a course to get more data out there for people to use. The UK has a world-leading university data infrastructure but it is making only a fraction of the contribution it should to a better system because too little of it ever sees the light of day.
Dr Mark Corver
Managing director, Data HE; former director of analysis and research, Ucas

Sir, I spent many years assessing candidates for admission to university; after a series of upsets I compared A-level predictions with actual results and found there was significant grade inflation on students’ Ucas forms. I found actual O-level results were a far better predictor of future academic prowess. There’s a caveat here about universities publishing A-level requirements.
Henry Bennet-Clark
Clifton, Bristol

Keeping safe online

Sir, Britain may be “leading the charge” (May 8) to keep young people safe online but we must not fall behind other nations over online technologies such as virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) environments. The Online Safety Act states that content should include immersive reality but much of the discussion around safety focuses on 2D content and platforms, not immersive 3D virtual interactions. The emerging harms from these virtual environments need a greater consideration. VR and AR serve as immersive arenas for real-time activities and are inherently difficult for parents to supervise; distinct approaches are needed.

The matter is urgent: 25 per cent of children aged from 5 to 13 use virtual reality every week, and children’s engagement with VR grew by 320 per cent from 2022 to 2023 (IET research). We must ensure legislation keeps pace as technology advances, to protect users. It is a heavy responsibility on Ofcom to get this right.
Jayne Black
Institution of Engineering and Technology

Increase in truancy

Sir, We are right to be concerned about the increase in children skipping school (“Truancy up by a fifth on Fridays”, May 10). As an education welfare officer in the 1980s I found that parents were not overly worried about their children falling behind in the three Rs. But those same parents were often persuaded when I told them another important reason for school attendance: no one wants to be best friends with a child who is regularly not at school to play with at breaktimes. Friendship groups will form without their child, who can then become socially isolated and anxious. Truancy has consequences, mental illness being one.
Frances Locke
London SE23

Sir, As a retired teacher I am surprised that the fact that truancy is up by a fifth on Fridays merited a headline. T’was ever thus: a large proportion of the absentees were the “baddies” who often turned into responsible citizens when they escaped school permanently.

Meanwhile, their absence from school provided a welcome respite for staff.
Angela Patey
Bristol

Eighty years young

Sir, Lynn Barber (Times2, May 10) misses some of the joys of turning 80 such as the kindness of the public, admitting merrily to drinking more than 14 units a week, talking desperately about that long green thing that goes in a salad and slipping into talking about the “old people”, who I suddenly remember are in their seventies. Mostly we are alive to read The Times, see the rain and sun and the children passing by.
Yvonne Kedge
Sonning Common, Oxon

Sir, I sympathise with Lynn. I used to feel fine but 80 was a milestone, and I now feel rather vulnerable and old. Our children (now in their fifties) and even grandchildren (now at uni) seem to feel that I am no longer capable of having an intelligent opinion about anything. Like Lynn, however, I am still capable of enjoying the odd G&T.
Lynn Hooper
Chidham, W Sussex

Playing less cricket

Sir, County cricket should not be treated as an academy for international cricket (“Players want less cricket — but that means job cuts”, Mike Atherton, May 9). Only a tiny minority of professional cricketers can even aspire to international cricket. The cream will always rise to the top and now selectors are talent-spotting players with very little relevant previous experience. Cricketers generally can nevertheless choose to enjoy the highs and lows of sport as a job in a team environment.

Elimination of 50-over cricket (what other sport operates multiple formats?), reversion to three-day matches, regionally based groups and end-of-season play-offs instead of promotion/relegation would enable a coherent and comprehensible season-long schedule with less travel, more non-playing time, more matches and greater entertainment for spectators and more predictable finances.
Martin Owen
Cardiff

Abused at school

Sir, Like Simon Mills (Times2, May 9) I too, at the age of 12, suffered at the hands of a sadistic headmaster. Yes, I misbehaved badly. I was summoned to his study, humiliated verbally and asked what thickness of cane I preferred: thin (which cut), thick (which bruised) or medium (inbetween). I chose the latter and instead of “six of the best” I got eight because I yelped twice. A year later I was given four (no choice this time) for not working hard enough. From then on until I left I did my best and kept my head down. It was harsh discipline but the upside is that I never misbehaved again and had a greater respect for authority.
Harry Tabeart
Canvey Island, Essex

Desperate crossing

Sir, My favourite Powell & Pressburger film, A Matter of Life and Death, No 4 in Kevin Maher’s list (“The 5 best Powell and Pressburger films — ranked”, Times2, May 10) has echoes of the migration debate. David Niven, an RAF bomber pilot, is desperate to get to Blighty but his burning Lancaster fails to make it over the Channel and he is washed up the next day on an English shore, apparently dead. In a bid to claim “asylum” on Earth, he ends up arguing his case in Heaven before a judge and jury. Desperate measures.
Anna Brown
Sheffield

Flossing award

Sir, All this talk of flossing, (Matthew Parris, May 8; letter, May 10) shows that dental floss really is an essential part of modern life. So much so that perhaps the inventor of floss should be commemorated with a plaque.
Richard Buckingham
Hook, Hants

Foot fetish

Sir, I enjoyed Laura Freeman’s take on the National Gallery’s Venus (“Between the sheets with art’s first postcoital masterpiece”, Times2, May 8). Of Venus’s costume, she asks: “How would one get her in or out of it?” As a retired consultant in sexual medicine, may I offer a different interpretation of this fine painting? Venus never had to undress. The part of her body that so enticed Mars lies where his finger points — at her foot. Seemingly the foot is the most common sexual fetish and has been reported in the literature over many centuries.
David Goldmeier
Edgware, Middx