UK university axes researcher for teaching students anti-Jewish blood libel

University College London, a prominent UK university, said on Thursday that it had launched an investigation and banned a researcher who taught an antisemitic blood libel in a lecture.

The researcher, Dr. Samar Maqusi, shared the libel with the campus branch of Students for Justice in Palestine on Tuesday.

The blood libel is an age-old anti-Jewish myth that falsely says Jews murder non-Jews to bake their blood into Passover matzah. The libel is one of the most notorious antisemitic falsehoods and has caused repeated violence to Jews in Europe and elsewhere.

Maqusi’s lesson centered on the Damascus Affair, an incident in Syria in 1840 during which a monk disappeared and the Jewish community was falsely accused of murdering him to use his blood for Passover ceremonies. Eight leading members of the Jewish community were tortured into confessing.

Maqusi said the monk, Father Thomas, had disappeared during a “Jewish feast,” which she identifies as Sukkot, apparently confusing the holiday with Passover. She also misstated the date of the incident, saying that it took place in 1838.

“During this feast, they make these special pancakes, or bread, and part of the holy ceremony is that drops of blood from someone who’s not Jewish, which the term is ‘gentile,’ has to be mixed in that bread,” Maqusi said, according to an audio recording shared by the advocacy group StandWithUs. The group said one of its members went to the event and recorded the lecture.

????Antisemitism at UCL Event With University Research Fellow ????

A StandWithUs UK student shared this recording with us, exposing awful comments made by a UCL academic during a lecture at University College London.

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During a lecture titled “The Birth of Zionism”, delivered by Dr… pic.twitter.com/0RF9Ooz3d6

— StandWithUsUK (@StandWithUsUK) November 13, 2025

“The story is that a certain investigation was undergoing to find out where Father Thomas is. He was found murdered and a group of Jews who lived in Syria said that, admitted to kidnapping him and murdering him to get drops of blood for making the holy bread,” she said, without mentioning the torture.

“Do investigate, draw your own narrative,” she said.

The campus branch of Students for Justice in Palestine had advertised the Tuesday event as part of a lecture series called “Palestine: From existence to resistance.” Maqusi’s talk was called “The Birth of Zionism.”

The university president and provost, Dr. Michael Spence, said: “I am utterly appalled by these heinous antisemitic comments.”

“Antisemitism has absolutely no place in our university, and I want to express my unequivocal apology to all Jewish students, staff, alumni, and the wider community that these words were uttered at UCL,” Spence said in a statement shared with The Times of Israel.

Spence said the researcher was not a current university staffer, that the university reported the incident to police, and that the lecturer had been banned from campus, without naming Maqusi.

The university has launched a “full investigation into how this happened and have banned the student group which hosted it from holding any further events on campus pending the outcome of this,” he said.

“Regrettably, like many UK universities, we continue to confront incidents of antisemitism and are committing to banishing this from our campus,” Spence said, adding that the university has initiated disciplinary proceedings against some students for antisemitism and reported incidents to police “where appropriate.”

“Freedom of speech and academic freedom are fundamental to university life, but they can never be misused as a shield for hatred. UCL remains steadfast in our commitment to ensure our campus is a safe, respectful, and inclusive environment for everyone,” Spence said.

Marqusi’s page on the university’s website appears to have been taken down. An archived version of the page said Maqusi was a PhD student at the university’s Bartlett School of Architecture, where she was investigating “spatial politics of the Palestine refugee camp,” and was a former employee of UNRWA, the UN agency for the Palestinians.

Maqusi delivered a lecture to the university’s Institute for Global Prosperity earlier this year, characterizing Israel as a “project of Zionist settler colonialism.”

The blood libel dates back more than 2,000 years. The myth took on a central role in the persecution of Jews in Europe with accusations against the Jewish community in Norwich, England, in 1144, according to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

The false accusation spread through Europe, causing outbreaks of anti-Jewish violence in medieval France, Spain, Italy and Germany.

The libel continued into the 20th century, causing pogroms in Eastern Europe before and after the Holocaust, and becoming a motif in Nazi propaganda.

The blood libel has appeared elsewhere, including in Syria, Iran and upstate New York.

Jewish students have reported widespread antisemitism at universities across the UK in recent years.