Revealed: Open University bowed to pro-Israel pressure over 'Ancient Palestine' terminology, FOI documents show

The Open University (OU) secretly committed to removing the historically accurate term 'Ancient Palestine' from its course materials after pressure from the pro-Israel lobby group UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI), newly obtained documents seen by The New Arab have revealed.

The disclosure, obtained through a Freedom of Information (FOI) request by the university’s Palestine Solidarity Group, sheds light on what campaigners are describing as political interference and an attempt to erase Palestine from history.

In a letter dated 30 November 2025 to OU vice-chancellor Professor David Phoenix, UKLFI accused the university of making a "modern political statement" by referring to Mary’s birthplace as in 'Ancient Palestine' in one of its religious studies modules.

The organisation argued that using the term imposed a "modern political label on a territory that had no such identity at the time", and went further to claim it was "suppressing Jewish identity".

UKLFI claimed that such terminology could amount to harassment under the Equality Act 2010, suggesting it privileged "Roman and, subsequently, Arab colonial powers" over the "indigenous Jewish roots" of the region.

The Equality Act, however, cannot be used as a legal reason for restricting lawful speech under the Higher Education Freedom of Speech Act.

It then proposed a list of substitute labels, urging the university to instead use "Judea, Samaria and the Galilee" or, in broader geographical terms, "the Southern Levant", terminology long promoted by pro-Israel advocates to avoid any reference to Palestine or Palestinian identity.

Historians have long used the term 'Ancient Palestine' to refer to the region inhabited for millennia around the eastern Mediterranean, including areas known during various periods as Canaan, Philistia, Judea and Samaria.

Roman and later Byzantine texts referred to 'Palestina', a term that appears throughout ancient scholarship without controversy until recent attempts to politicise it.

As the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies (BRISMES) and other academic societies note, the word is part of internationally recognised archaeological and historical terminology. Its erasure represents not a question of linguistic accuracy, but of political pressure, the academic group argues.

In December, the university’s Head of Arts and Social Sciences, Professor Adrienne Scullion, responded to UKLFI’s complaint.

Her correspondence, seen by The New Arab, reveals that while the OU insisted the term 'Ancient Palestine' was academically appropriate and used "in existing peer-reviewed scholarship", it nevertheless promised to revise its materials in future.

"We will not use the term ‘Ancient Palestine’ in any future course materials", Scullion wrote, adding that existing modules would include caveats "explaining the debates around its meaning".

She added that "the term is now problematic in a way that, perhaps, it was not when materials were written in 2018".

While Scullion maintained that the use of the term was "not a comment on contemporary political events", her letter confirmed that the University would stop using it in new content, effectively conceding to UKLFI’s demands.

Pro-Palestine activists have argued that, at a time when Palestinians are displaced and ethnically cleansed by Israel, the treatment of the word 'Palestine' as problematic is in itself an attempt at silencing the Palestinian people.

University denial and contradictory claims

After the FOI disclosures became public on 4 March, the Open University issued a statement denying that it had agreed to stop using the term 'Ancient Palestine'.

"Academic colleagues remain free to use the term", the statement said. "Decisions about the use of terminology are matters of academic judgment, made by individual academics and teaching teams".

But as the correspondence indicates, that was not the position the OU communicated to UKLFI in December. At the time, Scullion explicitly promised that "we will not use the term ‘Ancient Palestine’ in any future course materials".

The contradiction suggests that, once the FOI revelations drew public scrutiny, the OU sought to distance itself from the political nature of its earlier assurances.

A wider pattern of interference

The controversy comes amid growing criticism of UKLFI’s role in UK cultural and educational institutions.

The group has previously lobbied organisations, including the British Museum, which last year quietly removed the term 'Palestine' from one of its ancient geography exhibits following UKLFI interventions.

BRISMES has accused the UKLFI of "attempting to interfere with the production of academic materials relating to Palestine-Israel" in favour of Israel, and charged the OU of violating the Higher Education Freedom of Speech Act by allowing an external lobbying group to influence its teaching.

In an email sent to the OU on 26 February, BRISMES wrote that such external interference sets a "dangerous precedent".

Meanwhile, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign has filed a form with the Charity Commission calling for UKLFI to be investigated for what it describes as a "long list of racist and discriminatory attempts to erase Palestinian history, identity, and political campaigns".

The incident mirrors a broader wave of institutional pressure across the UK, as Palestinian identity and history face censorship under the guise of neutrality. From museum labels to lecture slides, the word 'Palestine' itself has become contested terrain.

What began as a small alteration to a module, critics say, has now snowballed into a telling case study of how lobbying groups can reshape public education to fit an ideological agenda.