Students accuse lecturer of sharing Russia war lies

It was the start of a new semester at the University of Edinburgh and Mariangela Alejandro couldn’t wait to start her next course. The 21-year-old history and politics student had heard good things about Professor Tim Hayward.

But a few weeks into the course, she said things got “strange.”

“He expects to talk about global financial markets [and] poverty, into this realm of conspiracy theories about [Syrian President Bashar al] Assad and Russia,” she told the BBC.

In a presentation obtained by the BBC, Prof Hayward outlined an argument that the renowned aid organization White Helmets may have helped fake a chemical weapons attack in Syria. Russia said the attack was “staged”.

It comes after he and a number of other academics were accused by MPs in March of spreading misinformation about the war in Ukraine – something Education Minister Nadhim Zahawi said the government would “crack down”.

In an interview later broadcast on BBC Radio 4’s File on 4, Prof Hayward said it was important to hear “both sides” when it came to the war in Ukraine.

Prof Hayward’s presentation concerned an attack in the Damascus suburb of Duma in 2018 that killed 40 people, according to medical professionals. A year later, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons said there was reasonable grounds to believe chlorine gas had been used.

Prof Hayward told the students: “One narrative has it that the White Helmets assisted in rescuing victims, provided evidence and gave testimony about the chemical weapons attack on Douma on April 7, 2018.

“The critics say the White Helmets are responsible for staging a false flag event to trick the West into attacking the Syrian government. In fact, the controversy surrounding this case is still current.”

It’s an argument put forward by members of a collective of academics and bloggers to which he belongs — the Working Group on Syria Propaganda and the Media (WGSPM).

Mariangela said she assumed after the lecture that it “might be true” that the attack was faked until she spoke to a Syrian friend.

“He [Prof Hayward] Basically phrases it as … ‘the task force is telling the truth and they’re not listening to us,’” she said.

Prof Hayward told the BBC his course asked whether a claim should be accepted simply on the basis of a person’s authority. His students are aware that the same applies to the words of their teachers, he added.

He said he doesn’t teach about Syria, but simply used an example he was familiar with in his teaching.

Kvitka Perenents, a Ukrainian student at Edinburgh University, watches the war in her homeland with concern from afar. Most of her family are there – some of them struggling – and she told the BBC she was troubled by Prof Hayward’s recent tweets.

Days after a Mariupol maternity hospital was bombed, Prof Hayward retweeted a Russian official at the UN describing the attack as #fakenews. The tweet said the hospital was controlled by the Ukrainian military and there were no patients there.

While one of Mariupol’s maternity hospitals was no longer operational, the bombed facility was quite a different one – and contained patients. Upon hearing this, Prof. Hayward updated his Twitter thread.

When asked by the BBC about the thread, he said: “I stand by the statement I included with this tweet, which is that we should strive to hear both sides.”

He also said it was “uncertain” whether the maternity hospital had been bombed by planes.

“The acquisition of knowledge involves inquiry, research and reasoning,” he added. “If that’s always dismissed as disinformation, I think it’s a very dangerous line to go down.”

But Kvitka said “there are no two sides” to the conflict.

“The moment we start equating the two sides of the story is the moment we lose our humanity,” she said. “The oppressor – in this case Russia – should not be given the same platform as those who are being oppressed.”

Kvitka said she brought Professor Hayward’s tweets to the attention of the university but received no response.

dr Nader Hashemi, director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Denver and visiting scholar at the University of Cambridge, told the BBC he was “appalled” by the content of Prof Hayward’s lecture on Syria.

“He formulates his talk in the language of global justice and citizenship and pretends to be objective,” he said. “I think he’s really dealing with a deeply distorted set of doctrines.”

The University of Edinburgh says its programs are approved by a study board. It says it is committed to “academic freedom” but takes “a strong stance… against the spread of misinformation” and encourages students to report concerns.

The university and Prof. Hayward have always maintained that his tweets and involvement in the WGSPM are separate from his academic work.

In England, the Office for Students (OfS) regulates universities, for example by monitoring student complaints. But there is no direct equivalent to the OfS in Scotland.

Jamie Hepburn, Scotland’s Minister for Higher Education and Further Training, told the BBC that “attempts by anyone to repeat Russian disinformation about Ukraine” were “unacceptable” – but that universities are “solely responsible for internal institutional matters such as the behavior of their staff are”. .

The Department of Education (DfE), which is responsible for education in England, said it expects “universities’ due diligence processes to take into account the reputational, ethical and safety risks of false and dangerous narratives and to ensure that students are not fooled by such views Being misled is clearly wrong”.

As the tweets from academics surfaced in the House of Commons, Mr Zahawi said Secretary of State for Higher Education and Further Education Michelle Donelan had “contacted these universities”.

A freedom of information request revealed that Ms Donelan raised the issue at a Higher Education Taskforce meeting. However, the BBC understands that no individual universities have been contacted.

Academics spreading misinformation about the war in Ukraine are useful to Russia, said James Roscoe, British ambassador to the United Nations. They add a veneer of respectability to the state’s narrative, he told the BBC.

“Russian diplomats can then retweet them, or Russian state media can retweet them,” Mr Roscoe added.

The BBC also has with Dr. Justin Schlossberg, who specializes in media and journalism at Birkbeck University of London. He was criticized for retweeting Russian state media questioning what happened in the Ukrainian city of Bucha.

The bodies of more than 1,000 civilians have been discovered in the Bucha region since Russian forces pushed back from Kyiv in late March. Photos, footage and satellite imagery showed bodies lying on the street.

dr Schlossberg retweeted a video of Bucha’s mayor speaking without mentioning a massacre. Russian media have used the video to support the idea that the bodies turned up after the Russians left the city.

Asked by the BBC what he thinks happened in Bucha, Dr. Schlossberg: “I have no idea. My only understanding is that I don’t think anyone else really knows what happened. I think there is a very strong possibility that there were very serious atrocities, the vast majority of which were almost certainly committed by Russia.

dr Schlossberg said he was also “concerned about disinformation that can sometimes come from Western governments.” He added that criticism on Twitter resembled “authoritarianism,” comparing it to McCarthyism in the US in the 1950s, when communists or suspected communists were accused of trying to overthrow the government.

Birkbeck, University of London, said there was “no evidence that Dr. Schlossberg has guided students or shared information in a way that violates its free speech policy,” and that it advocates free debate.

Last month, Ms Donelan said new legislation in England would “impose on universities a duty to promote freedom of speech and academic freedom, not just to protect them”.

dr Hashemi said academics who relay Russian misinformation could have a dangerous influence on young people. However, when asked whether they should be prevented from expressing personal views in lectures, he said any curtailment of academic freedom would be a “disaster”.

“We shouldn’t get involved in the business of deep censorship on campus,” he added.

You can listen to File on 4 on Tuesday 31 May at 20:00 BST on BBC Radio 4 or BBC sounds.