Opposition grows as UEL shuts down for G20

The axe has also fallen on the planned alternative G20 summit on Wednesday, which was to feature debate from figures such as Tony Benn and Ken Livingstone.

The actions have been met with a furious response, and the number of signatures on a petition calling for the university to re-open is surging towards 1,800 signatures.

UEL moved to suspend its anthropology professor Chris Knight last week after he was accused of inciting violence in interviews given to radio and newspapers. Mr Knight was helping to organise protests for G20 Meltdown.

The university confirmed course deadlines had been extended to Monday April 6, and that classes will either be rescheduled or provided online.

A spokesperson said: "As a university, we have a duty of care, and our primary responsibility is to maintain a safe campus environment for students, staff and visitors.

"There is a great deal of uncertainty about what may happen over the next two days. Our university continues to be named in various media, and we are concerned about the possibility of a serious disturbance on campus.

"Having made a careful risk assessment, we decided that temporary closure is the only safe option."

UEL added that the university "would not be a fortress" during the summit, and that resident students would be able to gain access to the campus.

But frustrated students and professors at UEL and elsewhere have added their names to an online petition calling for management "to defend the historic role of the university as a sanctuary for open debate".

It said: "We would feel ashamed of UEL if this institution - to which its staff is so committed - were to become known as the university that had closed its doors to democratic debate and education in times of crisis such as these."

Signataries included Dr Bernadette Buckley, from the politics department of Goldsmiths, who said: "This is a heavy handed and completely over-the-top response from the UEL senior management team.

"It is also an astonishingly grim reflection on the state of academic freedom today."

UEL has claimed the alternative summit - which was proposed as "an academic forum for discussion and debate around global justice" - was stopped after it was "linked to possible direct action protests against the G20 summit".

A spokesperson said: "Following discussions on Friday with University and College Lecturers (UCU) organising committee representatives, it was agreed that the potential scale of the event and associated risks had become unmanageable, and we would be unable to accommodate safely an event of this nature."

Organisers UCU sent out a statement this week, which said: "The aim was to provide a forum for debate about world crisis, hunger and conflict - and how we can tackle them in the interests of the majority of people.

"As academics proud of the radical and critical tradition held by many staff at UEL, we intended this to be an event of which the whole institution could be proud.

"The UCU committee regrets that the event will not take place because we can no longer deliver it as planned."

While UEL today maintained that "it was up to UCU to rearrange the event and they didn't do that", UCU countered that "it was arranged quite a long time ago, and if UEL hadn't made the decision very late on, the event would have gone ahead."

To view or sign the petition, go to petitiononline.com/openUEL/petition.html