The Union of Jewish Students (UJS) has raised concerns about the representation of Jewish students on the National Union of Students’ (NUS) anti-racism committee, claiming that “once again, Jewish students are not being listened to.”

Earlier this week, NUS President Malia Bouattia announced her intention to reverse the motion removing UJS's ability to select a Jewish representative to sit on NUS’s Anti-Racism Anti-Fascism (ARAF) campaign.

In a long-awaited response to a letter from CUSU calling on NUS to “do more to protect the rightful place of Jewish students within the student movement”, Bouattia said she had “issued an interpretation of policy which will ensure that representatives of the committee will be elected autonomously by self-identifying caucuses.”

However, UJS has raised concerns about this arrangement. In a statement on their website, they welcomed the fact that “only Jewish members” of NUS’s National Executive Committee (NEC) will elect the Jewish ARAF representative, but said “there are still issues” with the policy.

Among the issues cited by UJS was the fact that none of the Jewish members of NEC, who will be responsible for electing their ARAF representative, have been elected by Jewish students, meaning they “cannot be held to account” by them.

“The 8,500 Jewish students in the UK will continue to have no say on their sole representative within NUS' structures,” the statement reads.

UJS claimed that Bouattia “failed to consult” with Jewish members of NEC in the run-up to her decision that representatives on ARAF should be elected by “self-identifying caucuses”, arguing that, as the issue has been “an area of extreme contention”, discussions should have included “the relevant groups”.

The statement also raised broader concerns about NUS’s response to the concerns of Jewish students, saying that they “deserve proof that Malia and NUS are willing to take action against antisemitism, not just offer empty words”.

Addressing the passage in Bouattia’s letter, in which she claimed to have “already met the Union of Jewish Students”, UJS stated that, “despite what she has said, no UJS representative has met with Malia since the afternoon of her election”.

“There has been no contact from Malia since April, and crucially since she began her presidency. Due to her failure to adequately address the concerns of Jewish students, we have no intention of meeting her until she explicitly does so,” it added.