To foster a fully inclusive community, Imperial College London wants to ensure that all staff, students and visitors can enjoy full freedom of thought, belief and religion.

To achieve that, Imperial is committed to meeting our responsibilities under the Equality Act 2010 to promote good relations and understanding between people from different backgrounds, and to prevent harassment of all kinds, including religious harassment or intolerance. We take a robust approach to harassment throughout our university, ensuring that all our students and staff feel safe on campus.

We combine these responsibilities with our duty to protect freedom of speech as defined by the Education Act 1986 and Human Rights Act 1998. This means that we strongly promote both tolerance of individuals’ religious belief and Imperial as a place where critical inquiry on all topics is encouraged.

The College recognises that legitimate questions and critical analysis demand care and consideration as well as an appropriate manner, but in themselves do not constitute harassment.  The boundaries between legitimate critique, prejudicial speech or behaviour and harassment can be difficult to discern.

The guidance here aims to give our community a clearer understanding of what types of behaviours would be considered as unacceptable expressions of religious bigotry for the specific cases of antisemitism and Islamophobia. The guidance should also illuminate what might be considered unacceptable behaviour towards followers of other religions such as Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism and Sikhism. We commit to engaging further with our community to build a shared understanding of what religious tolerance means for us in practice.

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