Photographer Shahidul Alam returns his honorary doctorate to the University of the Arts London

Shahidul Alam
The photographer, curator and activist Shahidul Alam has returned his honorary doctorate from the University of the Arts London (UAL) in solidarity with its students and their stance on the war in Gaza.
“Universities are meant to be a places where critical thinking is practiced, where dissent is encouraged, where free thought is meant to be, that’s what it's all about. And to have such a repressive regime and system there was appalling,” Alam tells The Art Newspaper from Dhaka, Bangladesh.
“I thought, I happen to have an honorary doctorate from this place. No, that makes me culpable as well…I felt I really didn't have a choice,” he says.
Alam, whose career spans over 40 years, is an award-winning photographer whose work has been shown internationally by major museums, including Tate Modern, the Museum of Modern Art and the Centre Pompidou in Paris. He was also instrumental in the establishment of an array of groundbreaking initiatives such as the Chobi Mela Festival, the first and largest international photography biennial in Asia, the Pathshala South Asian Media Institute, which trains young photographers in the region, and the Majority World Agency, which sources photographs by artists in Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East who often struggle to gain access to a wide network of clients. He is also the recipient of the prestigious Humanitarian Lucie Award.
In 2018, Alam spent over 100 days in prison in Bangladesh after giving a television interview about student protests in the country in which he criticised the government and accused it of corruption. The case is still ongoing and he says he has to appear in court once a month as part of the condition of his release.
The UAL awarded the honorary doctorate to Alam in 2022 for his outstanding contribution to the fields of photography and activism.
A spokesperson for the university tells The Art Newspaper, “UAL is a passionate supporter of academic freedom and free speech within the law. Although we are disappointed that Shahidul Alam has returned his honorary doctorate, we respect his right to do so.” Alam says he did not receive a response from the university after informing them of his decision.
Alam says: “The fact that there is a person such as James Purnell chosen to be the vice chancellor of a university that prides itself on freedom of expression and free thought just does not make sense to me.” Purnell is a former member of parliament and was the chair of Labour Friends of Israel between 2002 and 2004. The protesting students are demanding his resignation.
While he would like to see other artists take a similar stance, Alam understands that the risk of being “defunded” and “blacklisted” prevents many from speaking out. “But I think the way forward is to resist, whenever there is injustice, we, particularly artists, I think, have a responsibility to resist,” he says. “The students are really the ones who are prepared to walk the walk, who still want to be on the right side of history and have a conscience, which the rest of the world seems to have lost a long time, particularly in the US.”
Alam was due to co-curate the 2024 edition of the Biennale für aktuelle Fotografie, a contemporary photo exhibition in the German cities of Mannheim, Ludwigshafen and Heidelberg. But in November 2023 organisers cancelled the event after he posted content on social media that the cities’ authorities described as antisemitic. These posts included a comparison of the current war in Gaza with the Holocaust and accusations of genocide by the state of Israel against the Palestinian population of Gaza, the organisers said in a statement. Alam and his co-curators would have been the first non-Europeans to organise the event, which was in its tenth year.
Alam’s move comes as UAL students have escalated their protests over the university’s stance on the war in Gaza. More than two weeks ago students took over the reception area at Central Saint Martins (CSM), one of the world's leading art colleges, an area they still occupy.
Last week, the students expanded their protest to the annual end-of-year BA fashion show at CSM. Over the past week, over 300 faculty and staff signed a statement in support of the students and their demands, which include a call for an immediate and permanent ceasefire, withdrawal from the IHRA [International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance] definition of antisemitism, protection of the right for free speech and the right to organise for Palestine, and to “declare and divest from any investments or financial interests, which make the institution and its members complicit in the genocide of Palestinian people.”
The UAL spokesperson referred to the statement on the university's website for its position on “the on-going war in Israel and Palestine.”
Students have also occupied the Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Arts (Goldsmiths CCA), part of the University of London, after ending their five-week occupation of its Stuart Hall Building in early May. Goldsmiths for Palestine, the group leading the protests, tells The Art Newspaper: “We decided to occupy the CCA after a period of stalled negotiations with the senior management following some initial positive concessions around our demands for Palestine were made in early May."
CCA’s Matt Connors exhibition, Finding Aid, which featured his work alongside that of 21 other artists in a show that he curated, was closed earlier than its intended 2 June end date. The closure followed pressure from students to adhere to a call made by the Mosaic Rooms’, a London based non-profit arts organisation and bookshop dedicated to supporting and promoting contemporary culture from the Arab world and beyond, to “all UK and international arts and cultural colleagues” to strike on 31 May for Palestine.
“Occupying the CCA is significant because there is a gallery in the building named after Candida and Zac Gertler who are close personal friends of [Israel’s prime minister Benjamin] Netanyahu, funders of his political campaign as well as founders of Outset [an arts charity],” Goldsmiths for Palestine said in a statement.
According to a post on its Instagram account, Goldsmiths CCA will reopen on 21 June with the “hope that the occupiers and the university reach a resolution soon”.
The latest demonstrations in the UK follow a string of campus protests in the US, at which there have been mass arrests, and come seven months into the war in Gaza. According to the United Nations, Israeli attacks have killed around 35,000 Palestinians—the majority of them were women and children—since Hamas’s 7 October terrorist attacks on Israel, in which around 1,200 people were killed and 253 people were taken hostage.

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