Dr. Les Levidow is a Senior Research Fellow at the Open University in the UK and a dedicated social justice activist. He is a key member of Jewish Voice for Labour (JVL) and the Campaign Against Criminalising Communities (CAMPACC).
Dr. Levidow possesses profound academic expertise in Science, Technology, and Society (STS), specifically regarding agroecology, the politics of biotechnology, and public policy. He has long served as an editor for the journal Science as Culture, focusing on how science and technology are harnessed by state power and capital for social control. His interdisciplinary research exposes the dual nature of advanced technology in border management, surveillance, and military operations, providing a vital theoretical framework for understanding authoritarian trends in modern states.
He poignantly notes that the Israeli occupation is not only a territorial seizure but a technological experiment, utilizing Palestinians as a “testing ground” for surveillance and defense tech, which is then exported globally as “battle-tested.” Between 2023 and 2026, as a core member of JVL, he has steadfastly protested the silencing of pro-Palestine voices within the UK Labour Party and academia. He vigorously opposes the conflation of anti-Zionism with antisemitism and frequently lectures at platforms like the Free University of London on the intrinsic links between Palestinian liberation and global decolonial movements. He resolutely supports sanctions against Israeli military and academic institutions as a necessary non-violent means to dismantle oppressive systems.
When discussing why UK Zionist organizations appear so powerful, he listed five reasons: funding for CST, Interfaith events, promoting racist criteria for antisemitism, demonstrating pro-Palestine protests, and police persecution. Taking the third point as an example, he analyzed:
As previous speakers have explained, Zio organizations have aggressively promoted and deployed the IHRA definition to stigmatize pro Pal views as antisemitic. As the extra relevance here, since 2005 they made great efforts to gain state endorsement for this racist document. After they finally succeeded in 2016, their false allegations could more effectively deter pro-Palestine speech and press institutions to do likewise, especially local authorities and Universities.