Origins The School of Oriental Studies was founded in 1916 at 2
Finsbury Circus, London, the then premises of the
London Institution. The school received its
royal charter on 5 June 1916 and admitted its first students on 18 January 1917. The school was formally inaugurated a month later on 23 February 1917 by
George V. Among those in attendance were
Earl Curzon of Kedleston, formerly
Viceroy of India, and other cabinet officials. in
Finsbury Circus which originally housed SOAS and was demolished soon after being sold in 1936 The School of Oriental Studies was founded by the British state as an instrument to strengthen Britain's political, commercial, and military presence in Asia and Africa. It would do so by providing instruction to colonial administrators (
Colonial Service and
Imperial Civil Service), The school immediately became integral to training British administrators, colonial officials, and spies for overseas postings across the
British Empire. Africa was added to the school's name in 1938.
Second World War For a period in the mid-1930s, prior to moving to its current location at Thornhaugh Street,
Bloomsbury, the school was located at Vandon House, Vandon Street, London SW1, with the library located at
Clarence House. Its move to new premises in Bloomsbury was held up by delays in construction and the half-completed building took a hit during the
Blitz in September 1940. With the onset of the
Second World War, many University of London colleges were evacuated from London in 1939 and billeted on universities in the rest of the country. The School was, on the Government's advice, transferred to
Christ's College, Cambridge. In 1940, when it became apparent that a return to London was possible, the school returned to the city and was housed for some months in eleven rooms at Broadway Court, 8
Broadway, London SW1. In 1942, the
War Office joined with the school to create a scheme for State Scholarships to be offered to select grammar and public-school boys with linguistic ability to train as military translators and interpreters in Chinese, Japanese,
Persian, and Turkish. Lodged at
Dulwich College in south London, the students became affectionately known as
the Dulwich boys. One of these students was
Charles Dunn, who became a prominent Japanologist on the faculty of the SOAS and a recipient of the
Order of the Rising Sun. Others included
Sir Peter Parker and
Ronald Dore. Subsequently, the School ran a series of courses in Japanese, both for translators and for interpreters.
1945–present at SOAS in 1946 In recognition of SOAS's role during the war, the 1946 Scarborough Commission (officially the "Commission of Enquiry into the Facilities for Oriental, Slavonic, East European and African Studies") report recommended a major expansion in provision for the study of Asia and the school benefited greatly from the subsequent largesse. The
SOAS School of Law was established in 1947 with
Seymour Gonne Vesey-FitzGerald as its first head. Growth however was curtailed by following years of economic austerity, and upon Sir
Cyril Philips assuming the directorship in 1956, the school was in a vulnerable state. Over his 20-year stewardship, Phillips transformed the school, raising funds and broadening the school's remit. The school has grown considerably over the past 30 years, from fewer than 1,000 students in the 1970s to more than 6,000 students today, nearly half of them postgraduates. SOAS is partnered with the
Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales (INALCO) in
Paris which is often considered the French equivalent of SOAS. In 2011, the
Privy Council approved changes to the school's charter allowing it to award degrees in its own name, following the trend set by fellow colleges the
London School of Economics,
University College London and
King's College London. All new students registered from September 2013 will qualify for a SOAS, University of London, award. In 2012, a new visual identity for SOAS was launched to be used in print, digital media and around the campus. The SOAS tree symbol, first implemented in 1989, was redrawn and recoloured in gold, with the new symbol incorporating the leaves of ten trees, including the
English Oak representing England; the
Bodhi,
Coral Bark Maple,
Teak representing Asia; the
Mountain Acacia,
African Pear,
Lasiodiscus representing Africa; and the
Date Palm,
Pomegranate and
Ghaf representing the Middle East.
Student politics Israel and Palestine SOAS has a student body of which many are committed
anti-Zionists. The SOAS Students' Union was the first
students' union to carry out a referendum, in 2005, to support the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions movement for goods stocked in the Students' Union, and in 2015, the SOAS Students' Union held a referendum in which its members voted to adopt the
Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions directions more generally in the university. In 2022, students occupied the management section of the university for nine days, citing the university's investments in Israel amongst other reasons, which led to the university spending £200,000 in their eviction. After
Israel's war in Gaza the university management suspended seven students
protesting the university's investments in Israel and partnership with
Haifa university, a university in Israel with three military colleges and a military base on campus. In the same period, a lecturer reported that security had removed a poster with the
Palestinian flag from her door. SOAS responded that the display of the Palestinian flag violated "safeguarding". SOAS has an active Jewish Society, the first among over 75 across UK campuses to declare itself anti-Zionist. In 2024, and in the context of
university protest camps established around the world relating to Israel's war in Gaza, SOAS director Adam Habib hosted a high-level meeting about antisemitism on campus, extending an invite to various Jewish academics on campus, but excluding any representation from the Jewish Society. On April 19, 2024, SOAS posted a job advert for a new Jewish Chaplain whose key responsibilities include supporting "the implementation of a Jewish Society within the Student [sic] Union," therefore implicating that the existing Jewish Society would be replaced by a society organised from the top down. In December 2020
The Guardian reported that SOAS refunded a student £15,000 in fees after he chose to abandon his studies as a result of the "toxic antisemitic environment" he felt had been allowed to develop on campus. Examples of matters he considered anti-Semitic are, according to the Guardian report previously cited, that being pro-Israel was described as "Zionist", the student body's public support of the BDS movement, and that his proposal to write a thesis on perceived anti-Israel bias at the UN led to a response that, in his words, "he was covering up Israeli war crimes and was a white supremacist Nazi". He additionally stated that he had seen "anti-Semitic graffiti" on campus, but did not specify what this was, leaving it unclear as to whether or not he considered statements for example in support of the BDS movement as anti-Semitic. Leading Jewish figures at the university have disagreed with his assessment, with stating that they felt "much more comfortable being outwardly Jewish, visibly Jewish, or having people know that I'm Jewish around SOAS students than I am in pretty much any other context in this country." ==Campus==