Introducing Sam Williams, Formerly of Balliol College, Oxford
Oct 19, 2025 4:00 pm
By Robert Spencer
9 Comments
Of all the Oxford colleges, Balliol is the most famous and, many think, has the most distinguished history. The classicist Benjamin Jowett, translator of Plato, was the celebrated head of Balliol beginning in the 1860s. A famous bit of doggerel about Jowett goes thus:Here come I, my name is Jowett.
All there is to know I know it.
I am Master of this College,
What I don’t know isn’t knowledge! Balliol graduates have held prominent positions in politics, including four prime ministers, senior cabinet ministers, and civil servants. So Sam Williams’s parents must have been very proud when he was admitted to Balliol, and now, no doubt, are horrified that their son, once a “swot” at secondary school, has been spending all his time neglecting his studies and instead taking part in endless pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel demonstrations. Still worse, Oxford has now suspended him, and he has been arrested to boot for encouraging racial hate and for incitement to murder.
More on Sam Williams can be found here: “Oxford student arrested after chanting ‘put Zios in the ground,’” by Poppy Wood and Tom McArdle, Telegraph, October 15, 2025:A University of Oxford student has been arrested after he led chants for Gaza to “put the Zios in the ground”, The Telegraph can reveal.
The Metropolitan Police said it had arrested a 20-year-old man in the early hours of Wednesday as part of an investigation into a demonstration in central London last Saturday.
On Wednesday, The Telegraph revealed that Samuel Williams, a philosophy, politics and economics student at Balliol College, was suspended by the university over the chant, which repeated: “Gaza, Gaza make us proud, put the Zios in the ground.”
The Met Police has not confirmed whether Mr Williams is the arrested student.
A spokesman for the force said: “Officers investigating chants filmed at a Palestine Coalition demonstration in central London on Saturday, 11 October, have made an arrest. A 20-year-old man was arrested at an address in Oxfordshire on Wednesday Oct 15 on suspicion of inciting racial hatred. He remains in police custody.”… He repeated the chant several times, using the word “Zio” as an abbreviation of “Zionists,” with several others around him joining in.
This is unambiguously a call to murder “Zios”— that is, Zionists. More than 90% of world Jewry consists of Zionists. Sam Williams’ little rhyming couplet is, therefore, an incitement to racial hatred and to murder Jews.
Mr. Williams, from placid Tunbridge Wells, Kent, where his fair-to-middling upper-middle-class family home is at the end of a comfortable cul-de-sac, is about to enter a world of woe. He is now being investigated by the police for incitement to murder. When the police conducted a search of his home, they found several rifles and ammunition, for which he has yet to offer an explanation. The police will have to charge him with “incitement to racial hatred” and “incitement to murder.” Oxford, in turn, will likely turn the temporary suspension of the baby gauleiter into a permanent one.
It’s going to be pleasant to see what Sam Williams will now almost certainly face. He will be booted out of Oxford, and who knows what other institution wants to court conceivable trouble by admitting him. He may face a year of prison, or possibly even more — a salutary lesson for others in Britain who may be thinking of marching around wishing death on Israelis, or on Jews. A criminal record won’t endear him to potential employers. And wherever he applies, whether for admission to another university or for a job, one internet search will reveal his unpleasant past and put the kibosh on his plans. Williams should have thought that out ahead of time. But thinking is not his strong suit. |
