Fact-check: Fabricated post claims Oxford disqualified Imran Khan from Chancellor race due to support for Palestine
University of Oxford confirms to Geo Fact Check that no such post was made from its official X account
Updated Monday Oct 28 2024
Britain’s University of Oxford will be electing its next chancellor between October 28 and November 25, for which one of the applicants was Pakistan’s jailed former prime minister Imran Khan.
However, Khan did not make it to the final list of candidates. Soon after the candidates were announced, a screenshot of a post on X (Twitter), purportedly by Oxford University, began making the rounds. The post claimed that the University had disqualified Khan due to his support for Palestine and the Afghan Taliban.
The post is self-generated.
Claim
A social media user on X shared an alleged post by the University of Oxford, dated October 17, which read:
“Accepting the request of the Government of Pakistan, we disqualify Imran Khan from the race for the chancellor election. That Imran Khan is against Israel and in favor of Palestine. It has also been said that Imran Khan is a supporter of Taliban and wants Islamic Sharia law in Pakistan.” (sic)
The screenshot was also shared widely on WhatsApp, TikTok and Facebook.
Fact
The University of Oxford did not post any such message on its official X (Twitter) account.
“I can confirm that this is not a tweet from the University of Oxford's X account,” a spokesperson of the University responded to Geo Fact Check via email. She further shared a post, dated October 16, that announced the candidates for the role of Chancellor.
Separately, Geo Fact Check could not find the supposed post dated October 17 on the University’s timeline. Geo Fact Check also checked Wayback Machine to locate any deleted posts by the University on that day, but could not locate any.
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