The Oxford Union has a tradition of hosting some of the world's most prominent individuals across politics, academia, and popular culture ranging from Albert Einstein and Elton John to Sir Winston Churchill, Ronald Reagan, Queen Elizabeth II and Mahathir Mohamad.

Many former Presidents of the Union have gone on to hold high office in the UK and the Commonwealth including William Gladstone, Ted Heath, Boris Johnson, and Benazir Bhutto.

[5] The Oxford Union has long associated itself with freedom of speech, most famously by debating and passing the motion "That this House would under no circumstances fight for its King and country" in 1933.

The debate polarized opinion across the country, with the Daily Telegraph running an article headlined "DISLOYALTY AT OXFORD: GESTURE TOWARDS THE REDS".

Sir Edward Heath records in his memoirs that Churchill was then chased around Oxford by undergraduates who intended to debag him (i.e., humiliate him by removing his trousers), and was then fined by the police for being illegally parked.

[8] In 1964, the Oxford Union invited American civil rights activist Malcolm X to speak on the motion, "This House Believes Extremism in Defence of Liberty is no Vice; Moderation in the Pursuit of Justice is no Virtue".

[10] In 1985, David Lange, prime minister of New Zealand, debated against the American evangelist Jerry Falwell the motion "This House Believes Nuclear Weapons are Morally Indefensible.

[16] Members of a number of other institutions, together with those participating in some visiting study programmes in Oxford, are also eligible to apply for temporary membership.

The Old Library is best known for its Pre-Raphaelite paintings by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris, referred to collectively as the Oxford Union murals.

[citation needed] The debating chamber features busts of such notables as Roy Jenkins, Edward Heath, Michael Heseltine, George Curzon and William Gladstone.

[citation needed] As recently as the 1970s the Oxford Union still provided a full silver service dining room for its members which, like its famous bar, was the afternoon and evening venue of choice for many of the university's leading undergraduate journalists and politicos.

To be invited to dine at the large table in the bay window - the usual domain of the Union's president - was considered the acme of attainment in that particular sphere of the university.

[25][26] Similarly, the Union's two libraries were extensively used by that same cadre of undergraduates (principally humanities students) who were rushing at the last minute to complete the obligatory weekly essay for their formal university education.

Speaking for 90 minutes in front of 1,300 students, Simpson spoke of racism in the Los Angeles Police Department, and said he was sorry for hitting his wife, Nicole.

[37] In November 2007, President Luke Tryl sparked controversy by inviting Holocaust denier David Irving and British National Party leader Nick Griffin to speak at a Union forum on the topic of free speech.

Smaller debates were eventually held with Irving and Griffin in separate rooms, amid criticism that the police and Union officials had not foreseen the degree of unrest which the controversial invitations would arouse.

[41] The President of Oxford University Student Union, Martin McCluskey, strongly criticised the decision to proceed with the debate, saying that providing Irving and Griffin with a platform for their extreme views afforded them undue legitimacy.

[42] Following the event, some, including Oxford MP Evan Harris, criticised the No Platform Policy adopted by the Student Union.

The speech went ahead as planned, albeit delayed by the protesters blockading the Union's main entrance, and briefly breaking into the building.

[47] In 2018, human rights activist Heather Marsh accused the Oxford Union of censorship and violating a contractual obligation when they failed to post video of a "Whistleblowing" panel in which she appeared to the official Oxford Union YouTube channel, allegedly at the request of a fellow panelist, former CIA operative David Shedd.

[48] In October 2019, before the annual 'No Confidence' debate, blind Ghanaian graduate student Ebenezer Azamati was violently removed from the hall for refusing to relinquish his seat, which had been reserved for a committee member.

This led to protests from the university's AfriSoc society on Azmati's behalf, and soon gained national news media coverage.

The event went ahead, but shortly after it started, a protestor glued themselves to the floor of the union's debating chamber before subsequently being removed by police.

The next day, two letters were sent to the union's trustees and senior officers, signed by the majority of the governing body and all of the non-white ex-presidents in statu pupillari.

These alleged that the society's disciplinary procedures were "opaque", "compromised" and had been repeatedly “disproportionately targeting individuals from non-traditional backgrounds”, as well as reporting that the tribunal's clerk, the acting returning officer, had been overheard making explicitly Islamophobic remarks both in reference to the defendant and more broadly, Muslim women.

During the debate one of the speakers for the opposition, Mosab Hassan Yousef declared that Palestinians do not exist and accused many of the students in attendance of being ‘terrorists’.

[61] He claimed that interventions from the floor were not properly dealt with by the chair, contributing to a hostile environment for the opposition speakers, and that adequate information was not given as to who would be speaking.

Yoseph Haddad similarly accused the Oxford Union of improper conduct, stating that that his removal from the chamber was unjust and that comments in support of the October 7 attack were made.

Nitschke received a second e-mail cancelling the invitation "in the interests of there being a 'fair debate'", and was told other speakers were unwilling to speak alongside him.

[69] According to Dixon, the speakers who successfully pressured the Union to withdraw Nitschke's invitation were a member of the public, whose brother had undergone assisted death, and British euthanasia campaigner Michael Irwin.