Greta Thunberg, Tracey Emin and Gary Lineker have signed an open letter backing Misan Harriman after criticism of social media posts and a video that drew a fierce reaction from critics and Jewish figures. The letter, signed by more than 245 people, calls the coverage a dishonest smear campaign.

Harriman has been chair of the Southbank Centre’s board of governors since 2021, making the row especially sensitive for one of Britain’s best-known publicly funded cultural institutions. The letter says the aim of the criticism is to “troduce and marginalise Misan,” and argues that trying to silence responsible critics of Israel by smearing them as antisemitic does not protect Britain’s Jewish community.

The intervention comes after The Telegraph accused Harriman of sharing a post that repeated a conspiracy about the Golders Green attack and questioned the amount of coverage given to the Muslim victim, Ishmail Hussein. Critics said the repost risked minimising the antisemitic nature of the attack. The same newspaper also ran a story under the headline Southbank Centre chief compares Reform victory to Holocaust, after Harriman quoted Susan Sontag in a video about Reform’s historic local election results.

Those remarks triggered a sharp backlash. David Taylor said the posts were “incredibly inappropriate for the chair of a charity board, but for anyone in the public eye.” Karen Pollock said: “How on earth could yesterday’s election results ever be comparable to the Holocaust?” Robert Jenrick called the post “disgusting” and said Harriman should be removed from his position at the Southbank Centre.

The defence of Harriman has not come only from celebrity supporters. Several Jewish cultural figures, including Benjamin Moser, Morgan Spector and Jillian Edelstein, also signed the letter, underlining that the dispute has become a broader argument over how criticism of Israel is framed in public debate. At the same time, 53,000 people had backed a campaign urging the press regulator Ipso to examine the coverage.

Harriman responded by saying that truth itself is being crushed by the very institutions that are supposed to uphold it, and that he will never whisper about the oppressed. The clash now leaves the Southbank Centre with a direct question over whether his public commentary can be separated from the demands of a chairing role at a major charity-backed institution. The answer, for now, is that the fight is not fading: it is widening.