Why Professor Geoffrey Alderman Is Wrong Regarding The Southampton Conference: A professor writes ...

Below is a guest blog by Professor William Rubinstein, who has held chairs of history at Deakin University in Australia and at the University of Wales, and who like Professor Geoffrey Alderman has written books and articles on Anglo-Jewish history.

This guest blog criticises Professor Alderman's contention in the Jewish Chronicle here that the cancellation of the scheduled conference at Southampton University entitled "International Law and the State of Israel: Legitimacy, Responsibility and Exceptionalism" is unjustified and regrettable.

Writes Professor Rubinstein:

Many of Professor Geoffrey Alderman's columns in the Jewish Chronicle are perceptive and cogent.

But many are not, and his most recent column – "An own goal in Southampton" – is not. In fact, it is totally wrong and mischievous, and I would be surprised if many of his normal supporters would agree with him.

The proposed Conference at Southampton University, which was to be held on 17-19 April, is not an academic conference in the normal sense.

By definition, academic discussions entail a variety of opinions, and, by definition, the organisers of academic conferences, while they may have a private opinion about the subject of the conference, even one passionately held, are neutral and scrupulously fair-minded about the presentation of contrary opinions

From its nature, the Southampton conference is the very opposite of a normal academic conference which is value-neutral on the subject under discussion.

This conference is, on the contrary, an academic lynch mob which makes no secret of its predetermined stance.

Its Organisers' Statement available online makes this clear: the conference exists to examine the "ongoing forced displacement of Palestinians and associated injustices" and one of its aims is "to educate a whole new generation [sic] of young Palestinian legal and political scholars about new possible arguments and concepts in order to use International Law better [sic]  in a way that expands legal argument beyond the '1967 occupation' discourse" [sic; – turgid language, poorly expressed and almost incomprehensible, is often part of the rhetoric of the far left, even – indeed, especially – at universities].

The organisers have provided an online list of the speakers and their topics at the conference, which makes for interesting reading and leaves one in no doubt how utterly unfair it is.

Apart from Alderman's paper, every one of the other fifteen or so papers at the gathering are venomously hostile to Israel's existence as a state, invariably from the international  Loony Left.

"On Comparative Settler Colonialism and American Expansionism,""Zionist Colonisation Strategies in Palestine," and "Israel and the Crimes of Apartheid: A Systematic Perspective" are typical examples of the fare to be served up.

It does not appear to have entered Geoffrey Alderman's head that he is obviously and manifestly being used as the token Zionist at an anti-Zionist hate-fest in order to give it some fig leaf of respectability as a bona-fide academic conference, of which it is the very opposite.

One wonders, too, if he, or any other Jewish spokesman would have taken part in a conference organised in Nazi Germany on the topic: "The Jewish Race: A Mortal Danger to Aryan Germany"?

How many would have dignified the topic and its assumptions by criticising this "viewpoint," in an audience composed in all likelihood of Storm Troopers, the SS, and other assorted thugs, every one of whom was an antisemite and a Hitler worshipper?

Not many, and nor should they.

Meanwhile ....

Alderman's point that many of the conference supporters are academics is also without merit: many of the most sedulous supporters of the Nazis in Germany, including at least two Nobel Prize winners, were academics or those with a string of degrees, for instance Dr. Goebbels.

I would personally have no objection to a bona-fide academic conference whose title was "Mandate Palestine in 1948: Contested Histories" or the like, in which a clash of opinions
– a genuine clash – is to be expected and encouraged.

The Southampton conference is the very opposite of this.

And if the organisers of this conference want to relocate to a non-academic venue and hold a tendentious  gathering unconnected with a university, that is their business.

A Hamas training camp in southern Lebanon suggests itself as an appropriate venue.

Blackballed by the Belfast Festival: pro-Israel scholar Professor Geoffrey Alderman

“He’s a Zionist – get him out of here!” A hiss of that sort, presumably, was the reason that a distinguished British historian had his invitation to speak at this year’s Belfast Festival removed – and at the eleventh hour! A case, no less, of belated blackballing and suppression of free speech  (hat tip: Jonathan Hoffman, over at Thejc.com blogs) that can best be described as shameful and squalid.

The Queen’s University of Belfast hosts the Belfast Festival, which last year, if I'm not mistaken,  featured Noam Chomsky as a speaker. In the lead-up to this year’s event, the university’s pro-vice-chancellor noted with pleasure that “The content and subjects [to be] portrayed address topics such as the feminism, teenage life and the war on terror. There is hard hitting drama, invigorating music, spectacular dance and a series of exquisite talks and tours. The Ulster Bank Belfast Festival at Queen’s truly has something for everybody.”

One of the speakers who were lined up to participate at the event is Professor Geoffrey Alderman, who has had an illustrious academic career.  The author of a number of pioneering works on the evolution of the Anglo-Jewish community, he is a regular columnist – pungent and pugnacious – in Britain’s leading Jewish newspaper, the Jewish Chronicle.

On 20 September this year Professor Alderman received an email from Graeme Farrow, Director of the Belfast Festival, inviting him to join a panel convened to discuss “Conflict in the Middle East”, and due to take place on the evening of Monday, 18 October – last evening, in fact. “I would be delighted if you would join our panel”, wrote Mr Farrow, and Professor Alderman was pleased to accept the invitation.

Imagine the professor’s bewilderment when, on the afternoon of Friday, 15 October 2010, he received a message rescinding the invitation. In his own words, as quoted by Jonathan Hoffman: ‘I was shocked to receive an email from Mr. Farrow informing me that “a mistake” had been made in extending the invitation to me and that although I could join the audience the event was to go ahead without my panel participation. In effect, I was being “disinvited.” In a series of email exchanges with Mr. Farrow I refused to accept this situation, and I have made it clear to him that I intend to travel to Belfast ... and shall expect to participate fully as a member of the panel. I am frankly appalled at the way I have been treated, for which I hold Queen’s University, Belfast, responsible.’

As good as his word, Professor Alderman travelled to Belfast yesterday. According to the Jewish Chronicle (18 October), Farrow explained that he had made “a mistake in agreeing to extend an invitation to you Geoffrey without consulting the academics in question”. The paper reported that 'following a meeting with Mr Farrow early this afternoon, Professor Alderman said he had given the organisers three options: to allow him to join the panel and if his fellow-panellists were to object, "they could stay away": to let him to take part while sitting on a separate table: or simply to call off the event.'

But his attempts to reach a modus vivendi were unavailing. The discussion proceeded without him. Significantly, the two panellists who took part – having not been subject to blackballing like Professor Alderman – are two academics not known for their glowing tenderness towards Israel. Baghdad-born Professor Avi Shlaim, Professor of International Relations at the University of Oxford, who lived in Israel during his childhood and adolescence, ranks with Ilan Pappe as one of the most active serial defamers of Israel in British academic circles today.  An insight into his attitude may be read here: http://jewishrefugees.blogspot.com/2005/08/inside-mind-of-avi-shlaim

The other panellist, Professor Beverley Milton-Edwards, of the School of Politics, International Studies and Philosophy at Queen's University Belfast, has authored such works as The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: a People's War and, very recently, Hamas: The Islamic Resistance Movement. She helped to found Conflicts Forum, advocates dialogue with Hamas, and on 2 September this year gave an interview on that theme to BBC Radio with not a hint of Hamas’s antisemitic Charter. In fact, Hamas almost came across as “Mother Theresa”, to invoke the words of that wonderful Latma song, “We Con the World”! For more about Professor Milton-Edwards see http://www.melaniephillips.com/diary/?p=1555

Blogged Jonathan Hoffman last evening: "Professor Alderman is now sitting in the hotel in Belfast while the meeting proceeds at the University. He was unable to negotiate his presence on the Panel and unable to get the meeting cancelled in view of the disgusting violation of free speech. Please protest now about this outrage to the Vice-Chancellor, Prof Peter Gregson: Executive PA: Mrs Fionnuala Newton - (0)28 9097 5134; Secretary Mrs Monica Salomeia (0)28 9097 3131
E-mail: vc.office@qub.ac.uk "