The University and College Union maintains an email list for its activists, which is administered and monitored by the union. As Harry’s Place readers know, the email list traffic is dominated by political extremists and almost entirely given over to their obsessive and nasty campaign to boycott Israeli academics.
The extremists are countered by a small number of Jews and anti-racists, many of them supporters of Engage. They are routinely defamed as racists, imperialists, Apartheid supporters, liars and conspirators. Quite a few of the Jews and anti-racists have been chucked off the list by the UCU administrators, arbitrarily, and usually for making public their complaints about the racism on the list.
There have been complaints to UCU about racism on its activist list. UCU has dismissed them all as baseless.
One of the formal complaints was made in relation to a series of particularly poisonous and nasty emails written by a Sheffield-based UCU activist called Jenna Delich. That complaint was also dismissed.
Yesterday Jenna Delich wrote the following message on the activist list in order to support a boycott of Israeli academics:
John,
In support to your link this may be a long but also an interesting reading:
http://www.davidduke.com/general/humanitarian-disaster_595.html
No comment necessary. The facts are speaking for themselves.
Jenna
JENNA DELICH
The website which she links to is the website of David Duke, who is the former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, and perhaps the most notorious racist and anti-semite in the world. The article itself was originally posted on an extremist conspiracy nut website, but appears only on David Duke’s website. It is therefore reasonable to infer that Jenna Delich reads and takes her information on world events from neo Nazis.
So, in a nutshell, the position is this. The UCU refuses to take action against viciousness against Jews and anti-racists on its own activist list, and endorses their exclusion from that email list when they defend themselves. Meanwhile, the UCU is circulating links to David Duke’s website on behalf of Delich.
What a wonderful institution UCU is.
UPDATE: Some commentators have said that they’ve heard that Jenna Delich has received threats of an unspecified nature. We do not believe that this photo could in any way exacerbate any such threats. Ms Delich’s prominence results first, from her conduct, and secondly, from the publicity generated by attempt to close us down. However, we feel that even if there is the remotest chance that this photo could contribute towards threats to her safety – now that discussion of this affair has circulated particularly widely – we’d rather take the road of caution and delete it.