This is a guest post by James Mendelsohn
UCU is putting on three one-day seminars about the dangers of anti-Semitism to coincide with Holocaust Memorial Day on January 27 2010. The sessions will cover areas including: The Holocaust, Jewish Resistance to the Holocaust and Historical Anti-Semitism in Europe: Patterns and Explanations.
Whilst the presence of Bob Fine is certainly welcome, I’m unconvinced. For a start, the sessions are chaired by Tom Hickey.
It will be interesting to see whether, when Dr Hickey chairs sessions about the Holocaust, he stands in front of a reading list featuring the work of a Holocaust denier, or whether hedecides that questions about contemporary hate speech against Jews should not be answered.
It will also be interesting to see whether any other leading lights from UCU will be there to defend contemporary hate speech against Jews. And, of course, it will be interesting to see whether UCU now starts to take meaningful action against antisemitism within its own house. But I’m not holding my breath, I’m afraid.
