I ve been mulling over David Miller – J-Wire jwire.com.au - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from jwire.com.au Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
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Mar. 4, 2021
As Rogers and Hammerstein almost asked, how do you solve a problem like David Miller? A professor of sociology at the University of Bristol, Miller has become the focus of angry controversy. According to his critics, he spreads hateful, antisemitic ideas. His defenders on the left and within the Palestine solidarity movement invoke academic freedom and laud him as a doughty comrade.
The stakes are high. Antisemitism remains a persistent form of racism which we are bound to combat. Yet we relinquish academic freedom at our peril. Reconciling these competing imperatives has been difficult.
Bristol University’s response to protests from Jewish students appears complacent and maladroit. The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism, adopted by the University in 2019 and which Jewish communal bodies and the government’s antisemitism adviser, Lord Mann, hoped would provide a valuable weapon with which to fight ca