Monday, February 28, 2011

Yet another update to the LSE story

After I first raised the alarm about the new Middle East Centre at the LSE (I discovered that its publicity material featured a map that eradicated the State of Israel) I followed up with details of my correspondence with Sir Howard Davies (the LSE Director) here and here.

The last article contained Davies's helpful response to my last letter. His response (29 Jan 2011) was:

"Your comments are not worthy of reply."

Since my correspondence the whole issue of LSE's funding by Arab tyrants (which was the focus of my complaints) has become a big story (mainly because of the Gadaffy money given to LSE, but also because reporters started looking into the Middle East Centre and its funding as I had). Dominic Kennedy had a big article about it in the Times on Saturday (you can see Melanie Phillips's comments about that here). Apparently Dominic Kennedy has followed up with an interview with Howard Davies in the Times today (see Harry's Place piece here, as the Times costs to read online) which includes the following:

'Sir Howard defended the LSE’s new Middle East Centre, half of whose board support an academic boycott of Israel. “The biggest donor to the School in the past year is George Soros, who of course is of Jewish origin. We operate, I believe, a very balanced view.”’

Apart from the hilarious 'some of my best friends are Jewish' angle to this, what make Davies's' response all the more incredible is that he is unaware that Soros has been so comprehensively exposed as the key player  in international attempts to deligitimize Israel with his funding of a whole range of anti-Israel organisations.

I'd say it is time for Davies to resign.

Update: Davies has resigned!

2 comments:

Juniper in the Desert said...

Have you seen this commentary?

http://hurryupharry.org/2011/02/28/comedy-corner-with-sir-howard-davies-of-the-lse/

Mark Wright said...

Yes - I linked to the Harry's Place article.