There’s been a spat on the University College Union mailing list for a while, with the rabid anti-Israelis having a pop at Jews. However things went a little further this week as one of the posters decided to link to David Duke, the ex-Ku Klux Klan boss and fascist activist, to support a friend of hers. Not surprisingly this raised a few hackles and David T of Harry’s Place highlighted this.
Apparently this has resulted in a complaint to their ISP, and the site has been taken down, under threat of libel. In a gesture of solidarity I am reproducing David’s post here.
UCU and the David Duke Fan
David T
August 22nd 2008, 5:58pm
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 Klu 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.
Jenna Delich
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.
For what it’s worth I don’t know if Delich is a racist, or an anti-semite and I am not that bothered. I don’t think the political views expressed by some university lecturer are that interesting. However I get all kinds of cross when people attempt to censor speech, especially when they get called on something they have said. Delich has not, so far as I can see, denied linking to Duke, she just seems unhappy that it has been made public. Silly, silly academics.
written by La Bete
\\ tags: censorship, delich, hurryupharry, libel
