I was a student at London University’s School of Slavonic and East European Studies between 1995 and 1999. The college was based in Senate House opposite the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) –the scene of some recently abhorrent behaviour by anti-Israeli/pro-Palestinian activists. I passed SOAS every day during my four years at university. I loved the atmosphere in and around the place which seemed much more vibrant than my tiny college.

During those four years there were a couple of occassions when anti-Israeli leaflets were handed out to passing students. I remember a couple of times when the accusations located within bordered upon the offensive. But I let them pass, thinking it was nothing more than harmless student radicalism.

So I was heartened to read that an attempt by the same SOAS activists and the SOAS Student Union to block a talk by Israeli embassy political councilor Roey Gilad was defeated. I was even more impressed when I learned that the union was overruled by SOAS director, Colin Bundy, and that Trevor Phillips, the chair of the Commission for Racial Equality, turned up unannounced and delivered an impromptu talk on freedom of speech. For more details see Norman Geras.

It’s about time Jewish students and pro-Israeli students were given some backing at SOAS.

But it also made me wonder about the recent troubles at Columbia University in relation to pro-Palestinian professor Rashid Khalidi. Khalidi has been the target of a prolonged attack by the David Project and the New York Sun for months now because of anti-Israeli bias in his lectures. However, I hear that a number of Jewish students at Columbia are extremely annoyed at the way Khalidi and the university are being portrayed. They feel the whole thing is being blown out of proportion and is damaging the reputation of the university.

The most recent attacks on Khalidi in the New York Sun led to him being barred by the New York City Board of Education from teaching public school teachers about the Middle East. Columbia has criticized the City for its knee-jerk reaction but why isn’t it doing more to defend him?

Surely universities should be places of debate, where people with different views (however radical) are free to express them as long is it is done in a constructive manner. The more universities welcome Israeli councilors and Palestinian lecturers the better we can all understand each other.

For a balaced view of the situation see this recent article in The Forward.

Meanwhile, here is an excerpt from the latest salvo printed in the New York Sun opinion page on Friday:

Nat Hentoff is quoted in the Forward as suggesting that instead of dumping Mr. Khalidi, the city “should have brought in a team teacher for the course so that it wouldn’t be one-sided indoctrination.” He’s a First Amendment expert who reckons the American Constitution requires New York taxpayers to pay for two Middle East teacher-trainers, one who says, wrongly, that Israel’s “occupation” is the longest in modern history and another that says it is not; one that says, wrongly, that shooting Israeli soldiers is legitimate resistance and one that says it is not. Maybe the First Amendment requires having a teacher trainer who says the Earth is flat and another who says it’s round.

This article also appears on Betty The Crow News.

UPDATE 5:00pm EST: I just found this in today’s Columbia Spectator

The University Senate returned to its discussion of improving Columbia’s grievance procedures on Friday in response to the ongoing MEALAC controversy, but it began with President Bollinger’s first public criticism of the New York City Department of Education’s recent dismissal of Rashid Khalidi from a program for secondary school teachers on instruction about the Middle East.

Bollinger called the dismissal of Khalidi, Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies, a “very, very serious matter” and said that the University believes the Department of Education’s actions were “wrong.”

Spotted outside a bar in Park Slope, Brooklyn.

Somehow, I don’t think this would be such an attraction in the UK. In fact, it makes you wonder what the Newcastle Girls look like. If they’re anything lke the ones I saw during my two years in Newquay it would put me off Newcastle Brown for life.

Over the past year, I’ve been astonished and delighted by the quality of British political blogs. What’s happened reminds me of the punk explosion when I was a teenager. People are ignoring the established system and beating it at its own game. Obvioulsy, there’s a great deal of dross, but what is heartening is how much original and intelligent journalism is coming from people entirely outside the media class, whose only chance of talking to the world would once have been confined to a few paragraphs on a letters’ page or a few minutes on a radio phone-in.

Nick Cohen Observer columnist/blogger in the new Observer blog.

I’m not so sure how much of a first the new Observer blog is, but it’s an extremely exciting development for me as a sometime reporter and a semi-addicted blogger. If anything, my one complaint is that it is so full of interesting posts (and is only going to become more and more crammed with goodies) that I don’t know how I am supposed to keep up.

How long before the others follow suit?

Lew on League has been cut off! The recent blizzard which deposited between 2 cm and 3 cm of snow in the Leeds area has severed Lew’s NTL links, leaving him without email. However, he has asked me to pass on his best wishes and thoughts for the weekend’s rugby action: that Bradford will make it three in a row when they lose to Wigan this evening; and that Lew will be in the north stand at Headingley on Sunday to watch Leeds beat Widnes (although he doesn’t think it will be a walkover).

Some people on this site and elsewhere constantly accuse the Left of supporting or at least being apologetic of Palestinian violence against civilians. My opinion on this matter is straight forward: The only consistent attitude towards terrorism in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is to be against its use by both sides.

So begins an interesting blog by Moishe Oofnik at Jewschool.