In a massive response to articles generated by SPME, ENGAGE, Times of London, Daily Telegraph, The Sun, Harry’s Place and others, academic friends of SPME and others showered the University of Leeds with letters, emails and telephone calls requesting that Dr. Matthias Kuentzel’s two day workshop for the Leeds University Department of German on “Islamic Anti-Semitism” be reinstated after having been canceled the day of its offering after months of planning. The reasons for the cancelation have been unclear.
Dr. Steven Kibble, “As someone who has a PhD from the University of Leeds (and who works for an organisation with programmes in the Middle East) I find it abhorrent that the university should attempt to stifle free speech and ask you to reinstate the lecture to be given by Matthbias Kuentzel – obviously with due regard for security. “
Prof. Denis MacEion, Royal Literary Fund Fellow, Arabic and Islamic Studies at Newcastle University, writes: “…Having myself given a lecture on Islamic Antisemitism a few days ago, I am horrified and outraged by this decision. As an academic who has struggled with religious pressures to censor and exercise control within my field, I place a high value on academic freedom within Western universities. I appreciate those freedoms the more for having studied at Shiraz University in Iran and taught at Mohammed V University in Fez, Morocco, where such freedoms are absent. An academic book of my own has recently been blocked from publication due to pressure brought on the publishers by a religious group. That is how keenly I feel about censorship contaminating the realm of academia, and why, in part, I am spurred to write to you in these terms. Academic freedom is the very foundation of all work carried in universities and colleges, and without it, as I know you must be very well aware, the entire project of unbiased, free, and honest academic teaching and research slips into degradation and abuse.
Prof. Diethard Pallaschke, University of Karlsruhe (Germany) and chair of SPME-Germany, comments: “I understand this sudden cancellation as a sell-out of academic freedom, especially the freedom of speech. “
Prof. Jeffrey Herf, Department of Government and Politics, University of Maryland reminds Leeds University officials, “…Some parts of British academia, whose traditions of pluralism, academic freedom and free speech are one of its grandest contributions to world civilization, is showing another face to the world, namely that of fear, intolerance, and failure to protect academic freedom. Mathias Kuentzel has made important contributions to the debate about the legacy of Nazism in the Middle East. His work is firmly rooted in evidence and scholarly argument. It raises serious questions of debate….”
Prof. Stanley Dubinsky, a member of the SPME Board from the Department of Linguistics, University of South Carolina wrote: ” It is my understanding that the lecture and workshop were cancelled on account of “security concerns,” which I take to be the result of threats of violence emanating from groups who might consider themselves offended by opinions that Dr. Kuentzel would be likely to express. If the reports that I have received are true, then I must say that I am embarrassed for you and the institution that you represent. It would appear, from the outside, that the University of Leeds’ commitment to
academic freedom and the pursuit of truth extends only the the inner edge of what is comfortable and what requires no resolve or inner fortitude. I find myself, in this context, wondering whether the heads of Leeds in the 1930s would have cancelled a workshop on Hitler because of threats from Oswald Mosley and his British brownshirts. Somehow, I doubt that they would have been cowed in this way. If there is some reason, other than cowardice, convenience, and comfort, which justified the cancellation of Dr. Kuentzel’s event, I would be pleased to hear of it, and would share the news with my colleagues here in North America. “
Lionel Tiger, Darwin Professor of Anthropology at Rutgers comments: ” I am acquainted with the important work of Dr Sim Ravidovitch who graced your university as a brave and distinguished scholar, editor, and writer during World War Two. He must be turning in his grave to learn of his and your University’s capitulation to precisely the forces which so ripped civility and thought during that war. It is shameful, craven, and – worse – now conventionally and unimaginatively ugly. Your fastidious fuss about security pales in significance aside the grave situation which permits you to tolerate a recurrence of what produced wartime violence. Please reverse this miserable decision.”
Finally, Gustav J. Beck, MD, NYU School of Medicine (ret.) writes: As a survivor of the Holocaust, who lived through the days when Great Britain tried to ignore Hitler’s threats under Chamberland’s leadership, I recognize a parallel in the yielding of your colleges’ administration to avoid perceived problems from malcontents within your students’ and possibly faculty’s ranks, resulting in the cancellation of the seminar, planned to be conducted by Matthias Kuentzel.
