London school to host conference on ‘Resisting Israeli Apartheid’. (Hat tip: zulubaby.)

A decision by The London University School of Oriental and African Studies to host a conference on Sunday at which academics will launch a campaign to break links with Israeli universities has raised a stir.

The school’s Palestinian Society which organized the event, called the conference Resisting Israeli Apartheid: Strategies and Principles. Jewish groups are accusing the society of inciting hatred.

Organizers are calling on the academic community to avoid cooperating with Israeli research institutes, to shun Israeli researchers by barring them from international conferences and by not awarding them any prizes. The organizers promise, however, to support any Israeli researchers who support their Palestinian counterparts in their struggle for self determination and academic freedom.

The university’s Jewish Society has lodged a complaint with the school about its decision to allow Tom Paulin to deliver a keynote address. Paulin, a poet and academic, was quoted in the Arab newspaper Al-Ahram Weekly in 2002 as saying that settlers “should be shot dead”. He later claimed that he had been misquoted.