UJS allegations open to question

In a letter to the Jewish Chronicle, the Open University (OU) has defended itself against allegations, by the Union of Jewish Students (UJS), that there was "anti-Semitic material on its website" and that the OU was "slow and generally unhelpful in dealing with this issue".

The UJS, for those who don't know, is a Zionist organisation with representation at the World Zionist Congress.

In his letter, Derek Prior of the OU points out that the complaints the UJS's Danny Stone was referring to were made "19 months ago and concerned a closed e-conference" and that a "small amount of offensive anti-Semitic material was removed by the moderator and disciplinary action was taken against the perpetrators."

Then, apparently, Danny Stone "submitted a list of demands....including an insistence that the university's student conference moderator undertake additional training from from the UJS [!] and that we meet the National Union of Students racism (sic) co-ordinator." The OU refused. But cop this for anti-semitic material:

"In the original list of so-called. [my emphasis], anti-Semitic material...a great deal of the comment concerned discussion of the government of Israel's policy on Palestine." This, it seems, is what the UJS was trying to prevent.

Derek Prior rounds off by saying:

The OU has no tolerance of religious or racist abuse and deplores the comments that were removed from this particular conference, but defends freedom of conscience and speech. The university has sent a full dossier to the Commons Home Affairs Committee to correct inaccuracies in the UJS report.

So let's just see.