Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from July, 2008

CONTROVERSY AND CRISIS

It's out! The book you've been waiting for! The book others have been dreading! Academic Studies Press (Massachusetts, USA) http://www.academicstudiespress.com/ Controversy and Crisis: Studies in the History of the Jews in Modern Britain - by Geoffrey Alderman 978-1-934843-22-2 320 pp. cloth $75.00 PUBLISHED 15 JULY 2008 http://www.amazon.com/Controversy-Crisis-Studies-History-Britain/dp/1934843229/ref=sr_1_15?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1217355933&sr=8-15 Professor Geoffrey Alderman is the acknowledged authority on the history of the Jews in modern Britain. During an academic career spanning forty years he has produced some of the most authoritative and controversial studies in this field, lighting up the dark corners of the Jewish existence in Great Britain and revealing secrets the Anglo-Jewish communities would rather have kept from public view. In this book he presents sixteen of these essays, covering fields as disparate as the history of the Jewish vote in the UK, t

BRITISH GOVERNMENT'S CONTRIBUTION TOWARDS ACADEMIC LINKS WITH ISRAEL CONDEMNED AS "AN INSULT"

BRITISH GOVERNMENT'S CONTRIBUTION TOWARDS ACADEMIC LINKS WITH ISRAEL CONDEMNED AS "AN INSULT" Prime Minister Gordon Brown's announcement today that the British government will only contribute £20,000 [$40,000] towards an academic co-operation programme with Israel has been condemned as "an insult" by leading Anglo-Jewish historian Professor Geoffrey Alderman. Professor Alderman, who teaches politics and history at the University of Buckingham, England, but who is also Visiting Professor at York St John University and Emeritus Professor at Middlesex University (London) and Touro College (New York), said: "Compared to the money that the British government is giving to the Palestinian Authority, this is an insult. I would throw this back in their faces. If the government was seriously interested in a programme to foster academic cooperation, it would think in terms of millions." Most of the money for the planned academic exchange scheme will come from

JEWISH EXAMPLE SHOWS THERE IS PLENTY OF ROOM FOR SHARIA WITHIN ENGLISH LAW

JEWISH EXAMPLE SHOWS THERE IS PLENTY OF ROOM FOR SHARIA WITHIN ENGLISH LAW [FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE] The experience of British Jewry demonstrates that there is plenty of room for aspects of Sharia to be incorporated within English law without in any way compromising the cardinal principle that all British citizens must be ‘equal under the law.’ This is the major theme of an address to be given by Professor Geoffrey Alderman to the Islamic Shari’a Council on Sunday 20 July 2008. Professor Alderman, who teaches politics and history at the University of Buckingham, is the author of The Jewish Community in British Politics and Modern British Jewry (both published by Oxford University Press); he writes a weekly column for the Jewish Chronicle. He and his family are practising Orthodox Jews. Supporting controversial remarks made earlier this year by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Professor Alderman, in his address, traces the history of the interface between Jews, Judaism and the English leg

Examine The Evidence

In today's Times Higher Education I invite Peter Williams, chief executive of the UK Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Eucation, to examine the evidence I have collected supporting my view that the External Examiner system is no longer 'fit for purpose.' http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=402706&c=2

JFS Legal Rulling

Following the publication of Mr Justice Munby's ruling on a legal challenge to the admissions policy of the Jews' Free School, Kenton, London, I have issued the following statement: " Mr Justice Munby has ruled that the JFS did not unlawfully discriminate against a boy whose mother was converted by a non-orthodox religious body. He also said that the JFS's policy "of giving preference to children who are Jewish, applying Orthodox Jewish principles" was "essential" to its legitimate aim of pursuing its Orthodox ethos. But the cases that I have been concerned with over several years are ones where the mother's conversion was by the supreme orthodox religious authorities in Israel. So, to that extent, I welcome the judge's words. In the two cases I have been concerned with the children remain fully Jewish in Israel, even though the Chief Rabbi of the United Synagogue in the UK refuses to recognize their religious status. This is (of course) d