Go to Engage for a full report by our friend Mira Vogel on last night’s London meeting which brought together David Hirsh, Jon Pike, Robert Fine, Les Back and Anthony Julius to discuss Hirsh’s recent paper Antisemitism and Anti-Zionism: Cosmopolitan Reflections.

Those on the panel, and many in the audience, were key players in the successful defeat of the proposed academic boycott of Israel.
I wasn’t there, sadly, but reading Mira’s report, it sounds like Anthony Julius - erudite lawyer and author of a brilliant study of the poet T.S Eliot’s antisemitism - stole the show. Anthony remarked that “rubbish” - what is known in the US as “garbage” - is a good analogy for antisemitism. Rubbish is rubbish, but the study of rubbish is scholarship.

Couldn’t agree more, even if it does mean getting one’s hands dirty.

UPDATE: Listen to the sound files here.