You have published letters complaining because the University of Southampton has cancelled a conference, the object of which was to try to delegitimise the existence of the state of Israel.
Supporters of the conference have been claiming that to cancel this event was a denial of free speech.
May I just remind these people that not one of them protested to the Echo last August, when this same university prevented an academic speaking.
He was a professor in engineering sciences at Ben-Gurion University, Mark Auslender, who had been due to speak about optical sensors and their use in healthcare.
Professor Auslender’s ‘crime’ was to be an Israeli, and his planned address, at the invitation of Southampton’s Optoelectronics Research Centre, was cancelled because of concerns about security when anti-Israel lovers of free speech began demonstrating outside where he was due to speak.
B RAYWID, Southampton.
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