Tom Williams | 20 October 2023 | Times Higher Education

A British-Israeli historian has criticised the “spineless” decision to cancel a lecture he was due to give at a UK university after the institution’s executive team pulled the plug due to concerns about the “well-being and safety” of staff and students.

Avi Shlaim, emeritus fellow of St Antony’s College, Oxford and a former professor of international relations there, was due to speak as part of a “distinguished lecture series” at Liverpool Hope University on 25 October but was told this week that the event would no longer be going ahead. Professor Shlaim is known as one of Israel’s “new historians”, a group of scholars critical of the history of Zionism and the development of the country in the 1940s and 1950s. In his latest book, Three Worlds: Memoirs of an Arab-Jew, he describes his own family’s exile from Iraq into Israel and claims to have found “undeniable proof” that Israel’s spy agency, Mossad, was involved in terror attacks on the Jewish community in Iraq, which hastened their transfer to the newly created state.

It is understood Liverpool Hope received complaints from members of the local Jewish community about the talk, citing the “present context” in the Middle East following the deadly attacks on Israel by Hamas on 7 October and the subsequent retaliation that has left thousands dead in Gaza. A spokesperson for Liverpool Hope said the talk had been “postponed” and would be rearranged for later in the academic year. “Free speech is of vital importance to the university and is core to its values,” the spokesperson said.

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