Thread by @YairWallach

1/ The @PearsFoundation have announced that they are withdrawing their name from Birkbeck’s Institute for the study of Antisemitism (@PearsInstitute). This is a problematic and regrettable decision.
pearsfoundation.org.uk/news/pears-fou…

[Thread]

2/ I am deeply saddened by these news. @PearsFoundation funded my own position at SOAS between 2011 and 2014, and supported several other Israel Studies projects I was involved with. I found them supportive and professional, and had excellent and warm relations with them.

3/ The Foundation’s ethos at the time was to support academic research and teaching on difficult and challenging issues, to contribute to an informed and well-reasoned public debate. They repeatedly stressed their commitment to academic independence.

4/ The Foundation made it clear that they would not intervene in academic decisions, or try to influence the direction of research. They lived up to this commitment, despite various pressures on them. But this decision marks a sharp departure from this principle.

5/ Pears explain:
“As the Institute increasingly tackles challenging and divisive issues in the public sphere, the Foundation’s Trustees have decided that continuing to be so closely associated with the Institute is no longer in the Foundation’s best interests.”

6/ This is a strange explanation. An Institute for the study of antisemitism would not be doing its job if it wasn’t tackling “challenging and divisive issues in the public sphere.” And @PearsInstitute has done so from its very establishment.

7/ The Institute tackled challenging issues with intellectual rigour, clarity and integrity: from the @JewishMuseumLDN exhibition “Jews, Money, Myth” to the conference and book on “Boycotts: Past and Present.”
jewishmuseum.org.uk/exhibitions/je…

8/ So it is not that the @PearsInstitute suddenly started tackling difficult issues. Rather, it is all but obvious that the Foundation was displeased by a specific intervention of the Institute’s director, Prof David Feldman - his recent Guardian op-ed.
theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

9/ In his December article for the Guardian, Professor Feldman cautioned against the government’s attempt to impose on universities the IHRA working definition of antisemitism. These concerns are widely shared among academics.

10/ The article (which was not the first time Feldman wrote on the limitations of the IHRA) triggered personal attacks and calls for his dismissal. Key Jewish Studies scholars wrote in support of Feldman and his exemplary leadership of the @PearsInstitute.
jewthink.org/2020/12/23/a-l…

11/ The Foundation’s decision to remove its name from the @PearsInstitute responds to these pressures, and is clearly a public rebuke. I cannot see it as anything but a punitive intervention designed to mark the limits of academic discussion.

12/ We often hear that there’s no evidence of abuse of the IHRA against academic freedom. But in this case, a key donor used its leverage to signal that it stands against the very discussion of this question by academics.

13/ This decision is likely to reinforce concerns about the role that private philanthropy can and should play in universities.

14/ As for Professor Feldman, this story is evidence of his intellectual integrity and stature. Against pressure from government, donors and others, he made a carefully-argued case relating to his field of expertise. This is the role of intellectuals.

15/ Feldman did not shy away from making this argument, just as he did not shy away from writing on the depth of Labour’s antisemitism problem, on failures of the Labour leadership, and on instances of “anti-Zionist” antisemitism in British academia.
haaretz.com/israel-news/da…

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