Professor Geoffrey Alderman - News

Mrs Gillian Roberts (1946-2010): The Last Academic Registrar of the University of London

2011-06-21T16:46:00.001+01:00

Mrs Gillian Roberts (née Murray) was the last Academic Registrar of the University of London; her retirement in 2006 marked the final stage in the university’s transition from a truly federal academy to what is in effect a loose confederation of academically independent colleges and institutes. As the most senior academic administrator of the university, Mrs. Roberts pivotally assisted in this transition, even though she privately regretted it.

Gillian Frances Murray was born on 3 November 1946 and educated at Sydenham High School and the University of Southampton. In 1967 she was appointed to the Academic Department of the University of London, located at the Senate House in Malet Street. A painstaking draftswoman, of scrupulous integrity and equally meticulous discretion, she moved inevitably up the hierarchical ladder, specialising in the robust academic management of the vast portfolio of degree programmes offered both by the federal university, by its constituent colleges and through its world-renowned system of external degrees.

At that time no college exercised its own degree-awarding powers; institutions so empowered that were admitted to the federation had to agree not to use such powers as they might have had. All degree proposals had to be vetted by subject-based and federally located “Boards of Studies” before being submitted to the democratically elected Academic Council that acted as the most senior academic quality assurance body in the entire university.

This matrix ensured federal oversight, by the university, of all degrees awarded in its name. But it was already under attack when Mrs. Roberts succeeded to the post of Academic Registrar in 1983. Some of the university’s constituent colleges were then already larger than some unitary self-governing universities. The 1992 transformation of the polytechnics into universities with their own degree-awarding powers added to the pressure for change. But the fatal blow to federal oversight of academic standards was delivered by a cabal of college heads, frustrated that policies they could push through their respective institutions could – and not infrequently were – vetoed at federal level, sometimes on the initiative of their own academic staff.

As Academic Registrar Mrs. Roberts was also secretary to the Senate, in which capacity it fell to her to oversee two major reforms of the university’s structure as well as innumerable academic reviews. That the university still survives owes much to her diplomatic skills, exercised always as a loyal servant of the university but also as champion of its reputation for academic excellence.

For many years Mrs. Roberts acted as the representative of the university on the City Parochial Foundation. She died on 9 September 2010 and is survived by her husband, Andrew Clive Roberts, whom she married in 1969. There were no children of the marriage.

Referee Criticism: Freedom of expression and public criticism of officials

2011-05-04T20:37:00.000+01:00

"Alex Ferguson, Manager of Manchester United football club, recently received a five-match 'touchline ban' and a £30,000 fine for publicly criticising a match referee. The Football Association (FA) judged him to be in breach of rule E3, which prohibits actions judged as bringing the game into disrepute. Gregory Ioannidis and Geoffrey Alderman, of the University of Buckingham, examine the legal and moral grounds for removing the right to free speech, the reasons for the FA's decision, whether the specificity of sport justifies the removal of such an important right and whether action is possible against the FA for abuse of power."

‘Referee Criticism: Freedom of expression and public criticism of officials,’ World Sports Law Report [G. Alderman & G. Ioannidis] (vol. 9, no.4, April 2011)

Dr Cable's Nightmare

2010-12-17T10:36:00.001Z

On 15 November Business Secretary Vince Cable, whose departmental responsibilities include those related to higher education, delivered a speech to the Girls’ School Association at its annual meeting in Manchester. Much of his address was devoted to the plight of taxpayer-funded universities – specifically English taxpayer-funded universities, which currently include Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial College, University College London, and the London School of Economics. By any university league-table you care to choose, these institutions are amongst the very best in the world. By common agreement they – along with all English taxpayer-funded universities – are grossly underfunded. The coalition government of which Dr Cable is a member had, earlier in the month, signalled its intention to legislate so as to permit all these universities to raise the maximum undergraduate tuition fee they can currently charge from £3,290 to £6,000 or – if they agree to certain conditions – to £9,000 per annum. This announcement had given rise to widespread student protests. So Dr Cable decided to devote much of his Manchester speech to explaining why the decision had been taken.

He did not mince his words. “We already [he said] have a lot of universities that are effectively broke. If they were in the private sector they would have been filing for bankruptcy. Various arrangements have been cobbled together to keep them going, and we can't continue to do that." The government, he explained, had no more money to pump into higher education, so other sources of funding must be found. And whilst the government had rejected the centrepiece recommendation of Lord Browne review, that the ‘cap’ on undergraduate tuition fees should be removed altogether, it had agreed to the cap being lifted in two stages: a ‘soft’ cap of £6000 that any university could charge, and a ‘hard’ cap of between £6,000 and £9000 that could be charged provided certain conditions were adhered to. And then Dr Cable made an astonishing admission: "One of the reasons were are doing this is precisely to head off Oxford, Cambridge, London School of Economics, University College London and a few others from going private, because if we had not opened up the system in the way we have, they would have had a very strong incentive to do so."

In other words, Dr Cable chose to lay at least some of the blame for the unpalatable decision the coalition government had had to take upon a handful of elite institutions that had – he declared – threatened to “privatise” [his word] if the ‘cap’ were not removed altogether. Faced with this ultimatum, the government had had to do something, and what it had chosen to do – to raise but not abolish the cap – had made the best of a bad job. Rather than protest – he implied – students and their funding fathers and mothers should be grateful that the government had grasped this nettle, though – he admitted - there could be no guarantee that one or more of these elite academies would not “privatise” at some future date. "Whether we shall head them off [he added ominously], I don't know."

This was a very odd speech for Dr Cable to have made at the annual meeting of the GSA, which is, after all, (as its website proclaims) “the professional association representing the Heads of leading independent girls’ schools in the UK.” For “independent” here read “private,” of course. If the government has no more money to give to the university sector, a decision by a university to go private would – surely – be a blessing for the government, not the curse, the unmitigated evil that Dr Cable insisted it would be.

As a matter of fact all English universities are private. All, without exception. Every university in England – indeed in the UK – is a private corporation, deriving its status and authority either from a Royal Charter (such as Oxford and Cambridge), from a specific, private Act of Parliament (such as the University of London) or from an order made under a more general parliamentary statute (such as the polytechnics raised to university status under the provisions of the Further & Higher Education Act of 1992). All English universities are private. But some are more private than others. The University of Buckingham (established by Royal Charter in 1983) is completely private, because it does not accept one penny of taxpayers’ money. In 2008-9 the University of Cambridge derived just 18 per cent of its annual income from direct government grants; at Oxford the proportion was a little higher, at 23 per cent. At the other end of the scale there are universities that rely on government grants – direct grants from the English Funding Council and (if relevant) from the Training & Development Agency for Schools - for very large proportions of their total incoming funds. At the University of Gloucestershire, for instance, the figure is around 46 per cent, and at Leeds Metropolitan around 45 per cent.

‘Going private’ means that universities, whilst continuing to receive tuition fees (the levels of which they themselves would be completely free to set, as at Buckingham), and while continuing to enjoy such research income and endowments as they could attract, would no longer receive funding-body grants. That is the basic truth behind university ‘privatisation.’ But it is not the whole truth.

The conditions under which a block grant is made to a university by the Funding Council are set out in a Financial Memorandum – in effect a contract between the two parties. At its website the Higher Education Funding Council for England reproduces its current “model” Financial Memorandum. In return for its annual block grant, the HEFCE can (amongst other things) insist that the quality of teaching and learning is “assessed” in a prescribed manner, that the institution in receipt of grant agrees to submit to a periodic HEFCE-driven assessment of its research, that the institution agrees to subscribe to the Quality Assurance Agency and to submit to QAA academic audit and – more ominously – that “value for money” is being achieved. HEFCE-funded institutions must also ensure that their strategic policy objectives mesh with and support those of the Funding Council. They must demonstrate that they are managing their “estate” in a sustainable way, and that they have, and operate, an approved “carbon management plan.” HEFCE demands “unrestricted access to information – including all records, assets, personnel and premises – and can require anyone to give any explanation which it considers necessary to fulfil its responsibilities.” And it reserves the right to impose special conditions on receipt of grant if it thinks fit.

It is important to remember that all these conditions apply irrespective of how great or how small the quantum of the block grant in any particular year. If so much as £1 of taxpayer’s money is made available to an institution by way of grant, all these conditions apply. And they are, of course, in addition to a university’s statutory responsibilities – for example under Equality and Health & Safety legislation.

In brief, a university in receipt of HEFCE grant has very little institutional autonomy. It does not have a soul to call its own. It must do what HEFCE says, when HEFCE says it. And if Dr Cable and his ministerial colleagues have their way, the supposed freedom that they will give to universities to charge higher tuition fees (now approved by Parliament) will also come with thick strings attached. In response to the publication of the Browne review, the government will, with effect from September 2012, permit publicly-funded universities to charge up to – but not more than - £9,000 per annum, but that if they want to charge more than £6,000 they will apparently have to agree to a raft of measures including offering bursaries, summer schools and “outreach” programmes, so as to promote applications from students from poorer backgrounds. To this end universities will be obliged to enter into “access agreements” with the Office for Fair Access; if this Office determines that an agreement has been broken, it will have the power to impose a fine, the proceeds of which will be redirected – it is said - to support disadvantaged students.

I am not for one moment saying that students from disadvantaged backgrounds should not be supported. They should. But we need to be clear that it is the present government’s clear intention to impose upon the English publicly-funded institutions of higher education a draconian regime of command-and-control should they wish to charge anything above the ‘soft’ cap of £6000. This regime could well include compelling institutions to lower their academic standards (in terms of entry requirements) so as to support some new Downing-Street-mandated strategic objective which, however laudable in itself (increasing participation in higher education by students from poorer homes) is not – in my view - one that universities should be compelled to underwrite.

The key to widening participation in higher education lies in the improvement of the quality of education in the state-funded primary and secondary education sectors. No university in its right mind should ever have to turn away an academically gifted student, irrespective of that student’s financial circumstances. Equally, no university in its right mind should ever have to lower its entry requirements merely to fulfil a politically-driven condition of the receipt of taxpayers’ money.

Clearly, that is not Dr Cable’s view. Reading between the lines of his address to the Girls’ School Association it is clear that his view – and presumably that of the coalition government of which he is a leading member – is that a university that goes “private” puts itself beyond the reach of the Funding Council, and hence beyond the scrutiny and reach of Whitehall. This he and his government view as a disaster to be avoided at all costs, certainly at the cost of permitting some universities to charge a relatively high undergraduate tuition fee.

I do not know whether any of the elite institutions mentioned by Dr Cable had in fact sent him an ultimatum: permit us to charge higher fees or we will go private. I do know this. If a number of elite institutions had indeed given the ultimatum that Dr Cable alleged they had delivered, why did he not simply dare them to carry out their threat? And I think I know the answer to this question.

Geoffrey Alderman

Rabbi Sacks, faith, and certainty

2010-09-15T19:36:00.001+01:00

The chief rabbi thinks faith is about the courage to live with uncertainty. I beg to differ

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/sep/15/rabbi-sacks-faith-certainty

This line on gay Jews is quite orthodox

2010-08-10T20:35:00.000+01:00

The rabbis' 'statement of principles' on homosexuality is to be welcomed, but it contains little that is new

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/aug/10/gay-orthodox-judaism-rabbis

Private universities are no threat to academic standards

2010-07-30T11:16:00.000+01:00

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jul/26/private-universities-academic-standards

First-class degrees may soon really be first-class

2010-07-20T20:20:00.000+01:00

New reforms mean that university qualifications will be subject to national academic standards. It's about time

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jul/20/university-standards-first-class-degree

The Growth of Private and For-Profit Higher Education in Britain

2010-07-16T15:50:00.001+01:00

The Growth of Private and For-Profit Higher Education in Britain: Competition or Collaboration?

http://chronicle.com/article/The-Growth-of-Private-and/66301

RESISTING CALLS FOR A NEW DEATH PENALTY

2010-07-12T15:22:00.002+01:00

Those of us who oppose capital punishment will have to clarify arguments against the inevitable clamour for its restoration

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jul/12/restoration-of-death-penalty

Geoffrey Alderman & Ariel University Center, Israel

2010-06-05T23:12:00.001+01:00

Academic threatens to sue University & College Union over proposed Israeli college boycott

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=411936&c=1

What next - penalising students for taking caffeine?

2010-05-24T14:56:00.000+01:00

The 'war on drugs' has been lost – it's time to rise above the moral panic and decriminalise, regulate and tax

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/may/24/drugs-policy-transform-symposium

Free speech on campus rightly has limits

2010-05-02T19:48:00.000+01:00

Freedom of expression is a precious commodity, but it does not give academics or students the right to break the law

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/apr/30/academic-freedom-speech

Mephedrone ban is irrational response

2010-04-19T12:16:00.001+01:00

"As a responsible adult, I object to the State telling me what I can inject, imbibe, ingest or inhale. These are inherently personal decisions that ought, in a liberal democracy, to be mine alone to take."

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/letters/article7101337.ece

Student consultation is a gimmick

2010-04-08T11:27:00.001+01:00

Evaluation questionnaires will not raise standards in universities – but students will soon be able to vote with their feet

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/apr/08/student-participation-universities-schools

Could the expulsion of an Israeli diplomat from the UK cost Labour the 2010 UK general election?

2010-03-23T20:42:00.001Z

See my contributions to the following Guardian online debate:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/mar/23/binyamin-netanyahu-diplomat-expulsion

Why university standards have fallen

2010-03-10T20:54:00.000Z

The disempowerment of academics and a corporate model of governance have driven down standards, not Blair's 50% target

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/mar/10/universities-standards-blair-target

Footballers have a right to privacy

2010-03-05T12:00:00.000Z

Fabio Capello has no right to tell his players to behave off the pitch – what they do in private is none of his business, or ours

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/mar/05/footballers-right-to-privacy

How Really Free is "Comment is Free?"

2010-02-06T23:13:00.002Z

How a leading newspaper - the Guardian - restricted my access to its ‘open-ended space’

http://www.thejc.com/comment-and-debate/columnists/26764/comment-not-quite-free

Legal highs are not a police matter

2009-12-14T16:09:00.001Z

The penalties meted out to children using legal substances such as mephedrone are outrageous, as is the police involvement

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/dec/14/policing-legal-substances-mephedrone?showallcomments=true#comment-51

Mr Disraeli, Mr Oborne, Mr Gladstone and Mr Lerman

2009-11-22T12:41:00.000Z

http://cifwatch.com/2009/11/21/mr-disraeli-mr-oborne-mr-gladstone-and-mr-lerman/

"The London Safety Camera Partnership is dominated by bureaucrats, has no constitution and holds meetings in secret"

2009-11-17T11:01:00.002Z

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/nov/17/speed-london-safety-camera-partnership

We Jews Cannot Have It Both Ways

2009-11-16T14:36:00.002Z

Jerusalem Post, 16 November 2009

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull&cid=1258027296250

The Virtual Private Network

2009-11-02T15:34:00.001Z

A colleague of mine has recently been the victim of credit-card fraud. Whilst the total sum involved is not huge we are nonetheless talking about several hundred pounds – money stolen by an electronic thief. This is an unnerving experience, but what makes it more unnerving still is the fact that as a reasonably IT-savvy professional person my colleague takes (or thought he took) every precaution when carrying out transactions online. He has a mainstream commercial virus, spyware etc package installed on his laptop and regularly updated. He is ultra careful about PINs and passwords. So how was this fraud carried out?

There are several possibilities, and investigations are still ongoing. The fraud may not be IT-related at all. But cybercrime is now very big business. My attention was recently drawn to the ease with which IT crooks can (effectively) hack into a laptop by exploiting loopholes in wireless “hotspots.” A recent British TV programme graphically demonstrated this, and pointed out that the most effective antidote was to use a Virtual Private Network (VPN).

In layman’s terms a VPN is an extra layer of internet network that prevents hackers from accessing details of one’s own Internet Provider (such details are incredibly easy to access, and can be exploited to permit access to private data, even passwords). Using a VPN means that one’s own genuine IP address is replaced by a dummy address, within which one’s own data is ‘hidden.’

I am currently trying out a VPN provided by www.hideipvpn.com , who have kindly provided me with a free trial. I’ll write in due course about how I get on with this service.

University Standards Row Deepens

2009-10-20T11:43:00.000+01:00

"One blazing hot June day last year, Geoffrey Alderman stepped up to a podium, lit a touchpaper and watched it ignite."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/oct/20/higher-education-standards

"The Communal Gadfly"

2009-10-02T12:06:00.001+01:00

Review in Times Higher Education

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=408458&c=2

"What is most attractive is the tone of Alderman's natural voice. He has a rare ability to float above stylistic expectations, producing a fluid textual mix of the academic, the idiomatic, the conversational and the Yiddish."

Geoffrey explains why he has written his own obituary

2009-08-20T11:10:00.000+01:00

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=407818&c=2

The right to award degrees must be vetted regularly

2009-08-04T19:36:00.001+01:00

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article6737827.ece

Students & Universities

2009-08-02T13:39:00.001+01:00

STUDENTS AND UNIVERSITIES

Personal Statement by Professor Geoffrey Alderman in response to the Report (2 August 2009) of the House of Commons’ Committee on Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills

Begins

1. On 17 June 2008 I delivered my Inaugural Professorial Lecture at the University of Buckingham. Entitled Teaching Quality Assessment, League Tables and the Decline of Academic Standards in British Higher Education the lecture brought together material I had collected as part of a larger inquiry into the decline of academic standards in UK universities. I concluded that “Academic standards at many British universities are in danger of collapse – and at some have already collapsed - because those responsible for them are unwilling or unable to withstand the pressures coming from the culture of league-tables that many vice-chancellors have been only too happy to embrace.” I pointed especially to the work of the so-called Joint Planning Group (1996), and I accused the members of that body of “cynically betraying the self-regulation that British universities had enjoyed hitherto, and of handing this regulation over to a body – the newly-created Quality Assurance Agency – that has- perforce - been the tool of government in the sacrifice of academic standards on the altar of ‘public information.’

2. Following the delivery of this lecture (and the publicity it attracted) the House of Commons’ Committee on Innovation, Universities, Science & Skills launched a wide-ranging inquiry that focussed, in part, on the findings that I had presented in the lecture. In my own evidence to this inquiry I made the following points:

• Over the past twenty or so years there has been a systemic failure to maintain appropriate academic standards in British higher education.

• The blame for this lies primarily with university chief executives, who have, in general, been willing to subordinate academic standards to their preoccupation with league-tables and ‘market-share.’

• The Quality Assurance Agency has failed to halt this process because of its mistaken belief that the maintenance of standards appropriate to higher education can be achieved through a compliance culture and the standardisation of procedures.

• The QAA needs to be radically refocused so that its processes address academic standards, and the resource decisions that underpin them.

• The current situation, whereby universities enjoy degree-awarding powers in perpetuity, is insupportable.

• Where an institution is found, by the QAA, to be derelict in its supreme duty to maintain standards … financial penalties should be levied, followed if necessary by the partial or complete withdrawal of the authority to award degrees.

3. I am therefore very pleased that the Committee, in its report published earlier today, has broadly endorsed these findings.

4. In particular, I welcome the following statements made by the Committee:

• “the system in England for safeguarding consistent national standards in higher education institutions is out-of-date, inadequate and in urgent need of replacement. The current arrangements with each university responsible for its own standards are no longer meeting the needs of a mass system of higher education in the 21st century with two million students. … it is not acceptable … that Vice-Chancellors cannot give a straightforward answer to the simple question of whether students obtaining first class honours degrees at different universities had attained the same intellectual standards.”

• “The body that currently “assures quality”, the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA), focuses almost exclusively on processes, not standards. This needs to change. We call for the QAA to be transformed into an independent Quality and Standards Agency with a remit, statutory if necessary, to safeguard, monitor and report on standards.”

• “We are looking to see a fundamental change in the operation of the QAA and that, if this cannot be achieved within two years, the QAA/Quality and Standards Agency should be abolished and an entirely new organisation be established in its place.”

• “all higher education institutions in England [should] have their accreditation to award degrees reviewed no less often than every 10 years by the reformed QAA. Where the Agency concludes that all or some of an institution’s powers should be withdrawn, we recommend that the Government draw up and put in place arrangements which would allow accreditation to award degrees to be withdrawn or curtailed by the Agency.”

5. It must be a matter of deep regret to all of us involved in the provision of higher education in this country that the sector has proved unable to reform itself, and that it has required a parliamentary investigation to bring these matters under public scrutiny. The sector’s “defensive complacency” to which the Committee has drawn attention must be jettisoned at once, and the grave faults on which the Committee has focussed must be addressed as matters of the utmost urgency.

ENDS

[NOTE FOR EDITORS: This Statement is issued by Professor Alderman in his personal capacity. Further information about Geoffrey Alderman can be found at: www.geoffreyalderman.com.]

Schools and Schisms

2009-07-24T08:55:00.001+01:00

The Board of Deputies of British Jews must not take sides in the case of admissions to the Jews' Free School

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2009/jul/23/faith-schools-board-deputies

Tax Avoidance: should the government have the right to punish me for doing something that is legal but, in its view, morally wrong?

2009-07-12T09:59:00.007+01:00

An action can be wrong as well as illegal (for example, murder), or - conceivably – illegal but not necessarily wrong (for example exceeding a designated speed limit when it is, objectively speaking, perfectly safe to do so). But can an action be legal but still wrong? Of course the concept of moral relativism makes this a very difficult question to address. Many people believe it is wrong to sell one’s body as a prostitute. But – in this country at any rate – prostitution is of itself not illegal. However, I am thinking more of the public domain rather than the private. The campaign now being waged by the Guardian – and latterly with the apparent support of Chancellor Alastair Darling – against tax avoidance falls squarely within this category.

Earlier this year the Guardian launched a widescale investigation of the stratagems used by large corporations to minimise their liability to UK tax. The Guardian named twenty or so major British companies, analysed their “secretive tax strategies,” and asked: are they paying their fair share? The Lib-Dem’s shadow chancellor, Vince Cable, naturally jumped upon this bandwagon. “The shocking scale of systematic corporate tax avoidance strikes a particularly ugly note [he thundered] in these straitened times.” [www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/feb/03/vince-cable-tax-revenue?showallcomments=true] According to Dr Cable, UK corporations should be paying 28% of their profits in tax, but many were paying much less. But neither he nor the Guardian suggested that anything illegal was actually happening. Why? Because they and he knew very well that it wasn’t.

At that time (February 2009) I entered the debate, via the Guardian’s website. I challenged the solution favoured by Dr Cable and his allies, that the UK should adopt a General Anti-Avoidance Rule, which would be interpreted and enforced by tax inspectors and which would proceed on the assumption that tax should be levied wherever Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs considered that there had been an intention to avoid the tax liability. This is part of what I wrote:

"Elsewhere in Europe the law of the constitution is (in general) that nothing is allowed save that which the law expressly permits. But in England … everything is permissible save that which the law expressly forbids. This is a cornerstone of English liberty. So, unless the law expressly forbids me from so arranging my financial affairs as to incur the least possible tax liability [tax avoidance], I am within my legal rights in so doing. What Dr Cable and his supporters want is a fundamental shift away from this position. He writes in favour of a more aggressive approach to tax avoidance and supports the notion of a General Anti-Avoidance Rule … that tax is applied wherever there is an intention to avoid it, even if the loophole hasn't specifically been identified in advance by the Inland Revenue. This would leave the door wide open to legislation [and not just interpretation of legislation] by tax-inspector decree. Let’s get one thing very clear: tax avoidance is and should be legal. Why should anyone – or any corporation – be prevented from exercising this right?"

The rule of the Guardians’s comments’ website meant that the debate was curtailed at this point. So my question was never answered. But a recent announcement by Chancellor Darling has re-opened the debate, and has, I think, given much greater urgency to the question I posed back in February.

Alastair Darling has announced [www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/jun/26/banks-tax-avoidance-darling-hitlist] that he proposes to publish a list of those banks that, in his view, assist their customers to avoid paying tax. Banks will be asked to sign up to a “code of conduct” prepared by Mr Darling. Those that refuse to do so, or which act against what is termed “the spirit” of current UK tax law, will be “named and shamed,” and will be subject to heavier scrutiny by the taxman. They will, in other words, be bullied and harassed until they do obey Mr Darling’s diktat.

Let’s get one thing absolutely clear: tax evasion – for instance concealing income -is illegal. Tax avoidance is not. Got that? It is my right, and the right of every citizen and every corporation in this country, to so arrange their tax affairs so as to incur the least possible amount of tax. What on earth does the Treasury mean when it threatens those who act against “the spirit” of current UK tax law? And who defines what “the spirit” actually is?

The law of the land collides with the Law of Moses

2009-07-04T23:17:00.000+01:00

A ruling by the Appeal Court last week raised the question of how Jewishness is to be defined

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article6632500.ece

So long, Ken's synthetic Simcha

2009-06-16T18:04:00.000+01:00

I, for one, won't mourn the axing of 'Simcha on the Square'. It was always more a Livingstone-fest than a genuine Jewish event

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jun/16/judaism-london

Bogus Colleges: Closing The Loophole

2009-04-27T20:28:00.001+01:00

The alleged terrorist plot in the north-west threw light on the sham academic institutions that offer a backdoor route into the UK. A crackdown is needed – for the sake of genuine international students as much as anyone

http://www.journal-online.co.uk/article/5714-bogus-colleges-closing-the-loophole

Silence over Sri Lanka

2009-04-27T11:25:00.001+01:00

Why do those in the international community who expressed outrage over Gaza stay silent while Tamils die?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/global/2009/apr/27/sri-lanka-war-silence

Don't Free Ronnie Biggs

2009-04-12T18:05:00.001+01:00

When the Great Train Robber comes up for parole, sentimentality must not cloud justice: he is not a hero, he is a criminal

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/apr/10/ukcrime-brazil

Better safe than sorry

2009-03-30T20:09:00.000+01:00

To abandon our deterrent would be to court danger without divine sanction

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2009/mar/27/religion-judaism-nuclear-weapons

Jacqui Smith didn't need to apologise

2009-03-30T20:07:00.000+01:00

The press is exploiting her expenses claim for pornographic films, but neither she nor her husband have done anything wrong

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/mar/30/jacqui-smith-expenses-pornographic-movies?showallcomments=true&commentpage=9&commentposted=1

Hazel Blears must back down

2009-03-25T12:00:00.000Z

Hazel Blears's standoff with the Muslim Council of Britain over the views of Daud Abdullah is not only misguided but sets a dangerous precedent

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/mar/25/hazel-blears-daud-abdullah

"Off Come The Rose Tinted Spectacles"

2009-03-22T20:35:00.003Z

Geoffrey appeared before the House of Commons' Select Committee on Innovation, Universities, Science & Skills, Monday 9 March 2009 [Report in Times Higher Education]

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=405760&c=1

Geoffrey's oral evidence can be accessed at:
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200809/cmselect/cmdius/uc170-iii/uc17001.htm

"A Troublesome Priest"

2009-02-25T17:20:00.001Z

For Jews, the return of Holocaust denier Richard Williamson to the UK is an irritant. But for Catholics, it's a disgrace

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/feb/25/richard-williamson-holocaust-catholic?commentpage=1

THE BOARD OF DEPUTIES OF BRITISH JEWS AND THE BURTON BOOK

2009-01-31T20:02:00.005Z

In his review [in the January 2009 Newsletter of the Jewish Historical Society of England] of my volume of essays Controversy and Crisis: Studies in the History of the Jews in Modern Britain (Academic Studies Press, 2008), Mr Raphael Langham discusses my account of a protracted dialogue that I had with the Board of Deputies of British Jews in the years 1985-88 stemming from my request to examine the so-called “Burton Book.” This document – an unpublished manuscript penned by the Victorian explorer Captain Sir Richard Burton, alleging that Jews used Christian blood for ritual purposes – had been purchased by the Board almost exactly one hundred years ago. Historians had not hitherto been granted access to it. In 1986 the incoming President of the Board, Dr Lionel Kopelowitz, wrote to me granting me permission to consult it. But almost at once this access was blocked, on grounds that had nothing to do with the manuscript, but which were related instead to public utterances I had made on other issues, and to which the senior leadership of the Board apparently took exception. In 1988 I was at last granted access, but only after I had, at Dr Kopelowitz’s request, agreed to keep silent about a quite unrelated communal matter.

Dr Kopelowitz may have forgotten that on 20 May 1988, as president of the Board, he wrote to me setting out precisely such a proviso.

A scan of this letter may be accessed at:

http://www.geoffreyalderman.com/pdf/Kopletter20May1988.pdf

I reproduce it now in the interests of historical accuracy and to set the record absolutely straight.

The history of “The Burton Book” is recounted by Professor Colin Holmes and me in our article of the same name in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, January 2008.

The Right Results?

2009-01-20T17:39:00.000Z

Inflated A-level grades are not only dishonest, they do our hard-working students no favours

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jan/20/a-level-results-inflation

HOW GAZA REVEALS HOME TRUTHS

2009-01-15T20:01:00.000Z

http://www.thejc.com/articles/how-gaza-reveals-home-truths

Can Israeli actions in Gaza be justified on the basis of Jewish scripture?

2009-01-12T12:44:00.000Z

Geoffrey Alderman v David Goldberg

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jan/12/judaism-gaza-israel-halachah

BUCKINGHAM - "A Real University"

2009-01-01T14:16:00.001Z

Interview of Geoffrey Alderman by Times Higher Education:

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=404854&c=2

Christmas Isn't My Thing

2008-12-25T11:23:00.001Z

Unlike some Jewish families, we won't be singing carols or eating mince pies

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2008/dec/24/judaism-religion

A two-year degree would be affordable to more students

2008-11-25T17:25:00.000Z

Education Guardian, 25 November 2008

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/mortarboard/2008/nov/25/degree-affordable-alderman-geoffrey

Obituary of Professor Norman Barry

2008-11-24T17:03:00.001Z

The Times, 24 November 2008

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article5218754.ece

DOCUMENTS ON THE HISTORY OF THE JEWS IN MODERN BRITAIN

2008-11-09T20:10:00.000Z

To mark the publication of Controversy and Crisis – my book of collected essays (published in July by the Academic Studies Press) that cover some of the most sensitive and divisive issues to have confronted British Jewry in recent times – I am, in the interests of historical research, publishing electronically original documents in my possession related to these topics.

In 1992 the Department of Hebrew & Jewish Studies at University College London (UCL) was engulfed in a series of controversies involving its internal management and its relationship with the University of London, of which UCL was (and is) a part. These events were briefly referred to in the second edition of my monograph Modern British Jewry (Oxford University Press, 1998). I was then Chairman of the Academic Council of the University, as well as Pro Vice-Chancellor for Academic Standards. I thus had a ‘ringside seat’ at the events which unfolded, but it also fell to me to deal in a professional capacity with the issues that emerged.

In 1992 the Executive Committee of the Academic Council was asked to regularise an alarming situation that had come to light in the Department of Hebrew & Jewish Studies at UCL. It appeared that students there had been taught a degree syllabus that the University had never approved. My Executive Committee decided that whilst the students had to be protected some drastic action was necessary, not least because of an impending ‘academic audit’ of the University by the UK Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education. It therefore insisted that UCL undertake a fundamental administrative review of the department concerned.

The report of that review, presented to the University in June 1992, is now reproduced at: http://www.geoffreyalderman.com/pdf/UCLReport1992.pdf .

I should add that the acceptance and implementation of the recommendations made in that review were by no means the end of the matter. Other causes for concern came to light in the course of 1992 relating to the University’s External BA in Jewish History, which the department at UCL had been permitted to run on behalf of the University. At its meeting on 27 November 1992 the Standing Committee of the Board of Studies in History minuted its view that one way forward might be for ‘recognition’ of the degree, by the University, to be withdrawn. In June 1993 an External Examiner for this degree (who himself was a faculty member of the University of Cambridge) characterised the manner in which UCL ran this degree programme as “a kind of controlled chaos.”

The Witching Hour Has Passed

2008-11-03T17:50:00.001Z

Calls to grant posthumous pardons to witches who were executed hundreds of years ago reflect a dangerous trend

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/nov/03/ukcrime-humanrights

Definitely, maybe

2008-10-27T11:42:00.002Z

If atheists aren't certain there's no God, as the bus ad suggests, they have no chance of persuading religious devotees to get on board

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/oct/27/atheism-religion

Obituary of the Rev. Leslie Hardman

2008-10-13T13:55:00.000+01:00

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/oct/13/secondworldwar-judaism

THERE'S NO ESCAPING STUDENT DEBT

2008-10-07T22:04:00.000+01:00

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/oct/07/tuitionfees.highereducation

Bordering On The Bureaucratic

2008-09-09T20:45:00.000+01:00

New visa regulations for non-European students are going to cause universities a whole lot of bother

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2008/sep/09/internationalstudents.visas/print

BATTLE OF THE RANKINGS

2008-08-28T13:00:00.000+01:00

American universities have begun a rebellion against academic league tables. British universities should join them

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/27/highereducation.usa

UNIVERSITY STANDARDS UNDER THREAT

2008-08-18T17:32:00.000+01:00

The case of Professor Paul Buckland exposes serious flaws in the way universities maintain standards and classify degrees

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/18/bournemouthuniversity.administration

STANDARDS SLIP AND SLIDE

2008-08-13T20:04:00.001+01:00

The new A* grade for A-level students could skew university admissions in favour of children from privileged backgrounds

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/13/publicschools.oxforduniversity

JONATHAN SACKS AND THE MASORTI MOVEMENT

2008-08-13T12:39:00.002+01:00

To mark the publication of Controversy and Crisis – my book of collected essays (published last month by the Academic Studies Press) : that cover some of the most sensitive and divisive issues to have confronted British Jewry in recent times – I am, in the interests of historical research, commencing the electronic publication of original documents in my possession related to these events.

The first, which I published on 7 August and which you can view at http://www.geoffreyalderman.com/pdf/deed.pdf , is the Deed of Submission (13 May 1985) that authorized the establishment of a special Beth Din [Ecclesiastical Court] to adjudicate on the dismissal from the staff of Jews’ College of the senior teacher of Talmud, Rabbi Simche Lieberman.

I now publish the second [ www.geoffreyalderman.com/pdf/Masorti.pdf ], which consists of two contrasting views of the Masorti movement by two successive British Chief Rabbis, Immanuel Jakobovits and Jonathan Sacks. On 24 September 1981 Jakobovits attempted to appease the Masorti movement by agreeing to certify to the president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews that the New Highgate & North London Synagogue was "a congregation of persons professing the Jewish Religion." Such certification [dating from 1836] was necessary so that this synagogue could appoint a marriage secretary who would be able to act as civil registrar - thus obviating the necessity for couples to attend a quite separate civil marriage ceremony. But Jakobovits was careful to add a rider: that his certification was dependant upon the synagogue conducting marriages in accordance with orthodox Jewish law. He was also careful to make it clear that his certification did not extend beyond the appointment of a [civil] secretary for marriages.

Jakobovits hoped that he could thus go some way towards healing the rifts caused by the Jacobs Affair, but without compromising his view that Rabbi Dr Louis Jacobs - in effect the religious founder of the Masorti movement in Great Britain - was a heretic.

But when Sacks was asked to certify another Masorti synagogue, in St Albans (11 January 1994), he attached no such rider.

Sacks' ambivalent attitude towards the Masorti movement was a key factor fuelling the confrontation that developed between him and large sections of the Torah-orthodox communities in the UK, and which climaxed in his having to rewrite sections of his book Dignity of Difference.

This confrontation forms an important them of the essays I reproduce in Controversy and Crisis.

Geoffrey Alderman

DOCUMENTS ON THE HISTORY OF THE JEWS IN MODERN BRITAIN

2008-08-07T10:11:00.002+01:00

To mark the publication of Controversy and Crisis – my book of collected essays that cover some of the most sensitive and divisive issues to have confronted British Jewry in recent times – I am, in the interests of historical research, commencing the electronic publication of original documents in my possession related to these events.

The first, which you can view at http://www.geoffreyalderman.com/pdf/deed.pdf , is the Deed of Submission (13 May 1985) that authorised the establishment of a special Beth Din [Ecclesiastical Court] to adjudicate on the dismissal from the staff of Jews’ College of the senior teacher of Talmud, Rabbi Simche Lieberman. This cause celèbre forms the subject-matter of ‘Albert Road: An Everyday Story of Jewish Folk,’ which was published as an appendix to my University of London Inaugural Lecture (1989) after having been banned by the Federation of Synagogues. The text of the lecture, and the banned appendix, are reproduced in full in Controversy and Crisis.

The Deed of Submission was signed by Rabbi Dr [now Professor Sir] Jonathan Sacks (then Principal of Jews’ College), Mr [now Lord] Stanley Kalms (then chairman of the College Council) and Sir [subsequently Lord] Immanuel Jakobovits, then Chief Rabbi of the United Synagogue and President of the College Council, as well as by Rabbi Lieberman, whose signature I witnessed.

This was the first occasion on which a British Chief Rabbi had agreed (in effect) to be summoned to a Din Torah [judgment by a Beth Din]; and the Beth Din itself was established completely outside the aegis of the United Synagogue.

[The Rabbi Lieberman (Antwerp) who was one of the members of this Beth Din was unrelated to Rabbi Simche Lieberman]

But this special Beth Din never actually sat, because – regrettably in my view - the dispute was settled the day before its scheduled first meeting, when a very large sum of money was paid to Rabbi Lieberman to drop all claims against the College.

For the technically minded, I drafted the Deed of Submission on my Sinclair Spectrum 48K computer – the first computer I ever owned - and it was printed on an Oki Microline dot-matrix machine. Primitive by today’s IT standards, these tools proved sufficient to the task twenty-three years ago, and played their part in one of the most divisive issues to have confronted British Jewry at the time.

Geoffrey Alderman

CONTROVERSY AND CRISIS

2008-07-29T19:40:00.000+01:00

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, the true story of the British Chief Rabbinate, and the uneasy tenure of Sir Jonathan Sacks in that office. He also considers the role of the historian in Anglo-Jewish life, and the troubled careers of some of its leaders and scholars.

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

2008-07-21T17:00:00.002+01:00

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 private foundations.

Why the recent POW swap between Israel and Hizbollah was a thoroughly bad deal for the Jewish state

2008-07-18T12:39:00.002+01:00

http://thejc.com/articles/the-pow-swap-was-a-bad-deal

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

2008-07-18T09:49:00.001+01:00

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 legal system. “The Jewish religion has – to some extent – been successfully incorporated with the English legal system,” Professor Alderman said: “this has damaged neither the status of British Jews nor the fabric of English law.”

NOTE FOR EDITORS: Further information about Geoffrey Alderman can be found at: www.geoffreyalderman.com. He can be contacted at geoffreyalderman@gmail.com and on 07850-457289.

Examine The Evidence

2008-07-10T14:30:00.001+01:00

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

2008-07-07T19:11:00.002+01:00

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) daft."

Lift Dwain Chambers' Olympic Ban

2008-07-06T14:32:00.001+01:00

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jul/03/olympicgames.drugsinsport

MPs to investigate academic 'fraud'

2008-06-26T21:42:00.003+01:00

See the Guardian report, 26 June 2008, at: http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/news/story/0,,2287492,00.html

Read the article by Professor Roger Brown and me - "Academic fraud: how to solve the problem" at:
http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/comment/story/0,,2287650,00.html

Dumbing Down of Academic Standards

2008-06-22T12:24:00.001+01:00

Hear my podcast for Insitelaw Magazine at:

http://www.insitelawmagazine.com/

and

http://www.insitelawmagazine.com/charonpodcast60.mp3

A grotesque bidding game is undermining university standards

2008-06-18T01:00:00.001+01:00

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article4158426.ece

Unconstitutional? Rubbish

2008-06-03T12:48:00.000+01:00

Jack Straw is wrong. Ousting Gordon Brown would not force a general election. The Queen has every right to refuse to dissolve parliament

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/geoffrey_alderman/2008/06/unconstitutional_rubbish.html

IT'S BOYCOTT TIME AGAIN!

2008-05-09T12:32:00.000+01:00

Geoffrey and the boycott
The idea of boycotting Israeli universities is unlawful, pointless and, finally, devoid of common sense

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/geoffrey_alderman/2008/05/geoffrey_and_the_boycott.html

END THE BAN ON DRUGS IN SPORT

2008-05-08T10:07:00.001+01:00

"The ban on performance-boosting substances in sport is a self-satisfied nonsense."

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=401786

BE WARY OF SPEED CAMERAS

2008-04-28T11:23:00.003+01:00

Washington Examiner, 28 April 2008

Traffic Enforcement Cameras aren't always accurate. They lack commonsense. And they can infringe individual liberties.

http://www.examiner.com/a-1363404~Geoffrey_Alderman__Brit_says_to_be_wary_of_speed_cameras.html

NOT SO FAST

2008-04-22T23:02:00.001+01:00

With a new speed camera system being trialled, isn't it time we asked whether these devices are as effective as their supporters claim?

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/geoffrey_alderman/2008/04/not_so_fast.html

MORE ON KEN LIVINGSTONE AND THE JEWS

2008-04-18T19:35:00.000+01:00

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard-mayor/article-23478856-details/Anti-semitism+-+and+a+timely+question+for+Ken/article.do

THE WRONG TARGET

2008-04-18T19:02:00.001+01:00

It is shameful that the New York Times has persecuted an academic whose legal advice was followed by the justice department

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/geoffrey_alderman/2008/04/wrong_target.html

Ken Livingstone's Jewish Problem

2008-04-04T10:44:00.001+01:00

Read my Guardian Comment on Ken Livingstone's Jewish Problem:

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/geoffrey_alderman/2008/04/an_old_enmity.html

JOSEF HEINZ LOBENSTEIN, ROWAN DOUGLAS WILLIAMS AND JONATHAN HENRY SACKS

2008-02-24T17:36:00.002Z

Josef Heinz Lobenstein, the resident gossip columnist of the Anglo-Yiddish Jewish Tribune – the newspaper of choice of the Anglo-Jewish so-called ‘ultra-orthodox,’ – has this past week [issue of 21 February 2008, not available online] turned his attention to the controversy triggered by a public lecture recently given by Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury.

In that lecture, Dr Williams argued for the incorporation within British law of certain aspects of Sharia [Muslim] law, and drew attention to some ways in which the religious requirements of Britain’s Jewish communities had already been similarly incorporated. I commented on this lecture – and supported the Archbishop’s position - in my Jewish Chronicle column of 15 February. Mr Lobenstein – who writes under the pseudonym ‘Ben Yitzchok’ – chooses not to comment directly on the contents of the lecture. He focuses his attention instead on criticisms of the response to that lecture from the Chief Rabbi of the United Synagogue, Professor Sir Jonathan Sacks.

In the media Sir Jonathan had studiously refused to be drawn on the detail of the Archbishop’s remarks. Mr Lobenstein praises him for preferring ‘not to get involved in the controversy.’ Instead, insists Mr Lobenstein, Sir Jonathan chose ‘the eloquence of silence,’ adding that he fully supports Sir Jonathan ‘for not meddling on [sic] a subject which really had nothing (or at least very little) to do with Jews and the Jewish community.’

Mr Lobenstein is clearly annoyed with unnamed Jewish leaders who had decided to ‘air their views’ on the Archbishop’s lecture ‘on the media’s front pages’ – perhaps a reference to the support [reported on the front page of the Jewish Chronicle of 15 February] given to Dr Williams by Rabbi Yisroel Lichtenstein, the Rosh Beth Din [Chief Judge] of the Federation of Synagogues (to which I belong).

Mr Lobenstein – a former Mayor of Hackney - clearly believes that British Jews should keep a very low profile on most matters of public moment in British society. He clearly believes that the Orthodox Judaism that he and I practise has little of substance to contribute to these public dialogues, and that if it does – perchance – then it is better not so say so. He is of course fully entitled to these opinions – though it would help if he had explained exactly what harm – if any – he fears might befall British Jewry if his policy of self-effacement is ignored.

But I am not so much concerned with this policy – with which I happen to profoundly disagree – as with the assumption by Mr Lobenstein that Sir Jonathan Sacks has wisely followed his code of silence.

In fact Sir Jonathan was not silent at all.

It is true that Sir Jonathan chose not to respond directly to the Archbishop’s lecture. But he did issue a statement to the Jewish Chronicle, which can be accessed at:

http://www.thejc.com/home.aspx?AId=58070&ATypeId=1&search=true2&srchstr=Sacks&srchtxt=1&srchhead=1&srchauthor=1&srchsandp=1&scsrch=0

Emphasising that ‘the law of the land is the law,’ Sir Jonathan did indeed sidestep the detail of the intense public debate that Dr Williams’ lecture has provoked. His statement ignored – I assume deliberately – the ways in which ‘the law of the land’ has been modified to address Jewish concerns (the theme of my JC piece). Acknowledging that Jews in Britain oft-times resorted to their own religious courts – Batei Din [singular Beth Din – ‘House of Judgment’] - Sir Jonathan hastened to reassure the British public that:

"Jewish courts have no power to enforce their rulings other than by consent of the parties involved. Jews may regulate their internal affairs through a beth din with three provisos:
1. That they are subject to the law of the land; 2. They do not attempt to “oust” or sidestep English courts; and 3. They conduct their affairs in accordance with the principles of “natural justice.” Jewish courts rely on influence rather than power. Despite this, however, the beth din remains a central institution in Jewish life, whether as a court of arbitration or as the body that determines the parameters of conduct for those who choose to live by halachah [Jewish Law]."

These are shocking statements for the United Synagogue’s Chief Rabbi to make. It is simply incorrect to say that ‘Jewish courts [in this country] rely on influence rather than power,’ and that they ‘have no power to enforce their rulings other than by consent of the parties involved.’

Sir Jonathan may well have forgotten – but I have not – that in the summer of 2005 he and his Beth Din conducted an investigation into Mrs Helen Sagal, whose Israeli conversion he and his Beth Din refused to recognise, thus enabling them to prevent her son Guy from entering the taxpayer-funded Jews’ Free School, Kenton. Sir Jonathan may well have forgotten – but I have not – that I accompanied Mrs Sagal to the inquisition held by him and his Beth Din, and that I was thereby privileged to witness at first hand the power this Beth Din wields. Mrs Sagal presented her Certificate of Conversion – endorsed by the Israeli Chief Rabbinate. Sir Jonathan’s Beth Din brushed it aside.

That is not ‘influence’ – let alone consensual influence. That is power.

I can readily understand why Sir Jonathan would not have wished to allude to these facts in his statement to the JC. The power of the Office of the Chief Rabbi to determine who can and who cannot attend taxpayer-funded Jewish schools in this country is a matter of public controversy, and may shortly come before the courts.

But as a leading member of the Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations Joe Lobenstein ought to know better. Of all the Jewish communities in this country, adherents of the Union are more likely than any other Anglo-Jewish grouping to submit themselves to the authority of a Beth Din. To say that such submission is ‘voluntary’ is – often – stretching a point, because an adherent of the Union who brings a matter to a secular court without the prior permission of a Beth Din risks sanction and ostracism. In 1991, for instance, a near-riot took place in Stamford Hill after it emerged that an ‘ultra-orthodox’ family had, without rabbinical authority, reported to the police two orthodox persons whom the family suspected of child abuse.

It seems to me, in short, that the real reason why Mr Lobenstein would like all us Jews to keep quiet about the contents and ramifications of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s remarks is not that we Jews have little if anything to contribute to the debate.

What he really fears is that we have a great deal indeed to offer. And that some of it might not redound to our credit.

WHY I SUPPORT ARCHBISHOP ROWAN WILLIAMS

2008-02-16T19:51:00.002Z

Last week the Archbishop of Canterbury proposed that British law should be a little more accommodating towards British Muslims, as it has been towards British Jews. I support this worthy aspiration:

http://www.thejc.com/home.aspx?ParentId=m12s114&SecId=114&AId=58118&ATypeId=1

THE CAMBRIDGE PRIMARY REVIEW: ANOTHER CASE OF MEDDLE AND MUDDLE?

2008-01-28T09:57:00.000Z

Fifteen months ago the Esmé Fairbairn Foundation announced that it was funding the first independent review of primary education in England since the ill-fated inquiry presided over by Lady Plowden in 1967. That investigation led to a widespread, chilling decline in standards that have scarred successive generations of pupils. I had hoped that the new inquiry, chaired by Professor Robin Alexander, of Cambridge University, would avoid the obsession with reform for reform’s sake that had so comprehensively undermined the Plowden review. Now, with the recent publication of its latest batch of reports, I am not so sure.

The report which caught my eye is entitled Aims for Primary Education: the changing national context, co-authored by two London University academics, Stephen Machin and Sandra McNally. It makes a ritualistic bow to acknowledge that one of the aims – I would have thought an overriding aim – of primary education is to inculcate a basic proficiency in literacy and numeracy. On the transmission of civic values (tolerance, respect, and so on) the report devotes but one sentence. Its focus is unashamedly on the crimes of middle-class parents:

"some aspects of primary education discriminate in favour of higher income groups and thereby exacerbate existing inequalities. For example, current admissions policies favour parents who not only know how to use published information about school standards (for example from Ofsted inspections and the Performance Tables), but can also afford to choose exactly where to live."

Well, we can’t have that, can we? I mean, we can’t have a situation in which parents actually read Ofsted reports and choose schools accordingly, with the result that high-quality schools are oversubscribed and poor quality ones are left with unfilled places. Oh no! We never actually meant Ofsted reports to be read and acted upon. Perish the thought!

Nor can we tolerate a situation in which parents who can, move to areas in which these high-quality schools flourish, leaving poorer parents to make do with poorer quality schools. We could recommend putting more money (and better teachers) into these schools, to bring them up to at least the national average. But why should we? Instead, say Drs Machin and McNally, we should adopt a more dirigiste approach:

"A fundamental reform of admissions policy (for example, prohibiting schools to discriminate [sic] on the basis of residence) would do much to level the playing field in terms of educational opportunities. It would thereby reduce the large inequalities that appear later in terms of wages and intergenerational mobility. "

Not to put too fine a point on it, the good doctors want schools to be banned from choosing pupils according to where they live. “Quite how far children should be bussed to other schools,” Dr McNally confessed to the Times (18 January) “would need to be worked out, but the local authority could organise some help with that. It’s a really vital area and an obvious way of making things fairer.”

But is it?

To begin with, I would have thought that the disastrous experiences of ‘bussing’ in the USA should act as a warning to us all against adopting an expensive and hideously bureaucratic device that will not achieve the desired result – unless, that is, we enforce, alongside the device, a system of internal passports of the sort used in the Soviet Union and present day North Korea: don’t live where you like, live where the state decrees.

Secondly, I can tell Drs McNally and Machin now, for free, that neither bussing, nor the enforcement of any ‘lottery’ system to allocate primary-school places, nor any other similarly contrived stratagem, will ‘make things fairer.’ Kids from some homes – by no means only middle-class, incidentally – will, no matter what kind of sink school they are legally obliged to attend, always be at an advantage because of the supportive domestic environment to which they return at the end of the school day. And I’m afraid the only way to deal with this fact of life, and to bring about the “level playing field” that Dr Machin and McNally say they want and we all need, is to remove children from their parents at birth, placing them instead in state-run kindergartens.

By a very convenient coincidence, during the same week that the Machin-McNally report was issued by the Cambridge Primary Review, schools minister Jim Knight announced the introduction of a new, mandatory, admissions appeal code, designed to give parents greater rights when appealing against decisions not to admit their children to particular schools. In making his announcement, Mr Knight cited instances of schools acting outside the law in the types of information they sought from prospective pupils. This is all well and good, I thought, until I read that one of the practices Mr Knight could not abide was the request for information that might enable a school to assess how supportive a parent might be of her or his child’s education.

Well, Mr Knight, there may be very sound reasons indeed why a school should want such information, which could help in deciding how best to educate a child from a less- or non-supportive home environment.

Children learn as much if not more at home as they do at school. Unless the Cambridge Primary Review accepts the truth of that axiom, I fear that any quick-fix recommendations will do as little good as those of Lady Plowden a half century ago.

WHY NO JEW SHOULD VOTE FOR KEN LIVINGSTONE

2008-01-13T10:43:00.000Z

My advice to Jewish voters in London is: whoever else you vote for in next May's London Mayoral Election, do not vote for RedKen Livingstone:

http://www.thejc.com/home.aspx?ParentId=m12s32s34&SecId=34&AId=57391&ATypeId=1

REWRITING THE PAST

2008-01-13T10:37:00.000Z

My critique of the British government initiative to rewrite the history of Northern Ireland can be found at: http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/geoffrey_alderman/2008/01/past_troubles.html

THE ILLUSION OF REFORM

2008-01-01T15:22:00.000Z

My critique of Gordon Brown's proposals for constitutional reform can be accessed at:
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/geoffrey_alderman/2008/01/the_illusion_of_reform.html

THE BUSINESS OF SEX

2007-12-27T14:31:00.000Z

For my comment on the Labour government's ill-considered proposal to criminalise prostitution, see:

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/geoffrey_alderman/2007/12/the_business_of_sex.html

How Jews Cause Antisemitism

2007-12-27T09:26:00.000Z

In my Jewish Chronicle column of 07 December 2007 I posed the question whether Jews cause, to any degree, the prejudice from which they suffer. My column focussed on the anonymous donations made to the Labour party by a Jewish property magnate. A number of correspondents have asked me for other specific examples. Well, here is one, ongoing, that does I think get to the heart of the matter.

In May 2005 the governors of the Beis Soroh Schneirer school for Jewish primary-age girls applied to the London Borough of Barnet for planning permission to convert for their purposes a disused warehouse on an industrial estate in West Hendon. The planning committee, for very cogent reasons, unanimously refused the application. But what the governors had not told the committee was that they intended to move the school into the warehouse whatever the outcome of the application. And on the very next morning after planning permission had been refused builders started converting the warehouse.

Not to put too fine a point on it, the governors had stuck two fingers up at the elected local authority. In mid-September 2005 the school opened for business. Barnet Council issued an enforcement notice, but by this time some 200 girls were already being educated in the converted warehouse. What was the government inspector (who heard the planning appeal) to do but to acquiesce in a fait accompli? He did, it is true, ask the school to make a contribution of £20,000 towards the cost of implementing various traffic management measures. In a typical display of chutzpah the governors pleaded that on the grounds of poverty they could only afford £5,000. More than a little odd – you might think - because the school been able to retain, at the appeal hearing, the services of one of the country’s foremost barristers specialising in town-planning cases.The school’s supporters have alleged that opposition to the school is being fuelled by local Muslims. This is nonsense. The chair of the West Hendon Community Forum happens to have been PA to the late Earl Mountbatten. The Community Forum’s objections have been endorsed by none other than the local MP, Andrew Dismore – and by me (I live less than two miles from the industrial estate in question).

In his ruling the government inspector agreed that the warehouse can continue to be used as a school until 31 December 2008, but ruled that it must meanwhile be genuinely advertised for sale as a building designated for industrial use. Of course, no such advertisement has yet been published. Nor, to the best of my knowledge, has the promised £5,000 contribution towards traffic-management been forthcoming.

The school’s governors and supporters are no doubt feeling very pleased with themselves. But in my view what has really been achieved is the creation of anti-Jewish prejudice where none existed before.

VICTORIAN EXPLORER EXPOSED AS AN ANTISEMITIC PLAGIARIST

2007-12-20T03:28:00.000Z

Captain Sir Richard Burton, the 19th century explorer and adventurer, who first translated the Kama Sutra into English and was one of the earliest Christians to enter Mecca, was both an anti-Semite and a plagiarist, according to new research published by the Royal Asiatic Society.

These stark conclusions appear in an article on Burton in the January 2008 edition of the Society’s Journal (published December 2007), written by two of the country’s leading experts in the history of anti-Jewish prejudice in modern Britain.

In 1989 Professor Geoffrey Alderman (University of Buckingham) and Professor Colin Holmes (University of Sheffield) were permitted to read an unpublished manuscript penned by Burton in the 1870s, and subsequently purchased by the Board of Deputies of British Jews.

In their article, Professors Alderman and Holmes unravel the history of the manuscript, in which Burton alleged that Jews murder Christians in order to use their blood for ritual purposes.

“Burton completely believed in these medieval allegations,” Alderman and Holmes said, “but most Burton scholars have ignored or belittled his anti-Jewish prejudices as they have presumably found them embarrassing, and not in accordance with the heroic tale they wish to tell.”

They also demonstrate that most of what Burton wrote in the manuscript was copied, verbatim, from a work published in France in 1847, and which Burton probably read in the British Museum. “The manuscript (they said) contains not a single original idea.”

In 1871, following complaints from the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, Gladstone’s government removed Burton from his post as British Consul in Damascus. He blamed his removal on Jewish influence, and wrote the manuscript in a fit of pique. On his death an attempt was made to publish it, but after a protracted legal action the Jewish Deputies bought it, so that it could be “suppressed forever.” The Deputies’ attempt to auction the manuscript in 2001 gave rise to an international outcry; it failed to reach its reserve, and was withdrawn from sale. It now remains under lock and key.

Why every self-respecting rabbi should join a trade union

2007-12-20T03:25:00.000Z

Rabbis, it's time to join the union! Go to: http://www.thejc.com/home.aspx?ParentId=m12s32s34&SecId=34&AId=56984&ATypeId=1

DONORGATE

2007-12-15T17:53:00.000Z

My comment on the "Donorgate" scandal and the role of Jewish businessman David Abrahams can be found at:
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/geoffrey_alderman/2007/12/a_selffulfilling_prophecy.html

"A Shabby Triumph"

2007-12-05T14:03:00.000Z

My Comment on the release from the Sudan of schoolteacher Gillian Gibbons can be accessed at:

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/geoffrey_alderman/2007/12/a_shabby_triumph.html

SELLING A KIDNEY: LET’S HAVE A GROWN-UP DEBATE

2007-11-18T15:56:00.000Z

This morning the Sunday Times reports that in the Netherlands a proposal is being considered to pay – or, more accurately, to bribe – citizens to encourage them to donate one of their kidneys for transplantation. The plan, being considered by the Dutch health minister, is to ‘reward’ donors by giving them free-for-life health insurance – calculated by the Dutch Health Council to be worth around €50,000 – say £35,000.

The background to this proposal is that there is in the Netherlands, as in the UK, a chronic shortage of healthy kidneys for transplantation, partly because advances in medical science mean that there are fewer cadaver-derived kidneys from – for example – road accident victims. Meanwhile, patients suffering from kidney failure are dying while on dialysis.

Currently, in the Netherlands as in Britain, the sale (as opposed to the simple donation) of organs is illegal. The British legislation was rushed through parliament in 1989 without any public debate (there was, it is true, a hysterical media campaign, but that is not quite the same thing, is it?) by a Tory government that had no mandate for such an enactment but which knew it could rely on the unthinking support of the Socialist opposition. On the Socialist side the argument was suddenly heard that unless the sale of organs was criminalised the poor might be exploited. And on the Tory side Mrs Thatcher declared that the sale of organs was “utterly repugnant.” So that was that.

But – of course – the sale of organs, and specifically of kidneys, has not ceased. The ‘trade’ has simply moved to India and elsewhere.

Meanwhile, last May, we had the bleak privilege of witnessing the first conviction in this country of someone who wished to sell a kidney. Mr Daniel Tuck was convicted of contravening the Human Tissue Act by offering to sell one of his kidneys to a reporter apparently working for a Birmingham newspaper. Mr Tuck (a young man who had gambling debts) subsequently hanged himself. What possible good did his prosecution serve? All those involved in the prosecution of Mr Tuck need to reflect on the fact that a kidney sufferer may have been denied the right to treatment, and that the ill-considered prosecution of Mr Tuck may have contributed to his tragic death. These are not things I would wish to have on my conscience.

Since appearing as an expert witness before the Professional Conduct Committee of the General Medical Council in 1990 I have written on this subject several times – notably in the journal (Verdict) of the Oxford University Law Society (1996) and in the Guardian earlier this year.[1] But I have to say that there appears to be a determined reluctance amongst politicians to have a serious debate on the subject. When I asked my own MP to sponsor such a debate in the House of Commons, he told me that he was not prepared to do this because he had “a list of other things I think are of higher priority.”

But what could be a higher priority than the saving of lives?

If I wish to sell one of my kidneys I should be free to do so. As for the poor, none of us has any moral right to prevent them selling something that is theirs. If there is felt to be a risk of exploitation, then regulation, not prohibition, is the answer.

I very much welcome the Dutch initiative, therefore. Let’s hope that it will stimulate a calm, rational, ‘grown up’ discussion in this country with a view to decriminalising the sale of organs for transplant, and establishing a regulated market for such life-saving procedures.

[1] http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/geoffrey_alderman/2007/07/body_politic.html

Power to the People

2007-11-13T12:11:00.000Z

The Conservative party – of which I am neither a member nor supporter – will today unveil a plan to give local-government electors the right to vote down large council-tax rises. Apparently, a threshold will be set, and any rise above this threshold will automatically trigger a local referendum.

Of course the devil will lie in the detail, but no-one concerned with the present moribund state of local democracy in England can do other than welcome this idea – as I do.

In response to the Tory proposal, the Local Government Association has said that “Local authorities should have the power to determine, without interference, the appropriate levels of council tax for their areas."

Presumably, however, the words “without interference” do not include local electors.

Of course it seems unlikely that local councillors will welcome these proposals, because the power of these councillors will – in effect – be usurped by the voters whose interests they are supposed to represent – but rarely do.

But if the local-referendum proposal is implemented, permitting local electors to veto local council budgets, local councillors will only have themselves to blame. For decades, a game of poker has been played between Whitehall and the town halls. Whitehall has shifted more and more of the tax burden to local councils, but local councillors have, for the most part, accepted and implemented these increases, and have shrunk from a policy of confrontation.

The Labour government's financial settlement for local authorities seems likely to trigger council-tax increases well above inflation in 2008. There is no justification for this, nor is there any mandate. But local councils do have a choice.

Whatever the culpability of the government, the political parties at local level can remedy the situation by announcing, now, that under no circumstances whatever will they propose or support above-inflation council-tax increases (inclusive of public-service precepts) next year.

Could they all please make such announcements, now?

REPRESENTATION WITHOUT TAXATION

2007-11-11T20:57:00.000Z

Lord Ashcroft is a multi-millionaire, whose fortune is said to amount to some £800 millions. He is a major donor to the Conservative party (of which I am neither a member nor a supporter). He is said to reside in Belize. It is not clear whether he pays any UK income tax.

The Guardian of 9 November 2007 ran a front-page story on him, alleging that prior to the conferment of his life peerage pledges were made by the Conservative party that he would return to the UK and pay UK income tax. The Guardian quoted David Heath, Liberal-Democrat spokesperson on constitutional affairs, as declaring that “No one should take a place in the legislature of this country who doesn’t pay taxes in this country.”

Why not? There are plenty of people living in this country who don’t pay any taxes. Are they, for that reason, to be barred from sitting in either House of Parliament? And what about voting? You don’t have to pay taxes in order to exercise the right to vote. The linkage between voting and payment of taxes was broken when the Representation of the People Act was passed in 1918. Indeed, until 1918 you couldn’t vote if you received poor relief – the dole.

In some ways this particular 1918 reform was retrograde. It has meant, and means, that citizens without any wealth, and who pay no taxes, are able to influence the tax burden on those who do have wealth, and are able to have a say in the manner in which these tax revenues (to which they have contributed nothing) are spent.

Be that as it may, the 1918 reform has stood the test of time. You can vote in local elections – and sit on your local council - whether or not you pay council tax, and in national elections – and be elected to the Commons - whether or not you pay income tax. So why, simply because you are a non-taxpayer, should you not be able to sit in the House of Lords?

I hold no particular brief for Lord Ashcroft. I do believe that he has rights, and is entitled to exercise them.

THE JEWISH TRIBUNE AND NETUREI KARTA

2006-09-04T02:25:00.000+01:00

Alex Strom writes an opinion column for the Jewish Tribune [JT], an Anglo-Yiddish newspaper owned by the Agudist movement and which circulates in the orthodox Jewish communities of the UK.

In its issue of 24 August 2006 the JT carried a piece by Strom highly critical of a motion passed at the AGM of the large and prestigious Adass Yisroel Synagogue of Hendon. This motion called on the Synagogue to sever its ties with the Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations [UOHC] should the Union not openly disassociate itself from Neturei Karta [NK], an allegedly orthodox extreme anti-Zionist group whose leaders travelled earlier this year to meet and make friends with the Jew-hating and Holocaust denying government of Iran, which is of course the patron of Hamas and Hizbollah.

But Strom did not mention that in recent years the UOHC has made donations totalling over £58,000 to NK. The story of these donations was first broken by the Jewish Chronicle earlier this year. But the JT has never reported these donations, details of which can be accessed at the website of the Charity Commission.

Unless JT readers know about these donations - for which no plausible explanation has ever been given - how can they be expected to understand the ferment within the Hendon Adass Yisroel Synagogue?

On 26 August I emailed the editor of the JT a letter setting the record straight.

I have learned today that the letter is not going to be published.

What a surprise!

Geoffrey Alderman

THE FORTHCOMING LOCAL ELECTIONS IN BARNET

2006-04-11T02:30:00.000+01:00

Next month Barnet council-taxpayers will be invited to go to the polls to elect their local council. The size and impact of the council tax will be the major issue at these elections, and the political parties have been hard at work reassuring us that council-tax rises are being kept as low as possible.

Since the last local elections four years ago, the council tax in Barnet has risen by some 32.5 per cent - an average rise over over 8 per cent each year. These tax hikes are way beyond the annual rate of inflation, which is now less than two per cent per annum. The Conservatives, who have been in power throughout this period, argue that the increases are due to extra demands - precepts as they are technically known - made by the London Assembly and various other London-wide public services, such as the Metropolitan Police. In regard to these precepts the Tories argue that they have had no discretion - they must pass on the increases, collect the revenue, and send it to the precepting authorities.

This is true. But it is not the whole truth.

If the Tories had really cared about the impact of these precepts on the council-taxpayers of Barnet they could have made it clear to the precepting authorities that for every one per cent increase in the precept above the headline inflation rate, the overall Barnet increase would be reduced by an identical one per cent - thus putting the onus squarely on the precepting authorities to make sure the overall burden on Barnet council-taxpayers was kept within reasonable bounds.

The Tories have also blamed the Barnet increases on the ever-growing demands made by Whitehall on local authorities. And it is certainly the case that, rather than raise income-tax or lower government expenditure, Chancellor Gordon Brown has resorted to a range of 'stealth taxes' - amongst which is the indirect raising of the council-tax by shifting responsibilities from Whitehall to the town hall.

Again, however, one has to ask: did the Tories fight hard enough for the Barnet council-taxpayers? Rather than raise the council-tax by 24 per cent in 2003 the Tories could have proposed an increase of - say - 4 percent [still well above the inflation rate], admittedly permitting local services to go into temporary crisis but justifiably putting the blame where it really lay, with Gordon Brown and his boss Tony Blair.

Or - of course- rather than impose the 24 per cent increase the Tories could have done the honorable thing and resigned en masse, so forcing Labour into office.

In opposition at Hendon Town Hall the Labour party was quick to condemn the massive increase in 2003, and since then its spokespersons have lost no opportunity in rounding on the Tories for their arrogance and wastefulness. This year Labour proposed a council-tax increase of just one per cent. Labour's deputy leader at Hendon, Councillor Danish Chopra, waxed lyrical about "Tory waste, mismanagement and splits." But the one thing Councillor Chopra - who is my local representative - has refused to do is to tell us how he and his party propose to recoup, for me and my fellow council-taxpayers, the unjustifiable 20 or so extra per cent we were forced to pay in 2003, an increase he has condemned and for which we voters never voted because it was never in any party manifesto.

The one per cent increase Labour now proposes is built on the foundations of the 24 per cent imposed - allegedly against their will - three years ago. Labour ritualistically opposed that increase. But they have built it into their forward plans. Morally, they are as responsible for it as are the Tories.

There seems, in fact, to be an unwritten alliance at our Town Hall between all the political parties - the LibDems included - on this issue.

I shall therefore deliberately abstain in the May elections, and I urge other Barnet voters to join me in this modest but necessary protest.

GEOFFREY ALDERMAN CENSORED BY THE SOUTHERN ASSOCIATION OF COLLEGES & SCHOOLS

2006-02-26T02:32:00.000Z

Geoffrey Alderman issues this statement in a purely personal capacity.

"Last year I accepted an invitation from the Southern Assocoiation of Colleges & Schools (SACS), based in Georgia, USA, to make a presentation to its annual meeting in Atlanta in December 2005.

The presentation involved, inter alia, a critique of the SACS' university and college accreditation methodology.

In January 2006 I was pleased to receive from SACS details of the very positive feedback on that presentation. I was invited to propose a subject for a presentation at the forthcoming SACS annual meeting, which will take place in Orlando, Florida, next December.

Meanwhile, the "Chronicle of Higher Education ran a long article (13 January 2006) on American InterContinental University (AIU). This article triggered a lively debate on the Chronicle's "Forum" website, in which my colleague Dr Grace Telesco (South Florida Campus) and I (London Campus) took part, in defence of the university. Again, I was openly critical of the SACS' accreditation methodology.

I was shocked to receive, subsequent to this debate, an email from SACS withdrawing the invitation to me to propose a presentation for delivery at Orlando. The reason given was that my institution - AIU - had been placed on sanction, which is true. When I queried this 'disinivitation,' and asked to be directed to the relevant SACS policy on this subject, I was referred to the President of SACS, Dr Belle Wheelan.

In an email to me earlier this month Dr Wheelan admitted that there was no SACS policy prohibiting me from making a presentation. But Dr Wheelan added that "as a matter of good PRACTICE, we have not historically accepted proposals from representatives of institutions that are on sanction. It keeps folks from asking, "if that is such a good practice, why is that institution on sanction?" " [To which of course the answer might be: It is SACS that is wrong, not the institution - GA]

I regard this as a quite disingenuous attempt to (a) prevent me making a presentation at Orlando and to (b) cast doubt on the legitimacy of anything I may have said or may say in the foreseeable future critical of SACS.

It is of course also an attack on my academic freedom. I have been prevented not merely from making a presentation at Orlando, but even from proposing a subject for presentation.

I have therefore placed the matter in the hands of the American Association of University Professors, of which I am a member."

STATEMENT ENDS.

THE OPEN UNIVERSITY ACCREDITATION MODEL

2005-12-26T02:33:00.000Z

A PERSONAL STATEMENT MADE MORE IN SORROW THAN IN ANGER

Earlier this month the Open University held a meeting with representatives of all its accredited institutions to tell them what it intends to do to deal with the "Limited Confidence" outcome of the audit of its collaborative provision undertaken by the Quality Assurance Agency last May. The result of this audit, and the manner in which the OU responds to it, are likely to have profound implications for the way in which all British institutions of higher education manage their collaborative arrangements in the future.

The "Limited Confidence" verdict cannot have come as any surprise to those familiar with OU procedures, as implemented through its validation arm, Open University Validation Services - OUVS.

When in 1992 the polytechnics were enabled to become universities, and were freed thereby from supervision by the Council for National Academic Awards, the CNAA itself was shut down. Realizing that this closure was going to leave a great many other mainly specialist institutions without anyone to award degrees to their students, the British government prevailed upon the OU to take on this role. So was born OUVS, whose methodology has until recently been based upon the CNAA model.

This model requires academic standards to be benchmarked against national norms, and places enormous responsibility on external examiners to ensure that these norms are adhered to in institutions that OUVS accredits. The major means by which OUVS assures itself that academic standards and quality of programme delivery are appropriate are the verdicts of the external examiners, and the annual monitoring reports that each accredited institution must provide.

The Open University itself, and its own academic staff, have historically taken little interest in the daily work of OUVS, which has been permitted an astonishing degree of independence from the university in whose name it grants thousands of degrees each year.

In the summer of 2003 this cosy arrangement was dealt a nasty blow. The QAA undertook an audit of a small Business programme that the OU, through OUVS, accredited for delivery at the Kolding institute in southern Denmark. The Kolding report (available on the QAA website at www.qaa.ac.uk/reviews/reports/overseas/openuniversity_denmark03.asp) paints a picture of an institution that had minimal reporting lines to the university - the OU - that granted degrees to its students. OUVS appears to have taken little interest in the academic activities of the Danish institution. The external examiners' reports would not be read routinely by anyone in the university beyond the confines of OUVS. Kolding's annual monitoring reports might or might not be read at university level. Kolding itself apparently had no contact with the OU's own Business School. The final sentence of the audit report damned not merely the particular arrangements that the OU had in place at Kolding but, explicitly, the entire programme-validation model that OUVS operated at its accredited institutions.

The Kolding report painted a gloomy picture. But there was in fact no evidence that academic standards had been sacrificed or compromised. The reporting line from Kolding to the OU's headquarters in Milton Keynes needed repair and upgrading. But nowhere did the Kolding auditors declare that students were receiving OU degrees who did not actually deserve them. The auditors themselves were either unaware of the history of OUVS, and that it was the successor body to the CNAA, or deliberately chose to ignore this vital historical context. They brought to their work a narrow view, focused exclusively on the QAA's own preferred accreditation model. Their report reflected a total and totally uncritical acceptance of that model.

When the Kolding report was published the OU came out of its corner fighting. Whilst agreeing that procedures could be improved, and that the relationship between the OU, OUVS and accredited institutions could be strengthened, the accreditation model was defended.

Now, two years later, the model has been all but totally abandoned.

Last May the QAA audited the OU's entire collaborative provision. The audit team's report was published in October [www.qaa.ac.uk/reviews/reports/institutional/OpenUni05/summary.asp]. Unsurprisingly, the accreditation model was again condemned. The language used by this latest team of auditors echoed that of the Kolding team. And in the wake of this latest "Limited Confidence" report the OU has rolled over. Practically every demand ("recommendation") of the QAA is to be met, in full. In the process the interests of the OU's 45 or so loyal accredited institutions are to be comprehensively sacrificed.

Of course this is not the way the OU is spinning the story. Representatives of accredited institutions whom senior OUVS officers met on 7 December were told that the OU's accreditation model would be preserved but that another, termed 'associate' status, was to be created, and that over a fairly limited period of time each accredited institution would be told whether it could remain 'accredited', or whether it was to become merely 'associated.' The associate model will - naturally - follow closely the diktats of the QAA as set forth in its October 2005 report. This will involve significant extra cost, which accredited - sorry, associated - institutions will have to bear.

Why the OU has decided to go down this route is a puzzle. Granted, a "Limited Confidence" verdict is unwelcome. But it is not the end of the world. The QAA is not the sole repository of wisdom on accreditation matters. QAA auditors are not infallible. It would be a very sorry state of affairs indeed were they to be encouraged to regard themselves as such.

Nor is the QAA-kitemarked accreditation model the only one that will guarantee a quality education grounded in robust academic standards.

Professor Geoffrey Alderman

CHIEF RABBI OF THE FEDERATION OF SYNAGOGUES

2005-09-13T18:30:00.000+01:00

I have this week written to the President of the Federation of Synagogues in London asking him and his fellow Honorary Officers to fill the vacant office of "Rav Rashi" - Chief Rabbi - of the Federation.

In my letter I reminded the President (Mr Alan Findlay) that the last holder of this office was the late Dayan Michael Fisher.

The need for this office remains as strong now as at the time of its inception - if not stronger. As the Federation grows, and as its influence is felt more keenly in circles beyond the immediate confines of Anglo-Jewry, it needs a public focus, embodied in a rabbi of great sagacity with a strong national profile.

"The office has remained vacant for far too long [I have said]. It should be filled without further delay."

MRS HELEN SAGAL

2005-08-07T18:30:00.000+01:00

The following statement was issued on Friday 05 August 2005 by Professor Geoffrey Alderman:

"A month ago the Chief Rabbi, Sir Jonathan Sacks, publicly declared that he was unable to accept the validity of Mrs Helen Sagal's conversion effected by the official rabbinical authorities in Israel some fifteen years ago.

Prior to his delivery of this judgment I has applied, on Mrs Sagal's behalf, to the London Beth Din [over which Sir Jonathan presides] for the delivery to us of copies of every document in its possession relating to her case. This application was made on 20 June 2005 under the provisions of the Data Protection Act, 1998. Accordingly, that Act gave the Clerk to the Beth Din, Mr David Frei, 40 days to comply with this application.

On Saturday 30 July, some 41 days after the application, I received a package of materials from Mr Frei. These include notes handwritten by various Dayanim [Judges] relating to the case, and give a unique insight into the motives that led the Beth Din to advise Sir Jonathan to reject the validity of Mrs Sagal's conversion. They also include hitherto unpublished correspondence, in Hebrew, between the religious authorities in London and Jerusalem.

I am sorry to say that this material confirms my original suspicion that the Beth Din was determined to find a reason for rejecting the validity of Mrs Sagal's conversion. It also casts doubt on the claim made by Sir Jonathan that the religious authorities in Israel had somehow transferred to his Beth Din in London the authority to determine Mrs Sagal's Jewish status, perhaps with a view to revoking it. Especially revealing is a letter in Hebrew, marked "Not for Publication," from Dayan Menachem Gelley, of the Beth Din, to the Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Israel, Rabbi Amar (14 April 2005), asking that the authority to determine Mrs Sagal's Jewish status be transferred to the London Beth Din. No such sanction was in fact ever given.

Mrs Sagal holds both British and Israeli citizenship. In Israel her status as a Jewess remains unimpaired.

Having obtained provisional but authoritative legal advice, I can now announce that Mrs Sagal is actively considering instituting legal proceedings, either against Sir Jonathan for alleged defamation [inasmuch as he has denied, in public and in writing, that she is Jewish], and/or against him and/or his Beth Din (or certain members of the Beth Din) is respect of the alleged denial to her of her human rights.

I should add that the successful use in this case of rights conferred under the Data Protection Act is, I am told, the first occasion on which the Act has been invoked against a Beth Din in this country. I am also pleased to report that, subsequently, the Act has been invoked - also against the London Beth Din - in relation to a second, similar case in which I am advising."

[Note for Editors: Mrs Sagal, who lives with her Israeli husband and family in North London, was converted to Orthodox Judaism by the official ecclesiastical authorities in Israel in 1990. Last December, in connection with the application Mr & Mrs Sagal had made for their eldest son, Guy, to be admitted to the Jews' Free School, Kenton, the Office of the Chief Rabbi in London declined to accept the validity of this conversion.]

MRS HELEN SAGAL

2005-07-06T18:30:00.000+01:00

Statement by Professor Geoffrey Alderman

The following statement was issued on Wednesday 06 July 2005 by Professor Geoffrey Alderman following a meeting that took place between Mr and Mrs Sagal and the Chief Rabbi to further explore the refusal of the Office of the Chief Rabbi to recognise Mrs Sagal's conversion effected in Israel some fifteen years ago.

"On Tuesday evening, 05 July 2005 I accompanied Mrs Helen Sgal and her husband, Israeli-born Mr Raoul Sagal, to a meeting with the Chief Rabbi, Sir Jonathan Sacks. The Chief Rabbi was accompanied by one of his Dayanim (Judges), Rabbi Ivan Binstock, and the Executive Director of his Office, Mrs Syma Weinberg. The meeting, which had been requested by the Chief Rabbi, took place in Mrs Weinberg's private residence, and lasted approximately 90 minutes.

At the meeting Sir Jonathan made a statement intended to justify the view that he and his Beth Din {Ecclesiastical Court] had taken, that the validity of Mrs Sagal's conversion effected in Israel could not be accepted. He offered to personally oversee a fresh conversion process involving Mrs Sagal, her two sons and her as yet unborn child (whose birth is imminent), with the aim of establishing Mrs Sagal's Jewish status "beyond doubt."

Sir Jonathan acknowledged that his Office had authorised the ritual circumcision of Mr & Mrs Sagal's elder son, Guy, without bothering to inquire into the circumstances of Mrs Sagal's conversion.

The Chief Rabbi admitted that there had been serious deficiencies in the way his Office had handled the Sagal case, for which he apologised, and announced that one of his officials had been formally reprimanded. I welcomed this admission and offered my services, free, to put in place fresh administrative procedures that would ensure that the requirements of natural justice and English law were complied with in future such cases.

As to the matter of substance, I pointed out that irrespective of any view the Chief Rabbi personally might hold of the manner in which Mrs Sagal's conversion had been effected in Israel, the fact was that that conversion had not been revoked. I asked for an undertaking that if Mrs Sagal were to agree to a re-conversion in England, the Chief Rabbi would meanwhile give his certification to the Jews' Free School for the purpose of permitting her elder son, Guy, to enter this school in September. I regret that this undertaking was not forthcoming.

Mr Sagal and I both observed that the evident effect of the decision not to recognise, in England, Mrs Sagal's conversion in Israel must be to call into question hundreds - perhaps thousands - of Israeli conversions and to cause anguish to many Israeli families.

Whilst I am grateful - and said so - for the ongoing personal involvement of the Chief Rabbi in this case, I am very disappointed with the outcome thus far. We are in fact no further forward now than we were six months ago. I have therefore advised Mr & Mrs Sagal to seek immediate redress in the English courts.

[Note for Editors: Mrs Sagal, who lives with her Israeli husband and family in North London, was converted to Orthodox Judaism by the official ecclesiastical authorities in Israel in 1990. Last December, in connection with the application Mr & Mrs Sagal had made for their elder son, Guy, to be admitted to the Jews' Free School, Kenton, the Office of the Chief Rabbi in London declined to accept the validity of this conversion.]
l must be to call into question hundreds - perhaps thousands - of Israeli conversions and to cause anguish to many Israeli families.

[Note for Editors: Mrs Sagal, who lives with her Israeli husband and family in North London, was converted to Orthodox Judaism by the official ecclesiastical authorities in Israel in 1990. Last December, in connection with the application Mr & Mrs Sagal had made for their elder son, Guy, to be admitted to the Jews' Free School, Kenton, the Office of the Chief Rabbi in London declined to accept the validity of this conversion.]

AUT BOYCOTT OF BAR ILAN AND HAIFA UNIVERSITIES

2005-04-26T02:36:00.000+01:00

PERSONAL STATEMENT BY PROFESSOR GEOFFREY ALDERMAN

The following statement was issued by Professor Geoffrey Alderman in London, England, on Monday night, 25 April 2005, following the decision by the Association of University Teachers, taken at the AUT's Annual Conference on Friday 22 April, to boycott the Universities of Bar Ilan and Haifa:

"I am an AUT member of some 36 years' standing, and a former Chair of its London Committee.

I am shocked and saddened that at its annual conference last week, timed to coincide with the eve of the Passover fesival, the Association saw fit to pass two ill-considered and spiteful resolutions calling on AUT members to boycott two Israeli universities.

Leaving aside the legality of what the resolutions propose, in terms of relevant anti-discrimination, equal opportunities and employment legislation, I am saddened that the AUT has allowed itself to be used as the tool of those whose agenda is aimed at the denial of the right of Jewish national self-determination and I am shocked at the assault on academic freedom that these resolutions embody.

Academic freedom is about the free exchange of ideas. The record of Israeli universities in this regard is very strong - much stronger than the oppressive record of universities in the Arab and Islamic states that surround Israel, but about which the AUT seems unconcerned.

I understand that, following the passage of these resolutions, some colleagues have resigned their AUT membership. I do not intend to do so. Instead, I call upon my fellow AUT members to ignore the resolutions and to treat them with the contempt they deserve."