Professor Geoffrey Alderman - News

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 Sy...

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

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. ...

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

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

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

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