Professor Geoffrey Alderman - News

  A  MILLER'S TALE On Friday 1 st October the University of Bristol issued a statement [1] in relation to Dr David Miller, who until that date (and from 2018) had been Professor of Sociology at that University. The statement told us that Professor Miller was no longer employed by the University, and it explained, in very general terms, why:   We have a duty of care to all students and the wider University community, in addition to a need to apply our own codes of conduct consistently and with integrity. Balancing those important considerations, and after careful deliberation, a disciplinary hearing found Professor Miller did not meet the standards of behaviour we expect from our staff and the University has concluded that Professor Miller’s employment should be terminated with immediate effect.   The background - or at least some background – to this decision to dismiss Professor Miller is I think well known. As I noted in the Jewish News last March [2] ...

  The following statement has been issued by  Professor Geoffrey Alderman :   “I have, in my personal capacity, referred to the powerful Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights the letter sent on 9 October 2020 to all English university heads by the Secretary of State for Education, Gavin Williamson.   This Joint Committee of both Houses of Parliament is currently undertaking an inquiry into Freedom of Expression. It is my view that the policy set out in the 9 October letter amounts to an imminent and explicit assault on that freedom.   In that letter Mr Williamson threatened that higher-education institutions that had not by Christmas 2020 adopted the definition of antisemitism drafted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) would be subject to a range of financial and other sanctions.” Professor Alderman has told the Parliamentary Joint Committee that in his view the threatening language employed by the Secretary of Stat...

Whilst I cannot claim to have read every obituary and post-mortem appreciation of the late former chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the British Commonwealth, Jonathan Henry Sacks (who died on 7 November 2020), I have certainly read a great many. With very few exceptions, they follow a common pattern. If they mention the multiple failures and shortcomings of his chief rabbinate at all [and most do not], they are notoriously economical with the truth, treating these as aberrational, incidental to his life and peripheral in their significance and impact. They concentrate rather on his reputation in the wider world, beyond the orbit of British Jewry, and they argue that if that reputation was high – even outstanding – then his numerous communal embarrassments must be discounted, or even entirely ignored. This is not a view that I share.   I have in fact perused with astonishment some of the encomia that have been heaped upon him. Here are very short extracts from th...

THE LONDON CONGESTION CHARGE Following the announcement by Mayor of London Sadiq Khan that the amount of the London Congestion Charge would increase to £15 a day, with longer hours of applicability  and extending to 7 days a week, I requested Greater London Assembly Member Andrew Dismore to ask the Mayor on my behalf what mandate - if any - he considered he had for these measures. Mr Dismore declined to put such a question, arguing that in the current pandemic emergency situation the Mayor had no choice in the matter, because these measures were virtually ordered by Transport Secretary Grant Shapps as a condition of the government's bailout of Transport for London. I asked Mr Dismore if he could point to that part of Mr Shapps' relevant letter to the Mayor [14 May 2020] requiring the Mayor to make these changes to the Congestion Charge. Mr Dismore pointed to paragraph 12h of the letter. In that paragraph, as a condition of the bailout, the Mayor is re...

In recent weeks I’ve given interviews to British, Israeli and even German newspapers on the subject of the fate of the Jewish Chronicle. Naturally I have been careful to declare a number of interests. It was for the Jewish Chronicle that from 2002 until 2016 I wrote the paper’s weekly anchor comment column. I never missed a deadline. Besides filing these columns I wrote others for the paper, including book reviews and obituaries. Then I should add that as part of my academic research I have actually read every edition of the JC, from its very first in 1841. I still resort to its invaluable online searchable archive to check this fact or that. In common with many other newspapers the JC has been struggling financially in recent years. In 2018 it posted a loss of around £1.5 million. Its immediate future appeared to have been secured by donations from (as the Financial Times unhelpfully put it) “unnamed individuals,” but evidently this was not enough to sav...

  Applying Student Number Controls to Alternative Providers with Designated Courses. Response to BIS Consultation from Professor Geoffrey Alderman Question 1 Name of organisation (or name of person if the response is a personal response and is not submitted on behalf of an organisation)? What type of organisation is it? (e.g. Alternative Provider, HEI, FEC, Regulatory Body etc.) Professor Geoffrey Alderman [Personal Response] Question 2 Do you have a preference for Method 1 (control based on eligible students) or Method 2 (control based on students accessing funding)? If so, why is this?   Method 2 - easier   Question 3 What is your view on submission of data to HESA? Do you think designated courses at alternative providers should participate in the Key Information Set and therefore complete the National Student Survey and Destination of Leavers in Higher Education survey (if student numbers are large ...

United Nations Human Rights Council “International Fact-Finding Mission on Israeli Settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory ” Submission from Professor Geoffrey Alderman Introduction 1.       This document evidences the submission of Professor Geoffrey Alderman to the United Nations Human Rights Council’s investigation entitled “International Fact-Finding Mission on Israeli Settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory .” 2.       This submission is made by Professor Geoffrey Alderman exclusively in his personal capacity. 3.       This submission addresses only the issue of the legality of Israeli settlements in the territory commonly referred to as “The West Bank,” more especially in the context of the Human Rights Council’s reference to “occupied Palestinian territory.” Professor Geoffrey Alderman 4.       Professor Geoffrey Alder...

DIRECTOR OF EDUCATIONAL OVERSIGHT AT THE QAA ALDERMAN’S APPLICATION LACKED EVIDENCE OF “INTERPERSONAL SKILLS” AND OF ABILITY TO WORK WITH UK BORDER AGENCY Professor Geoffrey Alderman, the internationally-known authority on the shortcomings of the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA), described himself as ‘deeply shocked’ on receiving feedback following his failure to be short-listed for the post of Director of Educational Oversight at the QAA. ‘Following my utter devastation [Alderman explained] at not being short-listed, and being naturally anxious to improve myself and enhance whatever career prospects I may still perchance enjoy, I asked the QAA for some honest-to-goodness feedback on my failure. This morning I got it, in the form of an email from the Agency’s Human Resources & Organisational Development secretariat.’ ‘Typically, the QAA did not mince its words [Alderman continued]. In a hard-hitting  judgement  it declared that my application had contained ...

Let’s Rejoice As We Commemorate The Heroes Of Bomber Command Today Her Majesty the Queen will unveil in London an imposing but controversial memorial to Bomber Command. Specifically the memorial honours the memory of the 55,573 British and Commonwealth airmen who gave their lives as crew-members of Bomber Command during the Second World War.  Some of these (like my uncle, the late Sargeant Henry Landau, who flew as the “air bomber” in a Mark III Lancaster in 166 Squadron: http://home.cogeco.ca/~dswallow4/MissingCaile.htm ) have no known graves, and their names are therefore already memorialised at the RAF memorial at Runnymede, opened by the Queen in 1953. The memorial that the Queen will unveil today commemorates them and their comrades whose last resting places are known. But it also includes an inscription remembering “those of all nations who lost their lives in the bombing of 1939 – 1945.” Behind this curious wording – and the fact that it appears following what ha...

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 col...

"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)

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 annu...