NOVANEWS
Dear All,
you’ll have got the earlier message about the cancellation of the 1.00 p.m. ICAHD talk by Jeff & Ghada. The reason for this is that the pro-Zionist Birmingham student Guild has imposed a disciplinary sentence on BUFoPSoc, namely that they must cease all operations until a new committee is elected in April.
The ‘offence’ is that when they arranged the Gilad Atzmon talk for Mon 22 Feb, they failed to get the speaker to sign a ‘freedom of speech’ form which has to be scrutinised and approved by the Guild before the event. IS THAT FREEDON OF SPEECH ? You might recall that the Guild earlier tried to have that event cancelled on the grounds that no risk assessment had been submitted – which had not been done because the event was off site. As a result BUFoPSoc withdrew from the event, designating it a private event presented by G. Atzmon.
They also asked us not to bill their events as presented by them, as the Guild told them that Guild society events should not be advertised by outside organisations.
This current development is the culmination of a campaign which has been growing for some time.
We should not take any action without consulting our BUFoPSoc colleagues nor without their agreement. As you’ll appreciate, the situation is very delicate; an outside organisation entering the fray could make thinfgs worse for them.