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Student to Dean Torbjørn Digernes at NTNU : “We Will Not Give In”…….

NTNU’s Dream Team

The Dean of the Norwegian “University of Hate: NTNU, Torbjørn Digernes, doesn’t understand that, inviting ultra anti-Israel lecturers to speak in a seminar about the Israeli Palestinian conflict, is like inviting Hamas leader Isma’il Haniyyah, France’s National Front, Jean-Marie Le Pen, and Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to speak about Israeli history and the Holocaust.

(click to enlargen)
Ready to give a seminar on Israeli history based on the Qu’ran”
Hamas spiritual leader and terrorist kingpin
Sheikh Ahmed Ismail Hassan Yassin
Sheikh Yassin:
If I wasn’t dead, Torbjørn Digernes would have invited me too!
The Norwegian university, NTNU is currently sponsoring a heavily loaded anti-Israel seminar, under the guise of intellectual debate. The list of guest speakers though, prove that the dean of NTNU, Torbjørn Digernes, is not interested in providing a factual academic discourse on the subject of the Israel-Arab conflict.
Nor are the students and faculty of NTNU very much impressed with the line-up of guest speakers, knowing full well that the only reason why they were invited, was to spread their ideologically driven, anti-Israel agenda within an academic setting. The blog Norway, Israel and the Jews, has an interesting post about a student who confronts the dean of his school.  KGS

On his blog, Dean Torbjørn Digernes at NTNU “salutes” the organizing committee behind the NTNU seminars on Israel and remains convinced that the seminars-series is a “praiseworthy initiative”. Students, staff and ordinary citizens are less convinced. The latest comment to Mr.Digernes’ blog is another protest – unauthorized translation below
Dear Dean.
It is saddening to see my university invite lecturers who are world-famous for their hatred of Israel to speak here at NTNU. Ilan Pappe?!?! To NTNU!?!? No, this is awful. I do not know how to attack this. Why not invite Benny Morris or Manfred Gerstenfeld? I believe the arguments in favor of a boycott would fall as a house of cards if the Norwegian public just one single time receied input from knowledgable people (Morris is the foremost on Israel’s history. Willoch eagerly quotes him, even though Morris has asked him to stop since Willoch contorts reality).
When we see which lecturers have been invited to the seimnar series, we understand that there are exclusively Israel-hostile voices behind the call. Do not take us for “fools”. We understand this cynical game. We are so endlessly tired of the criticism against Israel, which is blown beyond any meaningful proportion. By the way, where are all of those who spoke of proportionality during the Gaza-war?
We will not give in. The more you treat Israel unfairly, the more we shall resist you! However I did believe that students and staff were to spend their time on studies and science and not on countering political propaganda! I welcome a seminar which invites lecturers who represent different sides in the conflict, but in this respect our back-water university fails completely.

ALSO:

Academics Against Israel and the Jews
THE BOOK IS NOW AVAILABLE FOR FREE

The publication two years ago of Academics Against Israel and the Jews, edited by Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld, has drawn a lot of attention. The book is now available for free on the Internet:

Summary

The new century has seen many attempts to discriminate against Israel, its academic institutions, and its scholars in several Western countries. This includes boycotting Israeli universities and academics as well as calling for divestment from Israeli securities. The campaigns frequently use anti-Semitic motifs and sometimes also involve violent anti-Semitic acts.
These actions should be seen in the context of the much broader, multiple, ongoing attacks against Israel and the Jewish people. These initiatives are part of a postmodern global war and often are directly related to anti-Semitism. This global war is multisourced, fragmented, and often diffuse and discontinuous.
The modern anti-Semitism of the 1930s could be compared to many large, centrally managed factories of a toxin-producing corporation. Its chief executive was Hitler and from its tall chimneys anti-Semitic poison spread in large quantities over a wide area. Postmodern anti-Semitism can be compared to the pollution produced by the millions of cars everywhere. These run on fuel that causes poisonous elements to escape in limited quantities through a large number of exhausts all over the world. Today such poison is spread on many campuses.
The discriminatory actions against Israel prove that in many universities, academic freedom is abused as a subtle device to promote extremist ideologies and protect misbehavior. This is one among many reasons why what happens on campus should be subject to much greater external scrutiny. That would likely lead to a long-lasting general reassessment of issues concerning academia such as free speech, academic freedom, uncontrolled campus extremism including incitement to violence, university autonomy, the politicization of science, and the discrepancy in norm between academia and society at large.
Eighteen essays from four continents discuss a variety of cases of discrimination and how Israel and Jews can defend themselves against such initiatives.
Praise for the book
This volume is essential reading for all who care about the future, because it documents a worldwide campaign of disinformation and bigotry about Israel that is directed at university students. Its goal is as clear as it is cynical and dangerous: to mis-educate a generation of future leaders and turn them against the only democracy in the mid-east and the only Jewish state in the world. To combat this evil requires understanding of its sources and scope. Read this book, learn, and go forth and speak truth to bigotry.
Professor Alan Dershowitz, Harvard University
Anti-Semites succeeded in murdering six million Jews only after significant parts of the supposedly enlightened world accepted as a matter of fact that Jews were dangerous and inferior beings. Genocide became legitimate when this attitude permeated universities, the intelligentsia, and other elites.
Against this historical background, the inroads of the anti-Israeli campaign into the Western academic world are extremely worrying. The infrastructure for future crimes or even genocide is being laid by ideologists at universities of the free world.
We need many people to stand up against the demonizers, the propagators of double standards, and those who delegitimize Israel. Manfred Gerstenfeld and The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs were among the first to address the issue of the new academic discrimination globally. They published the first overview articles on the subject and made available case studies about a number of campuses.
This book is a further milestone in the exposure and analysis of the anti-Semitic forces in their various permutations on Western campuses. I congratulate the JCPA for this initiative.
Natan Sharansky, former Israeli Cabinet Minister, from the foreword
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments 9
Introduction 11
Natan Sharansky: Foreword 13
Manfred Gerstenfeld: Academics against Israel and the Jews 17
ESSAYS
Rebecca Leibowitz: Defeating Anti-Israeli and Anti-Semitic Activity on Campus: A Case Study: Rutgers University 83
Noah Liben: The Columbia University Report on Its Middle Eastern Department’s Problems: A Paradigm for Obscuring Structural Flaws 95
Martin Kramer: Columbia University: The Future of Middle Eastern Studies at Stake 103
Jonathan Jaffit: Fighting Sheikh Zayed’s Funding of Islamic Studies at Harvard Divinity School 108
Leila Beckwith: Anti-Zionism/Anti-Semitism at the University of California-Irvine 115
Leila Beckwith, Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, and Ilan Benjamin: Faculty Efforts to Combat Anti-Semitism and Anti-Israeli Bias at the University of California-Santa Cruz 122

Edward S. Beck: Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME): Fighting Anti-Israelism and Anti-Semitism on the University Campuses Worldwide 134

Roz Rothstein: StandWithUs: A Grassroots Advocacy Organization Also on Campus 147

Alain Goldschläger: The Canadian Campus Scene 154

Corinne Berzon: Anti-Israeli Activity at Concordia University 2000-2003 163

Aryeh Green: European Universities and the New Anti-Semitism: Issues, Examples, Prescriptions 174

Ruth Contreras: On the Situation in Austrian Universities 184

Ronnie Fraser: The Academic Boycott of Israel: Why Britain? 198

Manfred Gerstenfeld: The UCU May 2007 Boycott Resolution and Its Aftermath 214

Gavin Gross: Anti-Israeli Activity at the School of Oriental and African Studies: How Jewish Students Started to Fight Back 224

Manfred Gerstenfeld: Utrecht University: The Myth of Jewish Cannibalism, Censorship, and Fear of Muslim Intimidation 236

Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook: Anti-Semitism among Palestinian Authority Academics 242

Ted Lapkin: Academic Anti-Zionism in Australia 250

List of Contributors 259

Index 263

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