imed that being the only Jew in his class was “scary”. Miller faced no repercussions for his comments. The University of Bristol offered no support to Jewish students – not so much as an email.
Then, last week David Miller called for an “end of Zionism" in a video. Still the University of Bristol did nothing to support or protect Jewish students.
After that, Miller unashamedly doubled down on his comments. In a statement sent to reporters at The Tab Bristol, Miller declared Zionism a “racist, violent, imperialist ideology premised on ethnic cleansing". He suggested that Bristol JSoc had “manufactured hysteria” and the campaign against him had rendered Arab and Muslim students “unsafe”.
Though Miller attempted to pit two minority groups, two student groups (JSoc and the university Islamic society) against one and other, the University has only said they "do not endorse the comments made by Professor Miller about our Jewish students", saying "any action which we might take as an employer is a private matter".
However this malicious attempt to sow seeds of diversion between two minorities was not enough for Miller. On Saturday in The Electronic Intifada, a pro-Palestinian website, Miller claimed that UJS and Bristol JSoc has been manufacturing a “charade of false anti-Semitism allegations”. Still a deafening silence from the university….
David Miller’s position as a lecturer has allowed his hateful conspiracy theories to spread. This is why Miller is so dangerous to Jewish students and why the University of Bristol needs to take action fast.
And in the Times today, Daniel Finkelstein puts his finger on the real issue, when Miller crossed the line from poor scholarship and the spreading of antisemitic conspiracy theories to actual attacks on Bristol's Jewish students:
Professor Miller’s work has long been deeply offensive to me and to many Jews but that’s not a good enough argument for his dismissal. However, the same cannot be said for his recent response to controversies about his work.
Miller has chosen to attack the Bristol University Jewish Society — proper, actual students at his own university — as being part of a co-ordinated campaign of censorship directed by the state of Israel. He further told the Jewish Chronicle that: “There is a real question of abuse here — of Jewish students on British campuses being used as political pawns by a violent, racist foreign regime engaged in ethnic cleansing”.
Bristol University may regard Professor Miller’s amazing theories about power elites as part of the rich tapestry of political sociology and merely as a home for views on Israel I don’t happen to share.
It cannot, however, allow some 18-year-old student who comes up from Radlett to study, say, botany and joins the Jewish society to be characterised by one of its own professors as having signed up to a foreign-backed conspiracy to subvert the country’s politics.
If Bristol cannot tell the difference between such an assault and the normal cut and thrust of academic and political discourse then it doesn’t have any business even teaching political sociology.
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