Some correspondence regarding President Paul Davenport’s acceptance of a ‘honour’ at the Jewish National Fund’s Negev Dinner (June 2008)

Letter from 36 Western faculty to President Davenport, January 10 2008.

Background documents for our January 10 letter.

President Davenport’s response dated February 1, 2008, following our January 25 meeting.

Reply to President Davenport’s letter from the five faculty who met with him, February 25.

Letter from Adalah (Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel), February 22.

Joint letter from Al-Haq (Palestinian human rights organization) and Zochrot (Israeli organisation dedicated to raising awareness amongst Israeli Jews of the historical injustices committed in their name against Palestinians), February 23. Zochrot also started an online petition (in Hebrew) to the President of the University of Western Ontario in Canada to abstain from participating in a fundraising event for the Jewish National Fund.  

Letter on behalf of President Davenport declining an invitation from the Public Interest Research Group to attend a panel on the JNF (from Associate Vice-President Helen Connell, dated March 10, 2008).

JNF Award Incompatible with Diversity & Tolerance, Commentary in the Canadian Association of University Teachers Bulletin, March 2008, by Michael Lynk, Rebecca Coulter, David Heap & Randa Farah.

There were many letters to the editor in the Western News (both opposing Davenport's decision and supporting it, try http://communications.uwo.ca/com/search/ and search for “JFN”), as well as elsewhere in the media e.g. Award Dishonours All At Western by Henry Lowi, in the York University Excalibur, March 27, 2008 (scroll down to this letter, and another one following it).

Call-out for June 1 protest and statement from Public Interest Research Group (PIRG-UWO), London Project for a Participatory Society, Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights, Anti-War Organization of London. A significant amount of organizing for this event was done via a highly effective Facebook group.

President Davenport's  speech to the JNF dinner, June 1, 2008.

London Free Press coverage, June 2, 2008.

Davenport wrong to accept honour from Jewish group (letter from Dr. Peter Chidiac, Associate Professor, UWO Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, to the London Free Press, June 7, 2008).

Speech obscures Palestinian suffering, by a twenty UWO faculty, published in the Western News, June 19, 2008.

Some photos from the June 1, 2008 protest:

Last updated June 21, 2008.