Home > News > The conference at the University of Sussex; a gathering of (mostly) idiots
By David Collier, 14 May 2017
I have just returned from a fascinating two-day conference at the University of Sussex. As someone who researches anti-Zionist forces in the UK, watching these people operate inside an arena so fraught with internal disagreement, made for a fascinating and educational outing.
It spanned two full days and included around 50 speakers. The Sussex conference programme is available online.
The framing of the University of Sussex conference
Towards the end of the second day, Sussex ‘activist academic’ Michael Kearney made an interesting comment. Kearney had been discussing academic censorship when he spoke of the cancelled conference at Southampton:
“a conference that was supposed to be held at the University of Southampton on the very same topic that we are talking here today, but it was banished from the UK”
He was wrong. This wasn’t Southampton, Exeter or Cork, nor could it ever have been.