THE LYING UNIVERSITY OF LEEDS

Below is their excuse for banning the talk on Islam by Dr Kuenzel. Immediately below that is a response exposing the lies in the "explanation"

As the responsible officer, I write in response to your message to the Vice-Chancellor.

Dr Kuentzel's proposed public lecture last Wednesday evening was cancelled neither for any reason of censorship nor because of pressure from any interest group. It was cancelled because the organisers did not give us enough notice to provide the normal level of portering, stewarding and security (around twenty people in total) for such an event.

It is simply not true that we somehow capitulated to threats or complaints. As a matter of fact, we received no threats, and only a handful of complaints - fewer indeed than for a talk delivered on our campus the previous evening by an Israeli diplomat. The talk by the Israeli diplomat went ahead; the difference was that the organisers (the University's Jewish Society) told us about that talk the week before and worked with us to make the necessary arrangements.

Assuming that we are given enough notice, and appropriate logistical information, I know of no reason why Dr Kuentzel should not deliver his lecture in Leeds at a future date.

For the record, and despite press reports to the contrary, the University did not in any way seek to prevent two other talks by Dr Kuentzel on (I believe) the same theme: as internal academic seminars, they did not require the same level of support as a large public meeting.

I would refer you to a statement on the University's website (http://www.leeds.ac.uk/media/news/kuentzel.htm ).

Yours sincerely

Roger Gair

Comment by Dr. Matthias Kuentzel on the above:

First of all I have to emphasize that I never got a written or even verbal explanation by Mr. Gair or by the office of the University's vice-Chancellor as to why my talk on Islamic antisemitism had been canceled on the very day I arrived in Leeds. No one responsible for the cancellation ever apologized. The University of Leeds did not and does not treat me like an invited guest speaker, but like someone unwelcome who just makes mischief - quite an unpleasant experience.

Against this background, I was confronted with conflicting information with respect to the two seminars scheduled as follow-up events to my public talk. A press officer told me that only my public talk was cancelled. Faculty members of the German department told me that these seminars were cancelled as well. I finally gave these seminars at a location off the University grounds. Many faculty members and students of the University nevertheless participated. The statement by Roger Gair "The other two events [the seminars] are going ahead as planned" (see Times, March 16) was simply not true.

Roger Gair's statement of March 19 is as inconsistent as his press release of March 15.

1. His comparison of my talk with the talk of an Israeli diplomat is completedly misleading, since I am not a diplomat (with all the security requirements that such a status implies) but an academic.

2. He admits that the University in my case "received no threats, and only a handful of complaints". Why then has my "lecture been cancelled on safety grounds . to protect the safety of participants in the event" as his press release says? Why then did Mr. Gair demand that "around twenty people in total" or - in his press release four days earlier - "around 30 people in all" had to be in place just for security reasons?

3. His assertion that the organisers of my talk "did not give us enough notice" to provide for this amount of security staff is misleading, since my talk in Leeds had been scheduled four month earlier and the publicity for it had been out of weeks.

4. It was not my lecture which came to the University's "attention less then 36 hours before it was due to take place" - as his press release asserts - but rather some E-mails by Muslim students who asked the University only on March 13 to "provide a solution . by cancelling the lecture all together" and to "apologize to the Muslim Community as a whole, for suggesting such a topic."

That is why I cannot find the Secretary's claim that my public lecture "was cancelled neither for any reason of censorship nor because of pressure from any interest group" convincing. Instead, there are many indications that the University anticipated potential protests before they ever happened and thus practiced self-censorship.

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Australia: Federal Leftist leader warns far-Left on hatred of private schools



Kevin Rudd has broadened his campaign to move Labor to the political centre with an aggressive defence of his policy not to cut government funding to private schools, which he says is a fact of life. The Labor leader has used his own story - starting in public education and later moving to a private school and back again - to argue Labor must recognise that parents will move students between different types of schools according to needs and interests.

Mr Rudd and his education spokesman, Stephen Smith, promised this week that private schools would not lose money - a policy designed to bury Mark Latham's "hit list" of private schools in 2004 and Kim Beazley's freeze on funding of rich schools in 2001. The blunt message is one of a series of steps being taken by the Labor leader during the first half of the year to drag the party away from some of its historic left-wing pillars and create a less intimidating face for mainstream voters.

The next move will be on indigenous policy, with the ALP party conference in four weeks' time to debate a fundamental shift that will put economic development for Aboriginal people at its core. The same conference will be asked to junk opposition to the privatisation of Telstra - a critical part of delivering Mr Rudd's $4.7 billion broadband package - and to end the 25-year prohibition on new uranium mines.

The Left is set to come under further pressure over its opposition to Mr Rudd's move to scrap Labor's no-new-mines policy after Queensland Labor Premier Peter Beattie yesterday reversed his opposition to allow further uranium mining in his state. Mr Beattie relented after accepting advice that uranium mining would not threaten Queensland's coal industry. The move paves the way to open up $3.2 billion worth of uranium deposits. This leaves only the Labor states of Western Australia and NSW still opposed to new uranium mines.

Mr Rudd yesterday outlined his centrist credentials during a speech in support of Morris Iemma's bid to be re-elected as NSW Premier this weekend. "What we offer is a balance of fairness and flexibility," he said. "It's the Labor way. We know what it takes to grow businesses. We know what it takes to expand the economy. "We've been in this business for a long, long time. "But we are never prepared to sacrifice the interests of working families, as the Liberals seem to think is the only way ahead. "So the choices, friends, are stark. The choices are stark when it comes to the future provision of public services."

At a caucus meeting on Tuesday, several speakers responded to the education announcement by asking for a Labor focus on the public school sector. Former teacher and ACTU president Jenny George, and NSW colleagues Sharon Bird and Julia Irwin said Labor must be seen as a strong supporter of government schools. Mr Rudd is believed to have lectured the caucus, reminding MPs that Labor's endorsement of Robert Menzies's 1963 decision to give public funds to private and religious schools was made more than 30 years ago by Gough Whitlam.

Labor should forget about distinctions between the public and private sectors and instead talk in terms of equal opportunity. The party did not want two tiers of schools to develop, the leader argued. "He was almost spelling it out to them slowly and deliberately, 'Get used to it'," a Labor insider said.

The present ALP platform says Labor governments must give priority to the public sector, and that priority is seen as an important means to help children from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Others at the meeting said they were worried that the coverage of education policy always ended up focused on private schools, presenting a false emphasis in voters' minds. However, the speakers did not directly attack the party policy announced by Mr Rudd and Mr Smith, which stipulates that private schools will not lose money. But sources said Mr Rudd regarded the demands from Labor members that he talk up the government schools as showing a fundamental misunderstanding of the issue.

The education move has parallels with the decision to dump Labor's opposition to privatising Telstra. That change allowed the party on Wednesday to propose a $4.7billion rollout of advanced broadband services, paid for in part with money drawn from the Future Fund, which holds billions of dollars worth of Telstra shares.

Both strategies give Mr Rudd a way of developing a new centrist policy while pushing the Howard Government further to the Right. "We say there's a role for government," Mr Rudd said yesterday in reference to the funding approach for broadband. "They (the Coalition) say there is no role. The choice is as stark as that. "We come from a different set of ideas, which says public services are a normal part of the fabric of Australian life and we are the party which delivers it. They are the party which gets rid of them. That's the choice."

Labor insiders fear the decision to take money from the Future Fund has left Mr Rudd vulnerable to attacks by Peter Costello on the Opposition's economic credentials. But the Treasurer's assault in regards to raids on the Future Fund will be blunted by a new Treasury report revealing the ageing of the population is becoming far less menacing.

Ms George and Ms Bird did not comment yesterday on the caucus meeting, but Mrs Irwin said she was happy to hear Mr Rudd say he wanted to create a world-class education system for all. Labor's policy, which is to create a needs-based formula but also to continue indexation of grants for wealthy schools, has been welcomed by the Independent Schools Association and the Independent Education Union. The Australian Education Union, which represents government schools, believes there is still an imbalance in the present funding arrangements, under which public schools receive about 35 per cent of the federal funds while educating about 70 per cent of the students. Private schools receive little taxpayer support from state governments.

Source






One Australian State Government faces up to illiteracy among older kids



READING and writing coaching will be offered to Years 6 and 7 after students fell below accepted standards. Education Minister Rod Welford said yesterday that Education Queensland would pay teachers $54 an hour, the supply teaching rate, to conduct the intensive coaching after school. "We will be alerting parents that their students have fallen below Year 5 benchmarks and that we can give them this assistance," Mr Welford said. "It is absolutely essential that they improve their skills before they reach secondary school or they will be unable to handle secondary subjects."

The most recently released National Report on Schooling in Australia showed that Queensland children are the nation's best readers in Year 3, but by Year 5 they descend to being almost the worst, second only to Northern Territory children. In Year 3, when Queensland children are younger than many of their southern counterparts, 97 per cent achieved the national reading benchmark. However, by Year 5 only 83 per cent of Queensland children reached the benchmark. The latest set of assessments is due out next week.

Mr Welford said international data showed that Queensland's best primary school readers and writers were on a par with children in Finland, which was the best performing nation in the world on literacy. "However, we have a very long tail of students who are not making the grade, a very wide gap between the most able and least able students," Mr Welford said.

The move was welcomed yesterday by Ken Rowe, research director of the Learning Processes research program at the Australian Council for Educational Research. "It's never too late," Dr Rowe said. He said experience in Melbourne had shown that an hour of weekly expert coaching could make a real difference to students' ability to read and therefore to learn all subjects. "It is the foundation," he said. However, Dr Rowe, who chaired the Federal Government's 2005 National Inquiry into the Teaching of Literacy, said intervention should ideally start with some students as early as Year 3, as soon as problems were identified.

Source

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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