UCL on iERA event

From UCL News.

An organisation known as the Islamic Education and Research Academy (IERA) booked a room at UCL for a debate on Saturday evening (9 March). UCL was notified during Friday by some individuals planning to attend the event that the organisers intended to segregate the audience by gender.

This was directly contrary to UCL policy. We do not allow enforced segregation on any grounds at meetings held on campus. We immediately made clear to the organisers that the event would be cancelled if there were any attempt to enforce such segregation. We also required the organisers to make it explicit to attendees that seating arrangements were optional, and guests were welcome to sit wherever they felt comfortable. We also arranged for additional security staff to be present to ensure that people were not seated against their wishes.

It now appears that, despite our clear instructions, attempts were made to enforce segregation at the meeting. We are still investigating what actually happened at the meeting but, given IERA’s original intentions for a segregated audience we have concluded that their interests are contrary to UCL’s ethos and that we should not allow any further events involving them to take place on UCL premises.

Guest post on the “debate” at UCL

Guest post by Abishek N. Phadnis

The Missionary Position

Six weeks ago, Student Rights published its findings on the infestation of rabble-rousing Islamic preachers in British universities over the past year. Topping the charts was trash-talking noisemaker Hamza Tzortzis, with his hit single “we as Muslims reject the idea of freedom of speech, and even the idea of freedom”. That he has alchemised this rather exotic view into a career as a self-styled ‘intellectual activist’ is the least of his many contradictions.

Mr. Tzortzis is an alumnus of the Hizb-ut-Tahrir, a global Sunni extremist movement against the evils of homosexuality, Jewishness, women, democracy, freedom and probably happiness itself. He is a champion of such worthy causes as the criminalisation of homosexuality , the dragging of Britain into the Islamic Caliphate and the amputation of limbs for minor crimes. His brand of rabble-rousing, however, eschews violent radicalisation for a more insidious form of reactionary preaching that sexes up a dark and twisted interpretation of Islam as the ideal.

It is almost received wisdom now that intellectual honesty isn’t one of Mr. Tzortzis’s strongest suits. During his invasion of Sheffield Hallam University last month, his acolytes in the Islamic Society secured him a debate with the Atheist Society who, until the very eve, were given the impression that the opponent would be an Islamic Society student. This afforded Mr. Tzortzis the opportunity to alternate his gormless pseudo-profundity with some self-indulgent whingeing about the reluctance of high-profile unbelievers to debate him. [Read more…]

Press release on gender segregation at UCL event

The following is a statement by concerned students.

Sexual segregation at a UCL event is a scandal

A policy of sexual segregation was enforced at an event at University College London on Saturday, with the organisers’ security trying to physically remove members of the audience who would not comply.

Seating at the event was segregated between men and women, with a small ‘mixed’ space allocated for couples.

Separate entrances were in place for women and men, although ‘couples’ were allowed to enter via the men’s door. Male attendees were refused entry via the women’s door.

The event “Islam vs Atheism” on Saturday 9th was organised by the Islamic Education and Research Academy (IERA), and pitted writer Hamza Tzortzis against Professor Laurence Krauss in a debate. [Read more…]

SMF asks Miliband to rethink his support for ritual genital cutting

A press release from the Secular Medical Forum:

On 7 March Ed Miliband told an audience in London that he supports ritual genital cutting of children.  In reference to circumcision and kosher food the leader of the Labour party said:  ‘These are important traditions … ways of life must be preserved’.  The Secular Medical Forum condemns this announcement and asks Mr Miliband to rethink his support for ritual genital cutting.

It is a Jewish tradition to remove the prepuce (foreskin) of baby boys when they are eight days old.  This operation disregards autonomy and exposes the child to significant risks, including bleeding, infection and death.  The Secular Medical Forum questions why Mr Miliband supports ritual circumcision given that it is ethically flawed and medically dangerous. Ironically, the meeting was held at the Royal College of Surgeons, a respected organisation that educates surgeons in the ethics and practice of surgery. The first principle of healthcare is ‘primum non nocere – first do no harm’.  This guidance is disregarded by supporters of ritual circumcision.  The meeting was arranged by the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the senior representative body of Jewish people in the United Kingdom. [Read more…]

Child inmates flung themselves to the ground

Marie-Therese has a powerful article about shunning at ur-B&W. She has extended and corrosive experience of being shunned, starting with the nightmare of life in the industrial “school” in Dublin where she was imprisoned from childhood through adolescence.

The very thought of the word absolutely sends shivers down my spine. Shunning is indicative of pure ruthless social rejection, a thing I grew up with in Goldenbridge. I also associate it with children who were very friendly with each other in the institution, who, alas, were severely mocked and jeered and separated from each other by staff. The latter called them ‘love birds’ then castigated and shunned them. There were also children who were different from others, and they too were deliberately avoided by other children and not allowed to associate with the group. Goldenbridge children, who did not know the meaning of mother or father figures, should not have been targeted in a shunning manner by grown-ups, whose sole responsibility was to act in loco parentis. It was the antithesis of any kind of loving parenting or caring guardianship. The children who turned their backs on other children, however,  were only doing what they had seen those in charge doing all the time. It was learned behaviour. A warped environment begets warped behaviour. 
Mother and father figures are most important in children’s lives and deprivation of them was punishment enough, without having the added burden of being shunned by grown-ups. Mother and father words meant nothing to institutionalised inmates…excepting that they were words synonymous with beatings, whereby children had hollered out those very words…’O Mammy…O Daddy’ after a big thick shiny polished bark of a tree was rained down heavily by the nun in charge after the children had spent hours on a cold landing awaiting said floggings. Child inmates were also prevented from knowing  or [O1]  speaking to the nuns in the convent. The latter were just like aliens from another planet. When child inmates dared to look back at them sitting in their personal convent chapel pews, with black hooded heads completely hidden and matching black gown trails sprawling all over the aisles, they were invariably told by the nun who caught them to go and wait on the dreaded cold landing for punishment.

There was always so much punishment. The Ryan Report has many chapters on the subject. [Read more…]

Meet Kirk Sneade

Something I didn’t know about – a guy who pretended to self-identify as female to run for Women’s Officer at UCL. Oh ha ha, I can smell the jokes from here.

The UCL student uploaded a video of a woman being punched by a man and a photo with the slogan “memes are gay” as part of his campaign. Sneade, who is now claiming discrimination, reportedly likened his plight to the communist persecution in Nazi Germany.

Sneade’s original manifesto stated:

  • Kirk Sneade has self defined as a woman ever since he realised it gave him legal access to the women’s changing rooms at the Bloomsbury gym.
  • Kirk wants to make clear his desire to attend all Women’s forums to talk about Important Woman Issues such as hair dressing, shopping and walking sassily away from confrontations with your exes. [Read more…]

    • A war on information now?

    As I mentioned, Richard Dawkins has an informative post about the UCL debate yesterday at RDF. Very good. I tried to add to the information Richard provided by linking to the information I had provided on Friday, but a moderator removed the link to my post almost instantly.

    Why?

    I took a look at the Terms & Conditions, and I can’t find anything that forbids links to blog posts. I’m not surprised not to find such a thing, because that would be an incredibly stupid policy for a website to have. Blog posts can be informative, so it would be ludicrous to make a general policy against links to blogs.

    So then why?

    I have no idea. The Friday post is relevant because it documents that the organizers were on the record as having agreed to Krauss’s insistence that there be no gender segregation. It documents that this was public information on Friday.

    Why on earth remove that?

    I did another comment explaining the (obvious) relevance and asking for the link to be left, but that whole comment was deleted.

    What is wrong with them? If they have an ironclad rule against posting blog links, why isn’t it visible somewhere? And if they do, why do they, when it would be such a stupid rule?

    Then I wrote the post that quoted Chris Moos’s new letter to UCL, and commented at RDF to say I had new information and posted that link – and it was instantly removed.

    What is wrong with them?

    Krauss says no

    Dana Sondergaard attended the debate at UCL yesterday, and she recorded a video of Lawrence Krauss packing up his things and leaving because the gender segregation he’d objected to was still being enforced. It’s a public post on Facebook.

    “No!” he says, making the “no” gesture with his hands. “No gender segregation or I’m out of here.”

    More on yesterday at UCL

    Chris Moos has written again to UCL, and urges others to do the same. He gives a detailed account of how the gender segregation was enforced and what a crap job UCL did of interfering with it. Hello world, it’s 2013, and University College London is allowing segregated events on its campus. Chris has given me permission to quote his letter.

    Following up on the emails I had sent you on Thursday and Friday, I am writing to inform you that I was shocked about the manner in which the Islam or Atheism: The Big Debate event was carried out yesterday.

    1) The organisers clearly and repeatedly violated UCL’s Equality and Diversity policy. Not only did they enforce gender segregation, but five security guards of the organiser intimidated and attempted to physically remove audience members who refused to comply, falsely claiming that these attendees had been disruptive. Both male and female audience members felt intimidated by the actions of the organiser’s security guards.

    Only after Professor Krauss threatened thrice to leave the debate if the organisers should continue to enforce gender segregation (follow this link: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10151324574843231 ), the organisers cleared one row of the women’s area and allowed the male attendees to sit there, thereby maintaining forced gender segregation. Notably, the women who were sitting in that row were not asked by the security guards whether they would feel comfortable with a man sitting next to them, or whether they would be willing to move. Forced gender segregation was thus maintained. [Read more…]

    Yesterday at UCL

    Richard Dawkins has a fuller account of what happened yesterday at the “Islam or Atheism?” debate at UCL, via Krauss himself.

    A few days ago, I had received a tip-off from somebody who had made an inquiry about tickets: ‘We contacted the organizers today and learnt that “as for seating, it is according to when the ticket was booked and gender”.’

    I’m guessing that somebody was Chris Moos, since he’s been all over this and I don’t know of anyone else who has. Chris does great work.

    I passed this on to Lawrence, with the suggestion that he might consider withdrawing from the whole affair. He immediately asked the organizers, who assured him that the audience would not be segregated by sex, and Lawrence agreed to go ahead. [Read more…]