This was a reaction to the request made by Gary Goodyear, minister of state for science and technology, that the SSHRC convene a second peer-review committee to re-examine a previous decision to provide $19,750 in funding to the conference.

Professor Martin Lockshin, former director of the university’s Centre for Jewish Studies and currently a professor of humanities and Hebrew, addressed the meeting. Following are his remarks:

“The motion is a motherhood motion. Of course, I join all my colleagues in agreeing that academic conferences should be free from government intervention. How could anyone vote against that?

“But what do you do when you feel strongly that this particular academic conference was not organized in a legitimate academic manner? Of course, the university must be a place, as President Shoukri just said, for academic debate on all difficult issues. But as the president also said, this conference and every conference must be based on evidence and extensive research.

“Many of us who have some knowledge about Israel-Palestine feel strongly that this conference was put together by people, many of whom have no academic expertise in this area, academics who have fine academic credentials but who have done no research and have no training in this specific area. We are also concerned that too many speakers in this conference do not have academic credentials. They are political activists and they come from one part – and only one part – of the political spectrum.

“In other words, a number of us think that the peer review process didn’t work and failed to distinguish between political activism and academic research.”