Tuesday 25 May 2010

500 Israeli Academics and Students Call for Chomsky to Be Allowed In

CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION

GLOBAL NEWS TICKER May 25, 2010

Five hundred Israeli academics, students, and intellectuals have signed a letter to the Israeli interior ministry protesting the decision to bar Noam Chomsky, a professor emeritus at MIT, from entering the West Bank on May 16. Mr. Chomsky was due to lecture at Birzeit University and meet Palestinian leaders but was stopped by ministry officials as he crossed from Jordan to the West Bank and turned back after questioning. "Under democracy, we do not silence voices that express an opinion which is different than the dominant one," said the letter, according to a report in Haaretz, a daily newspaper. Earlier a spokesman for the Israeli prime minister told The New York Times that Mr. Chomsky should have been admitted, that turning him away was "a mishap" by an official who had "overstepped his authority," and that he would be allowed to enter if he tried again.

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