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Delay Sought Of Conference Seen As Anti-Israel (US & Italy)

Three major New York-based foundations sponsoring an academic conference in Italy that was scheduled to begin Monday are now calling for its postponement after the conference came under criticism as a forum for critics of Israel and after one of the articles circulated in advance of the meeting was found to have been what executives of two of the foundations called "an anti-Semitic paper by a Holocaust denier."

The New York Sun yesterday reported that eight of the 21 participants in the conference organized by the American Association of University Professors supported boycotting Israeli universities. Critics said that would misrepresent the number of those who support academic boycotts and wrongly legitimate their position.

The conference's sponsors yesterday said that one of the articles the American Association of University Professors circulated to those attending the meeting as preparation was printed in a pro-Hitler magazine, the Barnes Review.

The organizations sponsoring the conference, the Ford, Rockefeller, and Nathan Cummings Foundations, issued statements yesterday saying they doubted the conference's viability.

Click here to read the article published in the Barnes Review.

Read entire article at NY Sun