17.12.2019, 11:41
Deutsche Version folgt in zweitem Schreiben.
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Dear supporters,
Our petition has been on-line for nine days. Now it is time for some interim appraisal.
We have been asked several times what exactly may be objected against the IHRA “definition" of antisemitism. I will comment on this in a second letter.
Well, here is an interim appraisal:
Today, Dec 17, 9:30h a.m. MET, we are 845 supporters of the petition: 764 at the German version and 81 at the English one.
Originally we had planned to restrict the circle of supporters to academics at German universities, being the immediately affected persons. But we dismissed this restriction, after so many people had signed who are either not academics or have not been active at German universities.
Therefore, we thank all of you for your solidarity and would like to encourage you in bringing this petition to the attention of as many people as possible.
Before Georg Meggle and I had started this petition, Georg had written to the president of the German Rectors’ Conference (HRK). In the near future, we will further write to the rectors of all 268 universities and academies that are HRK members, in order to suggest that they may revise their resolution on the IHRA “definition”. When doing so, we will inform them about this petition, of course.
It was particularly encouraging when, three days ago, Amos Goldberg from Jerusalem sent our call to his list of addressees. Prof. Goldberg is the initiator of the letter to the German parliament (Bundestag) from 240 Jewish academics opposing against the anti-BDS resolution in May (and, recently, of a similar letter to the French assemblée nationale). It is mainly through his help that we have a nice number of Jewish/Israeli academics as supporters, thereby providing us with a strong argument justifying our request.
It is in this vein that I will do a little bit of name dropping about who signed so far (asking all those that remain unmentioned for their mercy):
Professors (mostly) of Jewish descent, international:
USA: Noam Chomsky, Richard Falk, Lawrence Davidson, Daniel Boyarin, Susan Slyomovics, Elsa Auerbach, Lisa Rofel, Joel Beinin, Colin Dayan, Rush Rehm, Andrew S. Bergerson
Israel: Amos Goldberg, Gadi Algazi, Yonathan Anson, Micah Leshem, Ofer Aharony, David Enoch, Nomi Erteshik-Shir, Avner Ben-Amos, Tommy Dreyfus
Belgium: Henri Hurwitz, Marc David, Willie van Peer, Victor Ginsburgh
France: James Cohen, Marc Steinling, Pascal Lederer, Jeanne Lichtenstein Fagnani, Sonia Dayan-Herzbrun
Great Britain: Donald Sassoon, Yosefa Loshitzky, Yossef Rapoport, Engin Isin
Others: Igor Primoratz (IL, AUS), Larry Haiven (CAN), Yakov Rabkin (CAN), Roy Wagner (CH), Michel Legrand (LUX)
We have plenty of other powerful personalities among these international supporters, like the psychiatrist Georges Yoram Federmann (fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Yoram_Federmann), the saxophonist Lena Bloch, the author Danièle Gervais-Marx
Professors in Germany on the list of signatories (insofar the title of professor either was indicated or is known to me; to my knowledge, five of us are of Jewish):
Philosophy: Georg Meggle, Pirmin Stekeler-Weithofer, Helmut Pape, Olivier Ndjimbi-Tshiende, Lothar Kreiser, Christoph Lumer
Law: Norman Paech, Kai Ambos, Jörg Arnold
Theology: Ulrich Duchrow, Dorothee Roer, Ulrich Hübner, Gottfried Orth, Johannes Wallmann
Mathematics: Hans Bandelt, Günter Törner
German studies: Eberhard Ockel
Political science: Srirupa Roy, Helga Baumgarten, Karin Kulow, Michael Klundt, Werner Ruf, Bodo Zeuner
Music: Sidney Corbett
Photography: Heiner Schmitz
Pedagogics: Micha Brumlik, Eva Borst, Iman Attia, Peter Rödler, Wolfgang Jantzen
Communication: Michael Meyen
History: Paul Münch
Medicine: Michael Kochen, Jan Hildebrandt, Otwin Linderkamp, Michael Falkenstein, Wulf Dietrich
Physics: Franz Fujara, Georg Bastian, Christian Jooß
Oriental studies: Udo Steinbach, Martin Beck (DK), Irene Schneider, Rupa Viswanath
Informatics: Fanny-Michaela Reisin, Eberhard von Goldammer
Sociology: Eva Senghaas-Knobloch, Richard Sorg
Economy: Jürgen Kunze
Agriculture: Hans Haußmann
Psychology: Rolf Verleger, Wilhelm Kempf, Birgit Kröner-Herwig, Werner Sommer, Günter Knoblich (Ö), Peter Kirsch, Andrea Kiesel, Wolfgang Kallus (Ö), Markus Kiefer, Hartmut Schächinger, Markus Junghöfer, Stefan Debener, Hans Markowitsch, Nele Wild-Wall
Whoever is missing on this list or feels being misclassified: please write me.
On behalf of Georg Meggle, I thank all of you for your support. Please help us in making the number of signatories increase further.
Rolf Verleger