Cloister, University of Glasgow, in Scotland. Photo Credit: _skynet/Flickr

A University of Glasgow journal has rescinded an apology it issued for publishing a peer-reviewed article that was accused of promoting antisemitic conspiracies, following denouncements by hundreds of scholars and Israel critics.

Published in the student-run postgraduate journal eSharp in 2017, the article — “Advocating Occupation: Outsourcing Zionist Propaganda in the UK,” by then-University of Exeter student Jane Jackman — became a point of controversy in 2020, when the pro-Israel activist David Collier flagged its contents for being “laden with conspiracy, antisemitism and errors.”

At the time, reporting on Collier’s essay prompted the Scottish university to point to its recent adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, and its commitment to “a zero-tolerance approach to antisemitism and hate speech of any kind.”

In May, the editors of eSharp then decided to append a disclaimer to the article, apologizing for its subpar research and antisemitic content.

“This article employs some discursive strategies, including a biased selection of sources as well as the misrepresentation of data, which promote an unfounded antisemitic theory regarding the State of Israel and its activity in the United Kingdom,” eSharp stated. “We would like to apologize that our editorial procedures did not identify those failures in scholarship.”

That decision then prompted a group of over 500 scholars — including linguist and frequent Israel-critic Noam Chomsky, as well as the leftist filmmaker Ken Loach — to sign a petition accusing the university of chilling free speech.

Now, the eSharp journal has revised that section of the article’s disclaimer, to read: “This article employs some discursive strategies, including a biased selection of sources as well as the misrepresentation of data, which promote what some would regard as an unfounded theory regarding the State of Israel and its activity in the United Kingdom.”

Continued the editors in a note, “This editorial was amended in September 2021 to address potential ambiguity in wording.”

Collier on Wednesday denounced the revision as “an act of cowardice.”

“It was a gutter piece and the underlying thread was that people like myself are effectively fifth columnists working inside the UK for a foreign nation —which is a basic antisemitic trope,” he told The Guardian. 

A spokesperson for the University of Glasgow commented, “The university does not agree that publication of the editorial is damaging to academic freedom. The article remains on the journal’s website and readers are free to endorse it or challenge it as they see fit.”