complicated simplicity

Malaysia’s 4th Prime Minister, Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, is visiting today to give a talk on "The Case for Criminalising War", and I will be attending it. Doors open at 6pm, and that’s in 30mins. It’s in the Sir Alexander Fleming building, Imperial College London.

The City Guilds College Union has a news article on this.

Although his prime motive for being in the UK is to go on BBC’s Hard Talk, ICU’s Political Philosophy Society (PPS) invited him to deliver a lecture while he was in the country. The event is titled "The Case for Criminalising War", a topic Tun has been lecturing on across the globe after giving up the post of PM in Malaysia.

This is going to be fun. Even though it’s the middle of exam studying, I’m so looking forward to this.

Because it’s started to drama already… From the PocPhil Soc:

Hello Everyone,Imperial College London is forcing us to limit the audience to Imperial College London members only.

You will need an Imperial College ID to enter.

Furthermore, they have made us reduce our number of seats to 320 only.

I am very sorry about this dissapointing development and wholeheartedly apologise for any inconvenienced this causes. The situatuion is out of our hands.

here is what happened:

- We organised the events booking 2 halls and everything was fine.

- The event was reported on the IC Live! website and a discussion ensued. It can be read at: http://live.cgcu.net/news/1739

- Following this, the IC Jewish Society and the UJS complained to Imperial College that we were inviting someone who could incite anti-semitic racial hatred the day before the event (today).

- Imperial College decided to call me today and force me to make these last minute changes. It was their decision after they took legal advice. They told me that they will be deploying security that will make sure that people without IC cards are not allowed in and that I could not do anything about that. So I thought I should tell everyone later rather than see you arrive and then miss out too.

- I am sorely disappointed by the outcome and very upset. I once again sincerely apologise.

The PPS understands the reason the Jewish Soc felt apprehensive and we have resolved our issues. It is the university that is now taking this action (not Jewish Soc as they are okay with this) in what it sees is its best interest, and we the PPS, being part of the IC union have no choice but to respect that.