A Public Correction

Several posts back, I took Jeff Halper to task.

I have since corrected that post to remove the name of the university I identified as being his employer. I am doing this at the request of the university, which sent me the following email:

September 14, 2008

To whom it may concern:

Please note that Dr. Jeff Halper was never a “professor” at {name deleted on request} University. Many years ago, he was an outside lecturer (“adjunct lecturer”) for a total of two semesters, and as such, he cannot claim that he was a “faculty member” of our institution, much less a tenured professor.

Therefore, we strongly object to the repeated assertions that are travelling around the internet (e.g., http://www.blogger.com/profile/12570980519532246704) that he is a “former faculty member” or “professor of anthropology” of {name deleted on request} University, or any like claim.

We request that you remove all references associating Dr. Jeff Halper with {name deleted on request} University from your internet site(s) and that you refrain from doing so in the future.

Thanking you in advance for your kind cooperation.

Sincerely,
{deleted in order to protect the identity of the university}
Office of the Rector
{deleted} University
{deleted}, Israel

Today I am correcting it publicly both here and in the original post, so the correction cannot be missed. I think I've corrected adequately. This is one of the problems with non-journalistic blogging (discussed at some length at South Jerusalem): as a diarist, I tend to rely on the sources I read (Haaretz, Jerusalem Post, al Arabiya, other blogs with good track records and original sources posted, etc.) but I'm not a journalist. Hence, I don't do things like telephone the university in question and confirm that Halper is or is not a professor there---I rely on the journalists in the media to do that. That's their job.

Of course, they don't always do their job, and I'm guilty of making an assumption, but that's why its a blog and not an Op-Ed in Haaretz.

It is, however, heartening to find that his former employer doesn't want its good name besmirched by association with Halper, and even better news that Halper has had his euros taken away from him.

It's apparently not true that "there's no such thing as bad publicity."