I am sure that you are perfectly nice at a personal level, but no way would I take on somebody who had served in the Israeli army.

Oxford Professor Refuses Application From Former Israeli Soldier

By Haim Watzmann

A UNIVERSITY of Oxford professor last week refused to consider an application from an Israeli Ph.D. candidate because of the applicant's nationality and because of his service in his country's armed forces. The professor subsequently apologized, but Oxford said it was investigating the matter anyway.

In an e-mail message, Andrew Wilkie, a pathologist at Oxford's Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine, informed the student, Amit Duvshani of Tel Aviv University's medical school, that

"I am sure that you are perfectly nice at a personal level, but no way would I take on somebody who had served in the Israeli army."

Mr. Wilkie also wrote: "I have a huge problem with the way that the Israelis take the moral high ground from their appalling treatment in the Holocaust, and then inflict gross human rights abuses on the Palestinians because [the Palestinians] wish to live in their own country."

Mr. Duvshani forwarded the e-mail message to students and faculty members in the medical school, and they sent it on to Israeli academic e-mail lists and the news media.

A number of faculty members wrote letters of protest to Oxford and to Mr. Wilkie personally. Mr. Wilkie apologized for his remarks in an e-mail message posted on the Oxford Web site, along with his original message.

"I recognize and apologize for any distress caused by my e-mail of 23 June and the wholly inappropriate expression of my personal opinions in that document," he wrote.

He also included a statement issued by an unnamed Oxford spokesman announcing that the university is conducting an investigation of the matter and that a report would be presented to the vice-chancellor in the coming week.

"Freedom of expression is a fundamental tenet of university life, but under no circumstances are we prepared to accept or condone conduct that appears to, or does, discriminate against anyone on grounds of ethnicity or nationality, whether directly or indirectly," the statement said.

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Daily Express headline, 24 Mar 1933