Ted Honderich - Controversy

Controversy

Honderich has been involved in controversy since the publication of his book After the Terror in 2002. Honderich arranged with Oxfam in Britain and the publisher of After the Terror, Edinburgh University Press, to have the £5,000 advance on royalties go to the charity, along with more money from the publishers. The Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail suggested that Oxfam was taking money from a terrorist sympathizer, and it then declined the contributions, for which it was judged adversely in the British media. The book was published in a German translation. Micha Brumlik, director of a Holocaust centre and Professor of Pedagogy at Frankfurt University, demanded publicly that the book be withdrawn from sale by the publisher, Suhrkamp Verlag. Despite the declaration by the philosopher Jürgen Habermas, who had recommended the translation, that the book was not anti-semitic, it was withdrawn from sale. Honderich demanded the dismissal of Brumlik from his professorship, for violation of academic principle. There was a media firestorm in Germany. The book was retranslated and republished by an antizionist Jewish publishing house, Melzer Verlag. Lesser controversies have included an imputation of anti-semitism by a student newspaper in London, against which Honderich took successful legal action. There have been attacks by Palestinians on Honderich's justification of Zionism too, including disruptions at meetings.