Medical institute withdraws peer’s invitation over “allegations of anti-Semitic sentiment”

The Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine rescinded an invitation to the life peer Jenny Tonge to be a panellist earlier this month at a meeting on maternal health because of “allegations of anti-Semitic sentiment.”

The event, which took place at the Wellcome Collection in London on 4 October, was part of the Liverpool institution’s B!RTH Project, which uses theatre to raise awareness and provoke debate on global inequality in maternal healthcare. It included two specially commissioned plays about the burden of obstetric fistula in Kenya and the realities of pregnancy and childbirth through conflict, and panellists discussed the issues raised.

Two weeks before the event Tonge received a letter from Janet Hemingway, director of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, saying that her invitation was being withdrawn because “a number of issues of concern” had been raised through the school’s due diligence …