Mick Hartley

Remember David Miller? – the Jew-obsessed Bristol University professor who issues deranged outbursts about the unique evils of Zionism and the "imperialist policies" of the Jewish state? He crossed some sort of line earlier this year when he accused members of Bristol's Jewish Society – actual students at his own university – of being pawns of Israel, part of a coordinated campaign of censorship directed by "a violent, racist foreign regime engaged in ethnic cleansing”.

Well, according to the New Statesman, he's received over £400,000 of taxpayers’ money in grants to fund his "research":

Miller has been put under investigation by the university after a number of controversial comments were exposed – including that the “Zionist movement” was “the enemy of world peace”, that members of university Jewish societies were “pawns” of Israel, and that the Israeli government of wanting to “impose [its] will all over the world”.

The UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), a government body that funds academic research and other ventures, awarded Miller and his co-authors £401,552 in funding for research across three years (2013-2016).

Research released by Miller in this period, seen by the New Statesman, accused Israel “lobby groups” of coercing politicians and the public into a pro-Israel stance (from a paper called “The Israel Lobby and the European Union”, published in 2016), and contained a map of the "British Zionist scene”, which claimed to link the Israeli government and pro-Zionist organisations to the main British political parties (included in a paper called “The Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre: Giving peace a chance?”, published in 2013).

In a 2015 openDemocracy article based on some of this research, Miller and his colleagues also included the “Zionist movement” in one of their “five pillars of Islamophobia”.

Nice work if you can get it.