Fred Halliday has been vindicated in his long battle with the LSE over taking Gaddafi money. But the underlying reason - corporate and government pressure on the university is not addressed by the Woolf Report into the scandal.
John Keane asks David Held to look back over events and reconsider his reactions to a dissimulator. Was this an error of theory or of practice? Hasn’t the LSE Libya affair done damage to the scholarly credibility of research programmes in the area of democracy?
How should the London School of Economics have handled its Libyan connections? Fred Halliday strongly opposed engagement, while David Held, Co-Director of LSE Global Governance, has been a major supporter. Is this shown to have been naïve or complicit? No - a risk worth taking, argues the author
Fred Halliday (1946-2010), openDemocracy author and Director-Designate of the LSE Middle East Centre, 2006-2008, did not want the LSE to accept a £1.5m grant. He wrote this memo to the University's governing body in October 2009 to try to convince them to give up the money.
