University of Edinburgh

Huge police force fails to stop students disrupting Israeli diplomat's speech at Scottish university

On Wednesday evening Edinburgh University’s Students For Justice in Palestine (SJP) manged to attend and disrupt a lecture by Daniel Taub, the Israeli ambassador to the UK. Taub was hosted by the university’s student politics society, and protected by what one activist told EI was the largest police presence anyone could remember. 

Whatever happened to Tom MacMaster, the "Gay Girl in Damascus" hoaxer?

Last June The Electronic Intifada exposed the identity of the person behind the “Gay Girl in Damascus” hoax. The perpetrator was Tom MacMaster, a 40-year-old American graduate student at the University of Edinburgh. After an surge of media attention, MacMaster disappeared from the public eye. The University of Edinburgh promised to investigate. But what happened, and was MacMaster ever held accountable for a hoax that many believe caused genuine harm? Documents released by the University of Edinburgh under the UK’s Freedom of Information Act, reveal that not only was MacMaster allowed to stay on as a student, but that the university sought as much as possible to gag him while never publishing any results of its investigation..