David Hirsh
David Hirsh (born 29 September 1967) is a lecturer in Sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London, and co-founder of Engage, a campaign against the academic boycott of Israel. Early life and education. Hirsh was raised in a Jewish family in Highgate, London and attended Highgate School until he was 15, when he persuaded his parents to allow him to transfer to Woodhouse Grammar School. For several years, he was a member of the Trotskyist Alliance for Workers' Liberty and, during the 1980s, a leading activist in the National Organisation of Labour Students. He briefly studied Physics at  Sheffield University, then worked as a driver for several years. He is a graduate of City University, London and holds an M.A. in Philosophy and Social Theory and a PhD from the University of Warwick, writing his dissertation on Crimes Against Humanity and International Law. Career. Hirsh won the British Sociological Association Philip Abrams Memorial Prize for the best first book in sociology for 2004, for his book "Law Against Genocide: Cosmopolitan trials". The book, on the significance of "cosmopolitan law", contains an account of the 1999 British trial of Anthony Sawoniuk for Holocaust-related crimes committed in Belarus in  1942. In 2005, he co-founded the Engage website, a resource for those working to oppose the boycott of Israel. Hirsh took a leading role during 2005-07 in opposing boycotts of Israeli universities proposed by British academics. Hirsh told "The Guardian", "It may not have anti-semitic motivations, but if you organise an academic boycott of Israeli Jewish academics but no-one else in the world, that is an anti-semitic policy". His 2017 book, "Contemporary Left Antisemitism", which combined narrative and case study with sociological analysis and theory to understand the controversial and contested phenomenon of antisemitism on  the left, was published in 2017. He developed, with Daniel Allington, the AzAs (Antizionist Antisemitism) Scale, for quantitatively measuring antisemitism as expressed in relation to Israel and its supporters. He is the director of the London Centre for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism, founded in 2022. Its mission statement is ‘To challenge the intellectual underpinnings of antisemitism in public life and to confront the hostile environment for Jews in universities.’ Livingstone Formulation. Hirsh originated the term "Livingstone Formulation", named after Ken Livingstone, as the claim made by those accused of antisemitism that the accusation is made in order to delegitimise  their criticism of Israel; he says it is accusing Jews of playing the race card. Alvin Hirsch Rosenfeld described the Livingstone Formulation as "a common trope of contemporary antisemitism in the United Kingdom." The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA), a pro-Israel group, has accused the BBC of using the Livingstone Formulation routinely, with statements such as "Others say the Israeli government and its supporters are deliberately confusing anti-Zionism with antisemitism to avoid criticism."