An Open Letter re the Dora Love Prize

Dear Professor Forster

I am writing to you in my capacities as an extremely concerned almunus of the university, a member of the Jewish community in Colchester, and heritage consultant with a background in

Genocide and Holocaust collections management and outreach, including running a series of talks in tandem to the university's own Holocaust Memorial Day. I am incredibly concerned about the status of the Prize re the 2024 academic year.

For 11 years, the Dora Love Prize has provided an important outlet and conduit for the education and discussion of intolerance, discrimination, racism (not limited to Anti-Semitism), encouraging students to question, interrogate and contemplate the impact of fear and hate on minorities writ large. The prize may have a young participation but those participants are our community's future. Those participants are our active legacy to a more humane future.

I moved to Colchester in 2015; I sadly did not have the opportunity to know Dora personally but do know people in this community whose lives she personally touched and have had the privilege of watching students who have participated in the prize grow into active bystanders that can only be described as assets and inspiration. To lose out on the Prize as outreach would be detrimental to the University as well as to the surrounding communities, not just those of us in a minority.

As a former student at the University and parent or a local student of age to participate in the Prize, I am disturbed at the lack of action around this year's prize. If the University is no longer in a position to support the Dora Love Prize, at the very least it could release the administrative files as a gesture of good will and solidarity to the Prize's mission.

I look forward to your response and to positive action from the University on the this matter.

Respectfully,