{"id":124879,"date":"2026-02-06T06:46:30","date_gmt":"2026-02-06T06:46:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/124879\/"},"modified":"2026-02-06T06:46:30","modified_gmt":"2026-02-06T06:46:30","slug":"george-mitchell-and-queens-university-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/124879\/","title":{"rendered":"George Mitchell and Queen\u2019s University \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Sir, \u2013 I do not go along with the argument that because former <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/politics\/2026\/02\/04\/george-mitchell-jeffrey-epstein-links-why-is-former-us-senators-name-being-removed-at-queens\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/politics\/2026\/02\/04\/george-mitchell-jeffrey-epstein-links-why-is-former-us-senators-name-being-removed-at-queens\/\">senator George Mitchell <\/a>played a pivotal role in the making of the Belfast Agreement, he should therefore be absolved from responsibility for misdeeds he may have committed. But here\u2019s the rub. Is there convincing evidence of really serious wrongdoing? It is not there in the rather <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/politics\/2026\/02\/04\/george-mitchell-jeffrey-epstein-links-why-is-former-us-senators-name-being-removed-at-queens\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/politics\/2026\/02\/04\/george-mitchell-jeffrey-epstein-links-why-is-former-us-senators-name-being-removed-at-queens\/\">threadbare justification my university issued <\/a>earlier this week. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The huge tranches of emails, heavily redacted as they are and often devoid of context, will take time to analyse and assess. Further information from other sources, pointing one way or the other, is likely to be coming down the line. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">So, I find the rush to judgment puzzling. On the face of it, it seems more reflective of the herd instinct than the careful, dispassionate sifting of evidence for which universities are noted. \u2013 Yours, etc<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">LIAM KENNEDY,<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Emeritus professor of history,<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Queen\u2019s University Belfast.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sir, \u2013 I do not go along with the argument that because former senator George Mitchell played a&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":124880,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[54330,9,24,63,122,124,123],"class_list":{"0":"post-124879","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-queens","8":"tag-letter-of-the-day","9":"tag-new-york","10":"tag-new-york-city","11":"tag-nyc","12":"tag-queens","13":"tag-queens-headlines","14":"tag-queens-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124879","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=124879"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124879\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/124880"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=124879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=124879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=124879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}