By Cnaan Liphshiz/(JTA) – A British university is responding to complaints that Jews were barred from a lecture alleging Israel was intentionally undermining the fertility of Palestinians. A spokesman for the University of Warwick, located 90 miles northwest of London, said the Jan. 17 event “was organized by group of researchers and students” and “was not organized by the University.” The university has received a complaint that at least three Jews were barred from the event, which was advertised as open to the public, the spokesman also said.

David Collier, a journalist and blogger on antisemitism, said he and two other Jews, Mandy Blumenthal and Yochy Davis, were stopped at the entrance to the lecture room by Lisa Tilley, a member of the faculty at Warwick’s School of Politics and International Relations, who asked to see their identity cards and then refused to admit them into the room. Contacted by JTA, Tilley said the event in question was attended by “many members of the Jewish community at Warwick.” Tilley wrote in an email to JTA: “All allegations of anti-Semitism in relation to me, the speaker, or anyone present are completely false.”

The event was a lecture by Sigrid Vertommen, a researcher from the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at King’s College London. The invitation to the event said that Israel’s policy of subsidizing multiple fertilization procedures for its citizens is “primarily aimed to serve the reproductive rights of its Jewish population at the expense of the indigenous Palestinian population.” Israel has 1.2 million Arab Palestinian citizens, who are entitled to the same medical benefits as Israeli citizens. “Rather than understanding Israel’s fertility policies in terms of rights, choice, peace and reconciliation,” the invitation to the event read, “it will propose a reproductive sabotage framework.”

Vertommen did not reply to a JTA request for comment.