Norwegian government and universities rejected accusations of anti-Semitism and anti-Israeli bias made by renowned US Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz.
But Norway’s leaders refused to meet with him.
"We condemn anti-Semitism," Norwegian Foreign Affairs Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere said Friday in the daily Aftenposten.
Stoere said "academic institutions must allow for a broad range of opinions and knowledge" but that it was "the institution's own responsibility to decide who they invited to speak."
Dershowitz, a 72-year-old law professor, had blasted Norwegian universities for refusing to let him speak on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict after being invited to Norway by the International Christian Embassy (ICEJ), a Jerusalem-based pro-Israel group.
"Hamas and its supporters are invited into the dialogue, but supporters of Israel are excluded by an implicit, yet very real, boycott against pro-Israel views," he wrote in an opinion piece in which he argued that the country's self-professed desire for dialogue was "one-sided."
During his time in Norway, Dershowitz was able to speak at three occasions after being invited by student groups.
At the Chabad House in Oslo, he made an account of the reactions he received from the country’s political and academic leadership, said the University of Oslo had not said why it turned him down, Trondheim's university said "that Israel was too 'controversial'" and the University of Bergen invited him to speak about the OJ Simpson case if he "promised not to mention Israel."
The University of Oslo meanwhile explained the date suggested by the organisation setting up Dershowitz' tour was inconvenient.
"The University of Oslo is by principle opposed to academic boycotting,"rector Ole Petter Ottersen said in the paper.
Calls for the academic boycotting Israel have previously been heard in Norway, but none of these materialized.
In his address, Professor Dershowitz read the first line of a petition prepared by Norwegian professors to boycott Israel, showing the students that it is not occupation, but rather the existence of the State of Israel altogether that bothers Norwegian academics.
“Norway is the worst country in the world when it comes to its record on Israel and the Jews,” he said. “It is on the wrong side of history, morality and democratic values. It permits the butchering of seals and whales, but does not allow the most humane means of animal slaughter simply because it is needed by Jews.”
Norway was the first the country in the Western world to prohibit production of kosher meat.
Around 1,000 Jews live in the country.