[News] University of Vienna bans public lecture by Black activist - Dhoruba Bin-Wahad
Anti-Imperialist News
news at freedomarchives.org
Mon Jun 25 11:09:59 EDT 2018
https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/university-vienna-bans-public-lecture-black-activist
University of Vienna bans public lecture by Black activist
Ali Abunimah <https://electronicintifada.net/people/ali-abunimah> - 21
June 2018
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The University of Vienna has bowed to pressure from Austria’s Israel
lobby and banned a public lecture by a veteran Black activist from the
United States.
Meanwhile in a significant victory for free speech in Germany, the
Ruhrtriennale festival reversed a decision to disinvite the group Young
Fathers because of its support for Palestinian rights.
Former member of the Black Panther Party Dhoruba Bin-Wahad had been
scheduled to speak
<http://mobilecultures.univie.ac.at/news-und-events/detailansicht/news/vortrag-von-dhoruba-bin-wahad-1/?tx_news_pi1%5Bcontroller%5D=News&tx_news_pi1%5Baction%5D=detail&cHash=aa5c287c0368be6db4c26646da295edf>
Thursday evening at the University of Vienna’s Institute for African
Studies.
The lecture was co-sponsored by Dar al Janub, an anti-racism and
Palestine solidarity
<http://www.dar-al-janub.net/daraljanubgoalsandactivities.htm> organization.
But in recent weeks, the university has been under pressure
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/young-fathers-bullied-german-festival-renounce-support-palestinian-rights>
from the Austrian Students Union and the Austrian Union of Jewish
Students to ban the event.
They claimed that Dar al Janub is closely associated with the Palestine
solidarity group BDS Austria and that both organizations are anti-Semitic.
That censorship campaign succeeded after the Israelitische
Kultusgemeinde, the central council of Jews in Austria, also got
involved, smearing Bin-Wahad himself as anti-Semitic and criminal
because of his involvement in the Black liberation struggle that faced
severe repression by US authorities.
Draconian restrictions
In recent days, according to email correspondence from administrators
seen by The Electronic Intifada, the university imposed increasingly
strict conditions on the lecture, ultimately forcing it off campus.
These included banning any involvement by Dar al Janub and insisting
that the lecturer stick strictly to the advertised topic and make no
“anti-Semitic statements.”
A dean, Melanie Malzahn, would be assigned to monitor the lecture as it
happened and would have the power to halt the event on the spot if she
judged that any of the speech restrictions were violated.
The university also decided that the public would not be allowed into
the lecture at all, and that Bin-Wahad could only speak to a handful of
students.
Reached by telephone by The Electronic Intifada, Malzahn stated, “I’m in
a meeting. I have no time now” and abruptly hung up the telephone. She
did not respond to a follow-up inquiry by email.
Bin-Wahad and Dar al Janub rejected the university’s draconian
restrictions and moved the event
<https://www.facebook.com/events/204656466808072/permalink/220495868557465/>
to Afripoint, an African cultural space in Vienna.
In a press release
<https://www.ots.at/presseaussendung/OTS_20180620_OTS0184/universitaet-wien-untersagt-de-facto-oeffentliche-veranstaltung-mit-ehemaligem-black-panther-dhoruba-bin-wahad>
announcing the change of venue, Dar al Janub said the university had
submitted to “unacceptable pressure” from student unions and other
interest groups.
Just before the university had imposed the restrictions, its top
official Rector Heinz Engl had held a closed meeting with
representatives of the Austrian Students Union and the Austrian Union of
Jewish Students.
Anti-Semitism accusation
Another of those interest groups is the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde.
The Jewish communal body sent a dossier to the university on Bin-Wahad.
The university then forwarded the group’s allegations to Dar al Janub,
and a translation was shared with The Electronic Intifada.
According to the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde, Bin-Wahad’s membership of
the Black Panthers and the Black Liberation Army made him part of “a
criminal organization that carried out bombings, killings of police
officers and drug dealers and is responsible for robberies.”
In fact, Bin-Wahad was wrongfully imprisoned for 19 years for allegedly
attempting to kill two police officers in 1971. He was exonerated
<https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Pages/casedetail.aspx?caseid=3028>
in 1990 and subsequently received $900,000 in damages from the New York
Police Department and the FBI.
His personal and political history was the advertised topic
<http://mobilecultures.univie.ac.at/news-und-events/detailansicht/news/vortrag-von-dhoruba-bin-wahad-1/?tx_news_pi1%5Bcontroller%5D=News&tx_news_pi1%5Baction%5D=detail&cHash=aa5c287c0368be6db4c26646da295edf>
of his planned lecture.
The Black Panthers, along with antiwar activists, left-wing groups and
the American Indian Movement, were targets of the FBI’s secret
COINTELPRO program <http://www.blackpast.org/aah/cointelpro-1956-1976>
to sabotage and disrupt their work, including by using infiltrators to
incite criminal activities to discredit the organizations.
Notoriously, as part of this government repression, a Chicago police
death squad in 1969 assassinated Fred Hampton
<http://www.blackpast.org/aah/hampton-fred-1948-1969>, the deputy leader
of the Illinois Black Panther Party, as he slept in his bed.
Bin-Wahad edited a 1993 book, /Still Black, Still Strong/
<https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/still-black-still-strong>, giving
testimonies of survivors of the US government’s war on the Black
liberation movement. He spoke about his experience in the 2016 video
interview with VladTV at the top of this article.
The Israelitische Kultusgemeinde also alleged that “there are valid
reasons to assume that the speaker could make anti-Semitic remarks at
the event on Thursday.”
As evidence the group quoted two statements from Bin-Wahad.
One of them was an answer he gave to a question about why Black American
political leaders did not show greater solidarity with Palestinians.
“I think that the silence of the Black political elite and many
so-called Black reformers and activists is a consequence of the
interference with political power on behalf of the African community,”
Bin-Wahad had responded. “AIPAC and the Zionist lobby in Washington and
Jewish money across the country has been a major factor historically in
the civil rights movement.”
In another statement quoted by the Jewish communal group, Bin-Wahad said
that the US government “has always carried out a policy to divide Black
leaders and the Black community away from the struggles of people for
self-determination and liberation and especially Arab and Palestinian
people.”
The Jewish group also objected to Bin-Wahad referring to Israel as a
“European settler state” and denying that Israel has a “right to
self-defense.”
He also accused “a Black comprador class and Black elected officials” of
accepting funding from “from the Israeli Zionist lobby and the right
wing in America.”
Silencing Black voices
The power of the Israel lobby, including its relationship with Black
political leaders and elites, remains a lively topic of discussion in
the United States, on the left and right. Views of Israel are almost
always at the center of these debates.
In a 2007 article
<https://electronicintifada.net/content/how-barack-obama-learned-love-israel/6786>,
for instance, this writer traced how as little known Chicago politician
Barack Obama rose to national prominence, he increasingly adopted the
hardline anti-Palestinian talking points of the powerful Israel lobby
group AIPAC.
In 2010, Glen Ford, editor of /Black Agenda Report/, wrote
<https://blackagendareport.com/content/two-black-caucus-members-ask-gaza-flotilla-probe-rest-are-silent>
that “the relentless pressures of the Israel lobby have succeeded in
causing most Black elected officials to cower in fear of being labeled
anti-Israel.”
“Since at least the mid-sixties, many Jewish organizations have treated
Black sympathies for the Palestinian people as rank anti-Semitism of the
kind Jews experienced at the hands of whites,” Ford observed. “In some
Jewish circles it is accepted as a truism that Blacks are anti-Semitic.”
In a recent article
<https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/rise-black-anti-semitism/>
for the far-right anti-Palestinian
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/commentary> magazine /Commentary/,
neoconservative pro-Israel activist
<https://www.alternet.org/grayzone-project/neocon-jamie-kirckick-makes-friendly-appearance-white-nationalist-radio-show>
Jamie Kirchick recycles claims about the “prevalence of, and insouciance
toward, anti-Semitism in the African American community.”
In a well-worn tactic
<https://electronicintifada.net/content/senator-his-pastor-and-israel-lobby/7440>,
Kirchick uses the fringe views of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan
in an effort to smear millions of Black people and bully Black activists
into backing off from working with Jewish groups that support
Palestinian rights and the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS)
movement – particularly Jewish Voice for Peace.
The smear campaign comes amid a resurgence of expressions of
historically strong Black solidarity
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/black-palestine> with Palestine in
the United States.
To prevent Black activists from responding to or discussing the history
and political context of such allegations – as the University of Vienna
has done – is effectively to endorse the attack on their communities and
to silence them.
Genocide advocate welcome
It is a well-established principle that it is not necessary to agree
with a speaker in order to defend their right to speak and the right of
students and educators to engage with them in public discussion.
Yet the University of Vienna has a deeply biased standard about who can
be heard.
In contrast to the draconian censorship of individuals and organizations
suspected of believing that Palestinians should have full rights, the
University of Vienna warmly welcomes those who advocate that
Palestinians should be exterminated.
Last year, university officials welcomed Israeli justice minister Ayelet
Shaked to campus despite how she had disseminated a call for the
genocide of the Palestinian people
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/israeli-lawmakers-call-genocide-palestinians-gets-thousands-facebook-likes>,
including the slaughter of mothers who give birth to “little snakes.”
In the face of strong objections
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/university-vienna-urged-cancel-talk-genocide-advocate-ayelet-shaked>
and protests
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/video-protests-disrupt-vienna-talk-israeli-genocide-advocate-ayelet-shaked>,
the university defended the invitation to Shaked in the name of
“dialogue” and “academic discourse.”
The University of Vienna’s tolerance of those like Ayelet Shaked who
spread calls for genocide, and its intolerance of those like Bin-Wahad
and Dar al Janub who struggle against racism and the legacy of slavery
and colonialism, is deeply troubling given the institution’s Nazi
history <http://www.austrianinformation.org/fall-2015/dark-history>.
Bin-Wahad spoke to a packed house at Afripoint on Thursday evening, an
attendee told The Electronic Intifada.
German festival changes course
The University of Vienna’s action is part of a wave of censorship
<https://electronicintifada.net/content/will-boycotting-israel-become-crime-germany/23986>
targeting supporters of Palestinian rights in Germany and Austria,
countries where elites channel historic guilt for the Nazi extermination
of Jews into unquestioning support for Israel.
Victory for free speech over anti-Palestinian censorship! After
disinviting @Youngfathers
<https://twitter.com/Youngfathers?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw> for refusing
to distance themselves from the Palestinian-led BDS human rights
movement, German @ruhrtriennale
<https://twitter.com/ruhrtriennale?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw> festival
bows to international #SupportYoungFathers
<https://twitter.com/hashtag/SupportYoungFathers?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw>
pressure and reinvites band! https://t.co/3Bh1U8cCnn
— PACBI (@PACBI) June 21, 2018
<https://twitter.com/PACBI/status/1009796187048890368?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw>
But in a surprising development on Thursday, Germany’s Ruhrtriennale
festival reversed
<https://www.ruhrtriennale.de/en/nieuws/16/Statement_der_Ruhrtriennale_Intendantin_Stefanie_Carp/>
an earlier decision
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/artists-boycott-germanys-ruhrtriennale-banning-palestinian-rights>
to ban the acclaimed Scotland-based group Young Fathers because it had
refused to renounce its support for BDS and Palestinian rights.
Festival director Stefanie Carp said she wished to “correct my
approach,” by inviting the group back, while still maintaining her
personal opposition to BDS.
Beirut-based musician Sherif Sehnaoui confirmed that the festival had
also reached out to re-invite him and four other artists who had pulled
out to protest
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/artists-boycott-germanys-ruhrtriennale-banning-palestinian-rights>
the cancellation of Young Fathers.
#Ruhrtriennale
<https://twitter.com/hashtag/Ruhrtriennale?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw>
re-invites @Youngfathers
<https://twitter.com/Youngfathers?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw>! Hats off,
already quite an achievement in the context of German society, and
against those who falsely equate #BDS
<https://twitter.com/hashtag/BDS?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw> with
anti-semitism!!!https://t.co/wXNvgpnPfC
— Sharif Sehnaoui (@SharifSehnaoui) June 21, 2018
<https://twitter.com/SharifSehnaoui/status/1009866268164403200?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw>
They reinvited everyone. And reached out to others who also
expressed willingness to withdraw
— Sharif Sehnaoui (@SharifSehnaoui) June 21, 2018
<https://twitter.com/SharifSehnaoui/status/1009869377620140036?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw>
“Hats off, already quite an achievement in the context of German
society, and against those who falsely equate BDS with anti-Semitism,”
Sehnaoui said in praise of Ruhrtriennale’s about turn.
PACBI, the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of
Israel, called the decision a “victory for free speech over
anti-Palestinian censorship.”
--
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