Australian writers’ festival boss resigns after Palestinian author axed
Al Jazeera
Director of Adelaide Writers’ Week steps down amid wave of speaker withdrawals and board resignations.
The director of a top writers’ festival in Australia has stepped down amid controversy over the cancellation of a scheduled appearance by a prominent Australian Palestinian activist and author.
Louise Adler, the director of Adelaide Writers’ Week, said in an op-ed published on Tuesday that Randa Abdel-Fattah had been disinvited by the festival’s board despite her “strongest opposition”.
Writing in The Guardian, Adler called Abdel-Fattah’s removal from the festival lineup a blow to free expression and a “harbinger of a less free nation”.
“Now religious leaders are to be policed, universities monitored, the public broadcaster scrutinised and the arts starved,” Adler wrote.
“Are you or have you ever been a critic of Israel? Joe McCarthy would be cheering on the inheritors of his tactics,” she added, citing a figure in Cold War history commonly associated with censorship.
