Ethnomusicology conference is hijacked by Palestine
NewsThere are several versions as to what really happened at the Society for Ethnomusicology’s conference last weekend in Ottawa, Canada, but all seem to agree that the intended agenda was taken over by pro-Palestine activists.
Here’s the basic version:
On Saturday, Indigenous scholars, including graduate students, gave the keynote lecture called “Listen, Watch Your Step” at the society’s annual meeting in Ottawa. It was a “performative” lecture, including sound, images and movement, rather than a speech from a podium. The scholars and students centered Indigenous North American academics’ experiences. “This performative lecture explores the range of experiences Indigenous and racialized scholars have when we walk into rooms not made to hold or support our epistemologies,” read a description in the program book.
But according to two professors who attended the event, the lecture included a brief display of a controversial slogan in the Middle East conflict: “From the river to the sea.”
According to one eyewitness account, the presentation screen went black and displayed the controversial slogan for less than five seconds, then transitioned to similarly brief slides reading “Free Palestine” and “End Israeli Apartheid.”
The society president issued a statement saying, in part, A significant number of our membership, have expressed tremendous outrage that the event’s presumed focal point was blurred by an unexpected interpolation of visual and sonic references to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and by what came across as a facile conflation of two distinct geopolitical and historical phenomena.’
Some Jewish participants said they felt threatened.
Responses and counter-responses are still coming in.
This article seems to be the best source, although several of the sloganising academic warriors opted to maintain anonymity.
Academia is full of leftists who support radical Islam? Definitely breaking news!!!
Whatever Woke, Inc. touches (in this case, so-called “ethnomusicology,” whatever that means) swirls swiftly down the toilet.
Ethnomusicology is an academic study of musics other than the western canon. If you dispute that such exist, you are showing ignorance. If you admit they exist but deny them the right to explore their place in the world of music, I don’t know what you think you are.
This was merely an academic session, covered by nobody except this Institute of Higher Education publication. It had no wider interest than would a symposium on the epistemology of Thomas Hardy.
And the inclusion of subliminal-inspired advertising of certain political views had no more place in this obscure and specialist area of musical sociology than it would in a Hardy symposium.
I am not usually very receptive to statements like “Some Jewish participants said they felt threatened.” I have little sympathy with the “safe space” crowd. But in this place, in this context, I can relate very vividly to the alarm of whatever Jewish participants were there.
They would, like other non-Indigenous attendees, be there as scholars of a relatively obscure subject that interested them. it would be the last place they would expect the current mid-east conflict to intrude, let alone in a way that so explicitly picks sides and includes tropes that many have seen — and it is hard to deny their interpretation — as a threat to the very existence of Israel.
So enough of the “woke”-bashing, in which I would normally support you. There is nothing “woke” about a group of academics meeting to discuss their interest. It was not being imposed on a wider world, it was an exploration, not a propaganda exercise. Indigenous people, who have to claw for space, would have every right to wish everyone involved in Gaza would keep their ideas to themselves and let them just discuss the subject at hand.
“Indigenous people, who have to claw for space, would have every right to wish everyone involved in Gaza would keep their ideas to themselves and let them just discuss the subject at hand.”
I absolutely agree myself. Yet it was an Indigenous person who added that material to the presentation (without telling the other co-authors, says the supervising professor).
Many words defending something that can be easily summed up in two: horse shit.
Naked unapologetic neo-Nazism is on the rise.
“Free Palestine” sounds better than “Kill the Jews”. Public speakers still usualy stick to the former. The crowds have already shifted to the latter.
Fascists require constant threats from insurmountable enemies in order to maintain the will of their people.
Perfectly put.
“…but all seem to agree that the intended agenda was taken over by pro-Palestine activists.”
Actually, the report says that one person put the slogan “From the river to the sea” into a PowerPoint slide and that there were two additional slides inserted along the same lines. This was done without the knowledge of any of the other participants. It would appear that there was only one “activist” which doesn’t seem like a “takeover.” On the other hand, the report quotes witnesses who said the slogans were applauded by many in the audience.
SEM condemned the use of the slogans but also condemned the abuse of the Native Americans whose presentation included the slogans: “We likewise condemn the abusive treatment of two of our collaborators. Those in pain must be allowed to speak, but no person should be insulted, belittled, entrapped, or threatened because of their views, nor held in contempt for the views expressed by another.”
Perhaps good advice for the commenters here as well?
That explanation — that the slogans about Gaza and Palestine were inserted by one member of the group, without the assent of the others, shortly before the presentation was given — was added to the report after it was first posted, and very likely after Norman had seen it.
There’s also the issue that the slogans were applauded by many in the audience. And that the presenters were apparently insulted, belittled, entrapped, and threatened.
The Society for Ethnomusicology has had a series of meltdowns over the course of the last few years. In 2018 its annual business meeting was interrupted:
https://lubricity.wordpress.com/2019/11/07/the-sound-of-feminist-snap-or-why-i-interrupted-the-2018-sem-business-meeting/
In 2019 many members were outraged at the annual honorary Seeger Lecture, delivered by George Clinton, and the lecture’s organizer had to write a letter of apology to the membership.
https://iu.mediaspace.kaltura.com/media/t/1_ww87xe63
And in 2020 the society’s president was forced to resign after an extended face-off with board members.
https://mattsakakeeny.files.wordpress.com/2020/09/sem_2020_communications-1.pdf?fbclid=IwAR1xqMlqvqQYwCtgB7qMFETVzlg9nTb90ZSo-i1cSr7_7SyKPKef5seKB20
This is like a Christopher Guest film! Or could it be Monty Python!
All of them victims.
Good job people take about as much interest in the machinations of the sequestered world of ethnomusicology as do in this comment section. Practically zero.
By the way, who are the ‘indigenous people’ of the geographic region Palestine?
Not Hamas
Inappropriate behavior, for sure. But I wonder what exactly threatened the Jews in the audience. Besides, this site sometimes publishes “shocking” first reports that later boil down to nothing.