Last year, you’ll remember that Professor Geoffrey Alderman, having travelled to Belfast, was disinvited from an event in which he was to be a panellist, alongside Avi Shlaim and Beverley Milton Edwards, an academic who is a founder of the pro-Hamas and Hezbollah lobbying organisation, Conflicts Forum. They apparently objected to speaking alongside a pro-Israel academic.
The University later apologised to Professor Alderman, but has given no explanation of his treatment.
The Northern Irish Minister of Culture, Nelson McCausland, has now intervened:
Mr McCausland, who became the culture minister in June 2009, attended a dinner with the vice chancellor of Queen’s to discuss this year’s festival programme. He and some of his officials also held a meeting with staff from Queen’s, including the festival director Graeme Farrow, in March 2010 to discuss the content of the festival.
…
“What I was saying to the festival, and I have said it to other arts organisations and sectors, is that if we are to build a shared and better future in NI, then it must be based on balance, fairness and inclusion,” he said.
“You can’t have a shared future based on discrimination and exclusion and simply, I was saying to them, make sure that your programmes, over a period of time, reflect balance, fairness and inclusion.”
The culture minister said he had asked the festival to include pro-Israeli views as a previous Israeli speaker had had his invitation withdrawn at the last minute by the festival.
“How can you have a situation like that? It’s bad for the image of Northern Ireland,” he said.
The BBC appears to be suggesting that there’s something improper in the Minister’s intervention. The only impropriety that I can see, is that such an intervention in the conduct of a public body, in receipt of public funds, should be necessary.
Notably, the BBC does not name Professor Alderman at all, or explain the scandalous treatment he received from the University of Belfast last year. In fact, it merely refers in passing to those events, near the end of the article. Very poor.
