Organizers for a conference on the Israeli war in Gaza had to scramble when officials at the University of Florida said the event could no longer take place on campus, less than 24 hours before it was scheduled to start.
The symposium, called “Fostering Critical Conversations in the Humanities: The War in Israel and Palestine” was scheduled to take place at UF on Friday and Saturday, Nov. 1-2. The conference featured a half a dozen activist and academic speakers, including well-known philosopher Judith Butler.
But on Thursday, UF officials emailed organizers saying the conference was not a university event, their use of a campus classroom was improper, and that the event was being canceled.
“Like all the symposiums we've had in the past, we went through exactly the same procedure,” said Malini Schueller, a professor in UF’s Department of English and the organizer of the event. “I don't know why they canceled the event because we followed everything that the university said.”
Schueller said the conference even received money from the university through the UF Office of Research, the UF Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere, and other sources. That money was slated to cover speaker honorariums, lunch for students, and a small reception. All of that, Schueller said, has been pulled. Organizers are not even allowed to use the university’s Zoom account.
An official with UF said the talk was incorrectly marketed as a UF-sponsored event, and it did not comply with its policy on using university space.
Schueller said this is all just politics.
"It's happening all over the country, and I'm really sorry that UF, which is an institution that has allowed academic conferences to continue and to allow us to have critical conversations, has totally suppressed this,” said Schueller. “Anything that has anything to do even in the slightest with Palestine is not allowed.”
Friday’s portion of the conference has been moved to the Westminster Presbyterian Church in Gainesville. Saturday’s conference events were already scheduled to take place remotely.
