Tel Aviv University
Tel Aviv University – TAU campus
administration found guilty of “suppression” of free speech; the
Tenured Left at TAU fails to support the student case for “academic
freedom”
Evidently Tel Aviv
University's law school, a bastion for leftists, Israel bashing, and
a school largely uninterested in freedom of speech (you may recall
the petition by some of its professors against allowing a woman
colonel teach in the school), did nothing to support the students.
Neither did any of the rest of the Tenured Left, always pretending
to support academic freedom when it comes to things like Neve
Gordon's calls for Israel to be annihilated, or the decision to turn
the TAU campus into a Gulag for a day (see
this). … A Tel Aviv District Court judge on Wednesday ruled that
Tel Aviv University had “violated freedom of expression”
Posted by
Steven Plaut
October 6, 2009
Tel Aviv University Loses Big in
Court; Academic Freedom Wins for a Change
What an
embarrassment for Tel Aviv University!
You may recall
that we reported last year that Tel Aviv University had
suppressed freedom of speech and academic freedom for its students
in an exhibit at the Student Union, which showed that China
suppresses, persecutes and murders members of the Falon Gung cult
group.
The campus
administration ordered the exhibit shut down lest it offend the
China Embassy staff in Israel. The two students who organized the
exhibit, Yaniv Nitzan and Itay Tamuz, are the real heroes here. They
were incensed at the censorship of the exhibit and decided to take
the matter to court. And they won!
The court found
for the students and ordered the university to pay them damages.
Evidently Tel Aviv University's law school, a bastion for leftists,
Israel bashing, and a school largely uninterested in freedom of
speech (you may recall the petition by some of its professors
against allowing a woman colonel teach in the school), did nothing
to support the students. Neither did any of the rest of the Tenured
Left, always pretending to support academic freedom when it comes to
things like Neve Gordon's calls for Israel to be annihilated, or the
decision to turn the TAU campus into a Gulag for a day (see
this).
The details of the
story are
here.
Here is the full
story from the Post:
Court backs students in TAU row over
Falun Gong exhibit the university removed
Oct. 1, 2009
Abe Selig , THE JERUSALEM POST
A Tel Aviv District Court judge on
Wednesday ruled that Tel Aviv University had "violated freedom of
expression and succumbed to pressure from the Chinese Embassy" when
it took down a student exhibition last year that focused on the
oppression of the Falun Gong spiritual movement at the hands of the
Communist Chinese government.
The exhibition, which featured 25
paintings by 17 artists from around the world, depicted Falun Gong
spiritual practices and the torture and executions its members have
reportedly been subjected to in recent years.
The movement, which is based on an
ancient Chinese meditation method that aims to bring its
practitioners to higher spiritual enlightenment, was outlawed in
China in 1999. Some of the artists, who are survivors of China's
hard labor camps, had endured the very tortures portrayed in the
paintings.
The exhibition was originally approved
by the head of the Asian Studies department at TAU, Prof. Yoav
Ariel, along with the university's administration, which allotted
nearly two weeks in March 2008, for the presenters to show the
paintings inside the central on-campus library.
But after just two days, organizers
were told that the exhibition had to be removed. After initially
protesting the move, they were given an additional three days to
hold the exhibition, but were then told it had to come down.
The two students who had organized the
exhibition, Yaniv Nitzan and Itay Tamuz, were incensed, and claimed
that the decision to shut down the exhibition had been made after
TAU was pressured by the Chinese Embassy in Tel Aviv, the two took
the matter to court.
Nitzan and Tamuz filed the petition
against both TAU and the university's student union, both of whom
appear as defendants on the court documents. According to a student
union member close to the case, the pair had been under the
impression that because the student union had refused to take sides
in the matter until a legal ruling was issued, it, too, opposed the
exhibition.
Nonetheless, after more than a year of
legal battles, Judge Amiram Benyamini ruled on Wednesday that TAU
had "succumbed to pressure from the Chinese Embassy, which funds
various activities at the university, and took down the exhibit,
violating [the students'] freedom of expression."
Benyamini also stipulated as part of
his ruling that the exhibition be given another week to be shown,
and ordered TAU to pay some NIS 45,000 for the students' court
costs.
TAU declined to comment on the matter
Wednesday afternoon, and a spokesman at the Chinese Embassy refused
to comment, telling The Jerusalem Post that it was "a holiday"
before hanging up the phone.
The TAU student union, however, which
was not affected by the ruling, issued a response expressing its
solidarity with the students, and called on the university to
"encourage pluralism and freedom of expression amongst the student
body."
"As part of this, the student union
will assist the organizers in their efforts to present the
exhibition on campus. From the moment that the university decided to
do away will the exhibition, the union waited for the legal ruling
of the court. After receiving the judge's ruling, we are now
standing with the students who initiated the exhibition, and will
assist them in any way they might need to present the exhibition
anew."
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