Institute of International Relations cancels Israel webinar

The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies’ In­sti­tute of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions (IIR) has can­celled a we­bi­nar fea­tur­ing for­mer Is­raeli am­bas­sador Ephraim Ben Matityahu, cit­ing the on­go­ing Is­raeli-Pales­tin­ian con­flict and the in­tense emo­tions it has gen­er­at­ed.

The we­bi­nar, ti­tled “The Unit­ed Ob­ses­sion with Is­rael: The Strange Coali­tion of Con­tra­dic­tion”, was sched­uled for Mon­day.

In a no­tice is­sued on Fri­day, the IIR apol­o­gised to peo­ple af­fect­ed di­rect­ly and in­di­rect­ly by the con­flict and said it re­mained com­mit­ted to aca­d­e­m­ic free­dom and re­spect for hu­man rights.

The IIR al­so said it would en­sure that events of a con­tro­ver­sial na­ture are “well vet­ted” and, if held, rep­re­sent­ed by all stake­hold­ers to en­cour­age re­spect­ful di­a­logue.

The can­cel­la­tion fol­lows con­cerns raised by the UWI St Au­gus­tine Guild of Stu­dents and a call from Con­cerned Mus­lims of Trinidad and To­ba­go (CMTT) for the we­bi­nar to be can­celled.

In a state­ment on Tues­day, Guild pres­i­dent Joshua Jit­ta said the Guild had re­ceived a sig­nif­i­cant vol­ume of con­cerns about the event.

Jit­ta said the Guild was con­cerned about what it de­scribed as a lack of pro­por­tion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion in the event’s fram­ing and had con­tact­ed IIR di­rec­tor Dr Knowles seek­ing clar­i­fi­ca­tion on the con­sul­ta­tion process, whether dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives had been con­sid­ered and whether stu­dents were re­quired to at­tend or par­tic­i­pate.

The Guild said at that stage it was seek­ing clar­i­fi­ca­tion rather than is­su­ing a con­dem­na­tion, and in­tend­ed to de­ter­mine its next course of ac­tion af­ter re­ceiv­ing a sub­stan­tive re­sponse from the IIR.

CMTT pres­i­dent Im­ti­az Mo­hammed al­so called for the we­bi­nar to be can­celled and urged the pub­lic to boy­cott it, ar­gu­ing that the event would fa­cil­i­tate what he de­scribed as mis­in­for­ma­tion and pro­pa­gan­da about the con­flict.

In its Fri­day no­tice, the IIR said it was grate­ful to those who re­mained com­mit­ted to peace.