Dennis Nealon, a spokesman for Brandeis, tells me the school did take down the exhibit.
“The university had to make a decision. We were getting complaints from people that the exhibit was one-dimensional. There was no other context… It was as if someone was looking at this issue with one eye closed. People were upset and confused. Some people found the images distrubing. We had to make a decision.”
Nealon says that the school hopes to mount the exhibit after all, some day, but with context.
This is, by the way, precisely what happened in the case of the Rachel Corrie play cancelled, or postponed, who knows, in February by the New York Theatre Workshop. It couldn’t mount the show without more context, it said. It needed to palliate or balance Rachel Corrie’s harsh words about the Occupation.
When will Americans be able to hear a differing point of view on the Israel/Palestine situation without having to explain those views away?
P.S. Lior Halperin tells me she won’t let Brandeis have the show. “They took it down without asking me. I’m taking it away from this place.”
