Ke­jan Haynes

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

ke­jan.haynes@guardian.co.tt

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 yes­ter­day, 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 in­sti­tute al­so said it would en­sure that events of a con­tro­ver­sial na­ture are “well vet­ted” and, if held, are 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, 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 seek­ing clar­i­fi­ca­tion on the con­sul­ta­tion process, whether dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives had been con­sid­ered and whether stu­dents were re­quired to at­tend or par­tic­i­pate.

Fol­low­ing con­fir­ma­tion of the can­cel­la­tion, the Guild Coun­cil thanked stu­dents for trust­ing its process and for their pa­tience as it fol­lowed what it de­scribed as re­spect­ful pro­to­cols of re­port­ing and es­ca­la­tion.

The Coun­cil said the out­come demon­strat­ed what was pos­si­ble when con­cerns were ad­dressed through a for­mal process.

How­ev­er, it said the can­cel­la­tion did not con­clude its work on the is­sue.

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.

Fol­low­ing the can­cel­la­tion, the In­sta­gram ac­count Trin­ba­go for Pales­tine thanked those who had re­fused to re­main neu­tral on the is­sue and called for a free Pales­tine.

The ac­count said, “If you are neu­tral in times of in­jus­tice, you have cho­sen the side of the op­pres­sor.”

The IIR, in its can­cel­la­tion no­tice, said it was grate­ful to those who re­mained com­mit­ted to peace.