Artists and Compelled Speech
The CBC reports:
European politicians are condemning a Belgian classical music festival's decision to cancel an upcoming performance led by an Israeli conductor due to concerns over where he stands on the war in Gaza.
Organizers of the Flanders Festival Ghent announced on Wednesday they were cancelling a performance by the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra slated for Sept. 18. They cited concerns surrounding the orchestra's future chief conductor, Lahav Shani.
Shani, who was born in Tel Aviv, is the director of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. Although he's not set to take over the Munich Philharmonic until next year, he was expected to conduct the performance in Ghent, Belgium.
Festival organizers said they made the decision even though Shani had previously spoken out "in favour of peace and reconciliation."
"In light of his role as the chief conductor of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, we are unable to provide sufficient clarity about his attitude to the genocidal regime in Tel Aviv," organizers said in a statement.
The statement went on to say that the festival is choosing not to collaborate with partners "who have not distanced themselves unequivocally from that regime."
The festival has attracted some grief over this decision from various Belgian officials, and, as I write, this petition to reverse the decision has over sixteen thousand signatures.
On this blog I have written before about artists being cancelled because of their origins, independently of the art they have created: Ballet Ireland cancelled a planned presentation because the choreographer was Israeli, and my own university cancelled a long-planned art exhibition by an artist because she was a Palestinian-American. In each of these cases the art was abstract, with no political or narrative content. In each of these cases there was a plan to show the work, followed by backtracking because somebody, somewhere, would complain. Shameful in each case.
But the Ghent festival gives us something slightly different. Lahav Shani and the Munich Philharmonic apparently could have performed, but, as the festival said in its statement:
Lahav Shani has spoken out in favour of peace and reconciliation several times in the past, but in the light of his role as the chief conductor of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, we are unable to provide sufficient clarity about his attitude to the genocidal regime in Tel Aviv.
What does “provide sufficient clarity” mean? It is vague, but my reading is that if Mr. Shani had provided a statement now deploring the actions of the government of Israel, that would have been sufficient. His past statements are not sufficient.
So. This is not a post about Israel, Gaza, and the Palestinian Arabs. My views on that part of the world are ordinary and boring and do not come from any special insight or background I have on the topic.
I am interested in what the Ghent festival was asking for.
Suppose I was going on a speaking tour to promote my latest book, giving talks at different universities in various countries. There might be one place that says “we don’t want any Americans here, even Canadian-Americans, so we are cancelling your talk.” I would not be happy about this, but I would get over it, heeding the advice Kingsley Amis once gave on reading a negative review of your new book: allow it to spoil your lunch, but not your dinner.
But what if a university said to me: “you can give your talk, but first you have to make a public statement denouncing the Trump administration.” My seven regular readers of this blog will know that I regularly denounce the actions of the administration in Washington, and of the administration of my state of Indiana, and the administration of my university. But I do not like, at all, the idea of my being compelled to make such a denunciation. I write this blog and criticize whomever I want to under the aegis of free speech. But compelled speech is against the principle of free speech, and being asked to make a statement to be allowed to present is no different from my being asked to restrain myself from certain speech in order to be allowed to present.
The actions by the Ghent festival put artists in a terrible bind: would a Chinese conductor be asked to denounce the Communist Party before being allowed to perform? A Russian to publicly denounce Putin? Or take your pick of the many odious regimes in the world.
I do not like the actions of my government, but I would not stand for being compelled to make a public statement to that effect, and if we take a Kantian stance that there should be no rules we would not be willing to apply universally, the Ghent festival did wrong.
Disagree. If someone holds a senior position in a publicly funded national institution (like the Israeli Philharmonic) they can be assumed, prima facie to represent the nation in question. But that assumption is rebuttable. So, it's entirely reasonable to ask them to make a clear statement one way or the other, or else to exclude them.
Turning things around, suppose that some group, reasonably enough in the circumstances, excluded Israelis in general. What would you say to someone seeking an exemption on the grounds that they had a clear public record of opposition to the government?
I totally agree, Michael. I'd refuse to make such a statement even if every words was a quotation from my own blog. I speak when I want to speak about what I want to speak. And I deeply object to the injection of politics into every nook and cranny of our lives, especially into the arts.