Crisis in Gaza

galway | rights, freedoms and repression | news report

Friday April 11, 2008 15:03

by Margaretta D'Arcy

Debacle at public meeting in Galway

30 students from The Irish Centre Of Human Rights Galway walked out in the middle of an Amnesty public meeting called to hear the recent experiences of a Galway woman in Gaza

“Crisis In Gaza” was an Amnesty Public Meeting in Galway’s Harbour Hotel on the 9th of April: Treasa Ní Cheannabhain had been invited to talk about her recent and highly-publicized visit to Gaza, a community under siege. Noam Lubell (an Israeli citizen) from the NUI Galway Human Rights Centre was on the platform to give, we were told, the perceptive overview of an academic and human rights expert. The evening ended in disarray when about 30 of his students walked out at what was perceived as a personal question to Mr Lubell. A bizarre turn of events in an open public meeting and extremely disrespectful to Ms Ní Cheannabhain.
One would expect high emotion when such contentious issues as Gaza are under discussion, but surely the point of the Human Rights Centre (“a world-premiere university-based institution with a global reputation”) is to provide an effective interaction between the precise scholarship of the academic community and the raw, often “anecdotal,” experience of public life. Its students are said to be of the highest calibre, but unless they can find their way to listen to and learn from the passions of the outside world, they will be of very little use to the outside world. The pursuit of Human Rights involves solving problems, no matter how uncomfortable. Compare Bertie Ahern’s account of his patient experience in the Good Friday negotiations, and his ultimate success.
If academics think fit to cause the break-up of off-campus discussions because they don’t like the manner of a questioner, they are unwittingly reverting to the mediaeval concept of irreconcilable feud between town and gown. It was perhaps naive of Mr Lubell to commence his contribution with an apology to his students who “already knew what he was going to say.” (Presumably they had come primarily to hear Ms Ní Cheannabhain?) The Galway townspeople present did not know what he was going to say; our edification, in a city hotel, should have been his first thought rather than the diversion of university personnel. Separation and condescension were thus already in place even before the meeting was properly underway.
Moreover, the convenors of the event had made a serious mistake in their preliminary arrangement. I am informed that Amnesty has a policy that no citizens of a country in conflict, no matter what their credentials, should be on the platform when that country’s role is in dispute. Amnesty should not have invited an Israeli citizen, even if he’d been “balanced” by a Palestinian speaker, and in any case there was no Palestinian.
I understand that the faculty members of the Human Rights Centre are hired primarily on their academic record. Might I suggest that in dealings with an unfamiliar non-academic public, communication skills, and sensitivity to cultural differences (specifically those that involve neo-imperialism and post-colonialism), be also taken into consideration?

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