Roger Waters Wasn’t Banned From Anti-Zionist Festival, University of Pennsylvania Says

Roger Waters, who was scheduled to speak at a controversial anti-Zionist festival held at the University of Pennsylvania over the weekend, was not banned from appearing on campus, a school spokesperson told The Algemeiner on Tuesday, despite the musician’s complaints to the contrary.

Last week, Waters posted a video on social media in which he claimed that the organizers of the “Palestine Writes Literature Festival,” an event featuring a gamut of speakers who have promoted antisemitic tropes and called for the destruction of Israel, told him at the last minute that he should not come even though he flew to America to be there in person.

“I’ve been told I’m not allowed … because they made arrangements for me to attend the panel via Zoom,” Waters said. “And the fact that I came all the way here actually to be present, because I care deeply about the issues that are being discussed, apparently cuts no ice with campus police or whoever it is.”

On Tuesday, however, a University of Pennsylvania spokesperson said that Waters was not initially supposed to appear on campus in person.

“Organizers of the Palestine Writes Literature Festival indicated from the beginning, and confirmed multiple times, that Mr. Waters would be participating in the event virtually,” the spokesperson told The Algemeiner. “On Wednesday, Sept. 20, less than 48 hours before the start of the event, the organizers communicated the change to in-person attendance to the University Life Space & Events team. We were unable to accommodate this request, as it would have required significant changes to event coordination, as well as additional campus safety and security resources that were unavailable on such short notice.”

The spokesperson added that, due to its concerns, the university asked both the organizers and Waters’ management to “honor the understanding from the beginning that he would not be appearing in person.”

Waters’ name on the list of speakers was one reason why the festival sparked outrage. In May, during a concert held in Berlin, the former Pink Floyd frontman performed in what looked like a Nazi SS officer uniform and played a projection that compared Holocaust victim Anne Frank to Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh — who was accidentally shot and killed last year while covering an Israeli military raid in the West Bank. The US State Department deemed the show “deeply offensive to Jewish people.”

Waters, who has won the support of white supremacists for his views on Israel and Jews, has previously made comments about “Jewish power” and compared Israel to Nazi Germany.

Beyond Waters, the festival’s itinerary included a host of other speakers who have praised terrorism against Israel, spoken out against Zionism, and been accused by Jewish groups of antisemitism.

For days, the university’s Jewish community and outside activists unsuccessfully urged the school to move or cancel the event, which university president M. Elizabeth Magill said she would not stop due to a “commitment to open expression and academic freedom.” The festival  was sponsored by the school’s Wolf Humanities Center, as well as its Department of Cinema and Media Studies.

The administration’s refusal to move the location of or condemn the festival led both alumni and the student body to speak out against it.

“At a time when we are experiencing record levels of anti-Jewish hate across the country and an unprecedented surge of antisemitic incidents on US college campuses, providing a platform for such extremely antisemitic voices will undermine the sense of security and belonging for Jewish students at UPenn and beyond,” said a letter obtained by The Algemeiner to Magill and signed by over 2,000 prominent alumni and supporters of the university.

The letter added that Penn should show equal concern for antisemitism that it does for discrimination targeting other minority communities and called on the school to unequivocally denounce the event’s platforming of antisemitic speakers, ensure that no Penn branding is used to promote the event, and implement antisemitism awareness training across the university.

On Thursday morning, just one day before the festival began, an unidentified male walked into the University of Pennsylvania’s Hillel building behind a staffer and shouted “F___ the Jews” and “Jesus Christ is king!” before overturning tables, podium stands, and chairs, according to students and school officials who spoke with The Algemeiner.

Just one week earlier, a giant swastika was graffitied in the basement of the university’s Stuart Weitzman School of Design.

On Thursday, a major Jewish civil rights group wrote to Magill, arguing the university’s apparent support for the festival created the impression that it endorsed the extremist ideologies of the activists who spoke there and opened the door to discrimination.

“Reports of new antisemitic vandalism on your campus today indicate that we are already seeing the foreseeable consequence of this failure to take strong leadership. You simply cannot allow this to happen,” the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law wrote.

The Brandeis Center noted in its letter that recent guidance issued by the US Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights emphasizes that antisemitic discrimination must be addressed as promptly and seriously as any other form of racism. “Penn must not permit a double standard when it comes to antisemitic hate,” the group wrote.

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

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