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University Politics

Syracuse University reverses decision to disinvite filmmaker

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Syracuse University religion professor M. Gail Hamner disinvited documentary filmmaker Shimon Dotan because she feared his film about Israeli settlers would anger BDS activists on campus.

Syracuse University will invite documentary filmmaker Shimon Dotan to SU to screen his new film about religious settlers on the West Bank, SU Vice Chancellor and Provost Michele Wheatly announced in an email to the SU community Friday.

The filmmaker was previously disinvited by SU religion professor M. Gail Hamner from screening the film at an international religious film conference that will be hosted at SU in the spring. Hamner told Dotan in an email later published in The Atlantic that members in the SU community of the pro-Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement would “make matters very unpleasant for you and for me if you come.”

Hamner also said she would “lose credibility” with film and women and gender studies faculty members if Dotan were to come. The Atlantic reported on the situation Thursday, and Hamner issued an apology Friday for disinviting Dotan.

Wheatly said in her email to the SU community that Hamner’s original decision was inconsistent with SU’s “policies, ideals, and practices.”

Wheatly added that she and SU Chancellor Kent Syverud would be working with Karin Ruhlandt, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, to invite Dotan to the SU campus to screen his film.



“The kind of exchange and respectful discourse we anticipate is intrinsic to the Syracuse University experience—from a teaching and learning perspective, both inside and outside the classroom,” Wheatly said in the email.





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