“A straight-up, bare-assed excuse for antisemitism”

: 11pt”>They're so brave, these writers…so principled.

As, it turns out, are the Writers Institute and the university.

At that point the Writers Institute and the University at Albany, which administers the program, had to make a choice: They could publicly condemn the antisemitism displayed by Gawad and Ko and make sure the festival-goers were aware of what had happened. In a series of phone calls Thursday afternoon, Albert says she tried to convince them to do just that. Or they could capitulate to the bigotry by trying to sweep the whole thing under the rug, and listing the cancellation on the festival’s website as the result of “unforeseen circumstances.”

The institute chose the latter course….

By the time I spoke to Albert over the weekend the shock had worn off, but not the anger. “Let’s face it,” she said. “The word Zionist is a newfangled word for Jew. Refusing to participate on a panel with a Zionist is a straight-up, bare-assed excuse for antisemitism.”