As authors abandon Adelaide Writers’ Week after cancelling of Randa Abdel-Fattah, is free speech in tatters?
- Written by Denis Muller, Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Advancing Journalism, The University of Melbourne
The decision by the Adelaide Festival Board to exclude Palestinian Australian author and academic Randa Abdel-Fattah from Adelaide Writers’ Week on the grounds of “cultural sensitivity” is based on a dangerously broad and vague criterion for suppressing free speech.
The board appears to have overruled Writer’s Week director...





