{"id":119136,"date":"2025-02-13T17:05:44","date_gmt":"2025-02-13T15:05:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=119136"},"modified":"2025-02-13T11:56:45","modified_gmt":"2025-02-13T09:56:45","slug":"13-05-108","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=119136","title":{"rendered":"Canceled … in Finland"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>Canceled … in Finland<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/h5>\n


\nIzabella Tabarovsky<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Students protest at Finland\u2019s Helsinki University, May 6, 2024 \/ Alessandro Rampazzo\/Anadolu via Getty Images<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Turns out that Finnish academics are just as grossly lazy, airheaded, pompous, and self-serving\u2014and just as eager to censor Jews\u2014as their American counterparts<\/strong><\/h4>\n<\/div>\n
\n

In recent days, two Finnish universities canceled my scheduled appearances on their campuses, turning me briefly into a minor celebrity in the country. \u00c5bo Akademi University, in Turku, barred me from delivering my keynote address at an international\u00a0conference on antisemitism<\/a>\u00a0set to take place on its campus. The University of Helsinki killed what was supposed to be a public talk. The title of both lectures: \u201cFrom the Cold War to University Campuses Today: The USSR, the Third World, and Contemporary Antizionist Discourse.\u201d The two schools caved to a smear campaign orchestrated by a \u201cpro-Palestinian\u201d Instagram account that weaponized my pro-Israel social media posts for the purpose.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

In the U.S., the censorship of \u201cwrong-thinking\u201d speakers, including Jews who hold Zionist beliefs, has become so commonplace that it\u2019s practically a nonevent. But this was Finland\u2019s first major controversy of this kind, and my photo got splashed across the local press. It was also a first for me, forcing me to confront head-on the same cowardice, hypocrisy, and stupidity that the American academy has displayed for years\u2014especially in the wake of Oct. 7.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

That the incident took place in Finland was particularly ironic for me, given the topic of my lecture and my background as an ex-Soviet Jew. For former Soviet citizens, Finland is indelibly linked to the history of the Bolshevik revolution. Not only did Lenin spend extended periods of time there, but also he and Stalin\u00a0first met<\/a>\u00a0at a 1905 Bolshevik conference in the Finnish city of Tampere.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

During the Cold War, Finland\u2014forced to maneuver to retain its independence in the shadow of the neighboring USSR (see:\u00a0Finlandization<\/a>)\u2014adopted a servile stance toward the communist superpower. Criticism of the USSR was taboo and self-censorship was rife\u2014all of which Finnish media\u00a0helped<\/a>\u00a0to enforce. Soviet influence extended to the country\u2019s intellectual, political, and cultural elites. In the 1970s, a scandal broke out when one of Finland\u2019s municipalities successfully\u00a0inserted<\/a>\u00a0materials from the Finnish-Soviet Friendship Society\u2014a branch of the USSR\u2019s global \u201cfriendship societies\u201d influence network\u2014as well as from Soviet textbooks into the school curriculum for grades 1-9, teaching Finnish children that there was no pollution in the USSR and that socialist central planning was superior to capitalism.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n

The cancellation of my lectures by the two Finnish universities echoed in a weird way some of their country\u2019s Cold War history. Finland has yet to fully come to terms with that past.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

When Moscow launched its\u00a0rabid anti-Israel propaganda campaign<\/a>\u00a0in 1967 and started building its \u201cAnti-Zionist International,\u201d Finnish intellectuals were drawn in as well. In 1975, Finnish writer Matti Larni, whose book castigating the U.S. made him popular in the USSR, published a piece about Israel in the\u00a0Literary Newspaper<\/em>\u2014the Soviet Union\u2019s most influential cultural publication. Larni\u2019s article echoed key Soviet talking points, branding Israel a Jewish supremacist, racist state and depicting Soviet Jewish immigrants in Israel as miserable, regretful traitors longing to return to their Soviet motherland. In 1980, the article was republished in\u00a0Zionism: Truth and Fiction<\/em>, a collection edited by\u00a0Yevgeny Yevseyev<\/a>\u2014one of the USSR\u2019s most viciously antisemitic ideologues with close ties to the KGB, who played a pivotal role in shaping the key tropes of Soviet \u201canti-Zionist\u201d ideology.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Another Finnish name appears in the Soviet 1984 propaganda pamphlet\u00a0Criminal Alliance of Zionism and Nazism<\/em>. The pamphlet recounts, in English, a press conference staged by the \u201cAnti-Zionist Committee of the Soviet Public\u201d\u2014a notorious KGB\u00a0front<\/a>\u00a0designed to vilify Israel and Zionism to foreign audiences under the guise of representing Soviet Jews. The entire event was dedicated to spreading the toxic equation of Zionism with Nazism\u2014a\u00a0cornerstone<\/a>\u00a0of Soviet anti-Israel propaganda\u2014to international audiences. Known as Holocaust inversion, this false equivalence is widely viewed by scholars of antisemitism as a potent tool of incitement against Jews, used by both the far right and the far left. As Deborah Lipstadt\u00a0has noted<\/a>, the trope contains a grain of Holocaust denial, exaggerating \u201cby a factor of zillion any wrongdoings Israel might have done,\u201d while simultaneously diminishing, by the same factor, the acts of the Germans. The USSR and its Western enablers\u2014including, it seems, the Finnish ones\u2014played a significant role in embedding this inversion among the global left.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

The cancellation of my lectures by the two Finnish universities, then, echoed in a weird way some of their country\u2019s Cold War history. One of my Finnish contacts may have been right when she told me that Finland has yet to fully come to terms with that past.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

It replayed some long-forgotten past experiences for me as well. For ex-Soviet Jews, the anti-Israel campaigns that have permeated university campuses in recent years serve as a\u00a0stark reminder<\/a>\u00a0of what we endured under the USSR. Maxim Shrayer, a refusenik and professor at Boston College,\u00a0recalls<\/a>\u00a0how in the 1970s and \u201980s, all \u201cexpressions of Jewish pride and Jewish spiritual and intellectual self-awareness\u201d were dubbed \u201c\u2018Zionist\u2019 and targeted for public ostracism and vilification.\u201d Under the pretense of combatting Zionism, \u201cbrainwashed Soviet young people acted on their antisemitic urges. A non-Jewish teenager at my Soviet school tried to beat up a Jewish kid because \u2018the Zionists have taken over the Golan Heights.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

For us, Soviet Jews, the state\u2019s obsession with Zionism led to relentless discrimination, barring us from certain universities, careers, and professions. This lived experience taught us that while \u201canti-Zionism\u201d doesn\u2019t have to be antisemitic in theory, it inevitably produces antisemitic outcomes in real life. In the wake of Oct. 7, Jews around the world are learning what we knew decades ago: Whether school bullies call us \u201ckikes\u201d or \u201cZios,\u201d the outcome is the same.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n

The smear campaign against me began on Instagram on Wednesday, Jan. 22\u2014one week before my scheduled appearance at a conference titled \u201cDialogue on Antisemitism: A Path Towards Understanding and Action.\u201d Organized by the\u00a0Antisemitism Undermining Democracy Project<\/a>\u00a0at the Polin Institute of \u00c5bo Akademi University, the conference was meant to launch a conversation that, the organizers felt, had long been overdue in Finland. It was the first major international conference dedicated to contemporary antisemitism in the country. Leading the effort was Merc\u00e9desz Czimbalmos, a scholar with a\u00a0an extensive body of research<\/a>\u00a0on antisemitism and Jewish life in Finland.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n

The campaign branded me a \u201cgenocide denier\u201d who legitimizes a \u201csettler-colonial apartheid state\u201d and is an all-around dangerous extremist guilty of the ultimate transgression\u2014equating anti-Zionism with antisemitism. It also seized on a mistake by a conference team member, who had erroneously added \u201cPh.D.\u201d next to my name on the conference site. The error was quickly fixed, but not before my detractors took notice and claimed I misrepresented my academic credentials. Angry calls and emails to university administrations followed. By Friday it was over.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Czimbalmos and her team fought hard, arguing on the merits: My lecture was not going to be about the Israel-Gaza conflict; diversity of opinions was important for stimulating dialogue; my expertise was widely known and acknowledged; the Ph.D. blunder wasn\u2019t my fault. They were ultimately overruled. Still, they chose a gesture of defiance: Rather than officially cancel my keynote or replace me with another speaker, they asked me for an article to read aloud to the participants in place of my speech. I couldn\u2019t think of a better piece for the occasion than \u201cWhat My Soviet Life Taught Me About Censorship<\/a>,\u201d published in\u00a0Quillette<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

As a student of anti-Zionist propaganda, who has closely watched the rise of anti-Israel demonization on American campuses and its impact on Jewish students and faculty, I understood exactly what had happened. Still, I thought the decision-makers owed me an explanation. I sent an identical email to \u00c5bo Akademi, addressing Rector Mikael Lindfelt and Dean Peter Nyn\u00e4s of the Faculty of Arts, Psychology, and Theology, and to the University of Helsinki, addressing Rector Sari Lindblom and Dean Pirjo Hiidenmaa of the Faculty of Humanities. I explained my scholarly credentials and added that I was bringing my lived experience to the lectures. I also asked them, slightly tongue in cheek, for the reason behind the cancellation of my talks.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

The correspondence that followed astonished me. It turned out that the learned men charged with deciding whether my talk could proceed hadn\u2019t even bothered to check the facts, censoring me on the basis of hearsay and slander. When I came around asking questions, they stammered and came up with dubious excuses. They were fearful, and it showed.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Writing to me on behalf of the University of Helsinki was Hannu Juusola, a professor of Middle Eastern studies and the head of the university\u2019s Department of Cultures. In a rambling response, Juusola blamed procedural faults but also stressed he knew nothing about my academic background\u2014only that I didn\u2019t have a Ph.D. More to the point, he\u2019d been told that I had \u201cstrong political opinions\u201d\u2014a fact he clearly found objectionable. He also hoped I understood that the topic of my research was \u201ccurrently very politicized.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

To me, this was hogwash. Information about my scholarly background had been sent to the university months before, and I had personally sent another bio in early December, further detailing my credentials. Universities regularly invite speakers with strong political opinions and no Ph.D.s, and the University of Helsinki is no exception. When Juusola later referred to my lecture as \u201ccontroversial,\u201d it became an open-and-shut case of political censorship by a faculty member whose own\u00a0strong anti-Israel political opinions<\/a>\u00a0are well known.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

In contrast to Juusola\u2019s verbose and self-contradictory explanations, Nyn\u00e4s at \u00c5bo Akademi opted for evasion as a strategy. \u201cThe decision was based on an overall assessment where no single argument in itself was decisive for this,\u201d he wrote. \u201cRather, as Dean, I felt that there were several difficult questions and that there was obvious uncertainty and lack of clarity around these. Furthermore, these posed risks to both individuals and other stakeholders that could not be clearly assessed or adequately addressed prior to the event.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Obviously defensive, he added: \u201cIn light of this, I felt that the best solution for all was to proceed in this way so that the seminar could be held. We see great value in the seminar and in contributing to the understanding of anti-Semitism and to dialogue about it, a topic that should be more widely known and understood.\u201d I couldn\u2019t resist pointing out that my keynote, of course, would have made a significant contribution to the \u201cunderstanding of antisemitism\u201d and to \u201cdialogue about it\u201d among conference participants. Censoring a recognized expert in the field\u2014who also brought firsthand experience of antisemitism to the conversation\u2014was hardly the path to reach the stated goal.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n

In the end, the conference at \u00c5bo Akademi went on without a hitch. No one showed up to protest or disrupt it. Was it only because my talk had been canceled? I\u2019m certain the outcome would have been the same had it gone ahead. And even if some protesters had shown up\u2014so what? After the first day of the event, a Finnish academic wrote a venomous thread on X, celebrating my cancellation and attacking two other speakers at the conference. It got six likes. The media storm sparked by the censorship was undoubtedly far bigger than anything my actual presentation could have generated.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Now that the news cycle is moving on, the two universities may be tempted to breathe a sigh of relief, but that would be a mistake. Their cowardice and failure to uphold their own values (truth, freedom, inclusivity, yada, yada, yada) should prompt them to take some time to contemplate their raison d\u2019\u00eatre.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

There were additional bad optics here. In this story, men in authority, who were not subject-matter experts, overruled their female subordinates\u2014women who had organized the conference, were experts in their field and knew exactly who they were inviting and why. These men also thought it appropriate to censor a female speaker whose expertise had earned her an international reputation. The fact that three out of the four women affected were Jewish, and all were of Eastern European background, only worsened the optics.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

In the end, the Finnish public missed out on a lecture I\u2019ve presented at countless universities and academic centers around the world. But the leadership of the two universities shouldn\u2019t see this as a barrier to their own learning. My articles and talks are available online and are an excellent place for the esteemed professors, deans, and rectors to expand their knowledge about antisemitism. Not the type that denies the Holocaust but the one that makes a show of commemorating dead Jews while refusing to hear those who are still alive.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\n

Izabella Tabarovsky<\/strong> is a scholar of Soviet anti-Zionism and contemporary left antisemitism. She is a Senior Fellow with the Z3 Institute for Jewish Priorities and a Research Fellow with the London Centre for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and ISGAP. Follow her on Twitter\u00a0@IzaTabaro<\/a>.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n

Zawarto\u015b\u0107 publikowanych artyku\u0142\u00f3w i materia\u0142\u00f3w nie reprezentuje pogl\u0105d\u00f3w ani opinii Reunion’68,<\/em>
\nani te\u017c webmastera Blogu Reunion’68, chyba ze jest to wyra\u017anie zaznaczone.
\nTwoje uwagi, linki, w\u0142asne artyku\u0142y lub wiadomo\u015bci prze\u015blij na adres:
\n<\/em>webmaster@reunion68.com<\/span><\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Canceled … in Finland Izabella Tabarovsky Students protest at Finland\u2019s Helsinki University, May 6, 2024 \/ Alessandro Rampazzo\/Anadolu via Getty Images Turns out that Finnish academics are just as grossly lazy, airheaded, pompous, and self-serving\u2014and just as eager to censor Jews\u2014as their American counterparts In recent days, two Finnish universities canceled my scheduled appearances on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[26,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119136"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=119136"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119136\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":119214,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119136\/revisions\/119214"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=119136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=119136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=119136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}