“AJC Welcomes UNESCO Director-General's Decision to Withdraw from World Philosophy Day in ... - Earthtimes” plus 2 more |
- AJC Welcomes UNESCO Director-General's Decision to Withdraw from World Philosophy Day in ... - Earthtimes
- Unesco Backs Off Philosophy Day in Iran - New York Times
- UNESCO withdraws support for Iran philosophy event - AP - msnbc.com
| Posted: 09 Nov 2010 10:29 AM PST NEW YORK, Nov. 9, 2010 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The American Jewish Committee welcomed UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokovina's announcement that the international cultural body will "disassociate" itself from the World Philosophy Day events scheduled to take place in Iran from November 21-23. (Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20100816/AJCLOGO) (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20100816/AJCLOGO) "Director-General Bokovina has taken the morally correct step and we applaud her decision," said AJC Executive Director David Harris. "Given the Iranian government's appalling record on human rights, academic exchange, and freedom of expression, UNESCO's imprimatur on an event like World Philosophy Day would have been used by the regime as a badge of honor." AJC was among a number of human rights organizations and leading academic representatives who urged UNESCO to withdraw its support. In a letter sent to Bokovina on November 3, Harris and AJC President Robert Elman wrote: "The Iranian government has ensured that any opposing views will be stifled, having barred the participation of moderate and learned philosophers. In a tragic and ironic twist, just last week, Iran implemented a new round of restrictions on the study of 12 key human social sciences, among them, philosophy and human rights." SOURCE American Jewish Committee This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
| Unesco Backs Off Philosophy Day in Iran - New York Times Posted: 09 Nov 2010 12:16 PM PST Correction Appended PARIS — The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization decided Tuesday to pull the plug on another embarrassment to its reputation, dissociating itself from this year's celebration of philosophy, to be held in Iran in less than two weeks. Unesco has been celebrating World Philosophy Day since 2002, but an agreement made quietly in 2008 for Iran to host this year's event became extremely controversial, given Iran's record of repression and censorship after disputed elections in 2009. Academics vowed to boycott this year's event, scheduled for Nov. 21 to 23, and European nations, joined by the United States, urged the organization's new director general, Irina Bokova, to cancel the event. A Paris-based event for Philosophy Day, which Ms. Bokova intends now to be the main celebration, is expected to go ahead as scheduled on Nov. 18. Western diplomats said that they had first raised the issue with Ms. Bokova early this year, when the agreement with Iran became more widely known. This spring, Unesco said the event would go ahead as scheduled. On Tuesday Ms. Bokova announced that the organization would dissociate itself from any related events in Tehran. There were indications that Iran's state-supervised news media was attempting to gloss over Unesco's absence. A report by the semiofficial Mehr news agency, for example, said that besides the "gathering which will be held in Iran for the International Day of Philosophy, Unesco will hold various events at its headquarters in Paris." Over the spring and summer, diplomats and nongovernmental organizations pointed to the arrests and deportations of notable Iranian academics after the elections, and to evidence that the event was being run by hard-line voices in the complicated Iranian system. France was particularly involved in trying to persuade Ms. Bokova to cancel the event, and was joined by other European Union countries in appealing to Ms. Bokova, whose predecessor, Koichiro Matsuura, had made the agreement with Iran in 2008 when Tehran offered to host this year's event. A senior Western diplomat pointed out that the decision to hold the day in a particular country was in the power of the director general, and that Unesco's executive board had never been consulted on the issue. One letter earlier this month to Ms. Bokova from the American ambassador to Unesco, David T. Killion, pointed to reports that the authorities intended to use World Philosophy Day for political purposes, while Iranian officials said in October that Western social and human sciences were dangerous for Iran. The Iranian minister in charge of science, research and technology announced the freezing of any new academic courses in Western disciplines, including philosophy, until their content could be reviewed. Another senior Western diplomat said that Ms. Bokova had done the right thing by canceling the event and trying to maintain a dialogue with Tehran, but should have acted sooner. A quicker decision further away from the event itself may have spared embarrassment both to Unesco and to Iran, which the West is trying to engage in serious talks about nuclear enrichment and regional security. "The event in Iran was completely inappropriate, given the events that took place after the 2009 elections," the diplomat said. "There was a contradiction between Unesco's ambitions and goals and those of philosophy itself, which depends on the right to think freely." Ramin Jahanbegloo, an Iranian-Canadian philosopher who was jailed in 2006 and now teaches at the University of Toronto, was instrumental in organizing an academic boycott of the Tehran event, and urged Ms. Bokova to reconsider. He pointed out that President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad had installed a hard-line politician, Gholam Ali Haddad Adel, whose daughter is married to the son of Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as head of the Iranian Institute of Philosophy. Ms. Bokova has also worked hard to avoid another inherited embarrassment to Unesco, which was a lavish prize in the life sciences financed by an African dictator, President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea. In October, the executive board agreed to suspend the awarding of the prize until consensus was reached on it among members, which means that it is unlikely to be awarded. World Philosophy Day began in Paris and has been hosted since in Chile, Morocco, Turkey, Italy and Russia, with subsidiary events the same day in many other countries. Correction: November 9, 2010 An earlier version of this article misstated the full name of Unesco. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
| UNESCO withdraws support for Iran philosophy event - AP - msnbc.com Posted: 09 Nov 2010 09:31 AM PST PARIS — UNESCO has withdrawn its support for events Iran is organizing to mark World Philosophy Day this month, the organization said in a statement Tuesday. While the Paris-based organization — the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization — didn't spell out its reasoning, diplomats said the move was partly a reaction to new restrictions on the teaching of social sciences at Iranian universities. Iranian state radio reported late last month that authorities had imposed new restrictions on 12 university social sciences deemed to be incompatible with Islamic teachings. The curriculum of subjects — including law, political science and philosophy — will be largely revised, and universities prevented from opening new departments in those subjects. The changes were seen as a response to concerns expressed by Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who said the subjects could lead to religious doubts. The World Philosophy Day events in Teheran on Nov. 21-23 had been one of four flagship UNESCO-backed events scheduled around the world. But UNESCO said "the conditions necessary to guarantee the effective organization of a U.N. international conference have not been met." The French Foreign Ministry and the United States mission to UNESCO hailed the decision. In a statement, France's Foreign Ministry said "the context of repression that reigns today in Iran ... is incompatible with the values of culture, humanism and tolerance of which UNESCO is the symbol." The statement called the decision "a new reminder by the international community for Iran to respect its international commitments." In a separate statement, the U.S. mission to UNESCO said "we also hope that all participants in World Philosophy Day around the globe pay due respect to philosophers, teachers, and other thinkers who exercise and defend freedom of expression every day, even in countries whose governments try to exploit such events for political purposes as they repress the opinions and ideas of their own people." A Western diplomat said a number of countries had protested UNESCO's decision to take Iran up on its 2008 offer to host events for World Philosophy Day's 2010 edition since it was announced several months ago. The diplomat, who was speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said several countries including the U.S. sent official letters to UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova, while "many others from all regions" registered their opposition through informal channels. The Iranian university restrictions and concerns about what would be on the program at the Teheran conference — as well as worries about possible restrictions on access to the event — were the main reasons behind the criticism, he said. Founded in 2002 to promote philosophic dialogues and exchanges, the objective of National Philosophy Day is "to promote an international culture of philosophical debate that respects human dignity and diversity," according to the UNESCO statement. Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
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