State Library Victoria Teen Writing Bootcamp controversy
Six writers - Alison Evans, Amie Kaufman, Jinghua Qian, Ariel Slamet Ries, Morgan Rose and Omar Sakr - were scheduled to appear at a series of online Teen Writing Bootcamp events for young people run by the State Library Victoria in March 2024.
On 28 February 2024, the entire program was cancelled and indefinitely postponed by the library who cited that a "child and cultural safety" review was necessary at a time of "heightened sensitivities."
On 15 September 2023, an official Library press release for International Democracy Day affirmed the institution's commitment to "taking a stand against increasing challenges to intellectual freedom faced by public libraries across Australia, in the form of demands for book challenges, book theft, intimidating protests and threats against public programs, including rainbow and drag queen story times."
[2] In January 2024, it was publicly disclosed that the dismissal of pro-Palestinian journalist Antoinette Lattouf from the ABC had been coordinated by a WhatsApp chat named "Lawyers for Israel".
[7] The Teen Writing Bootcamps were originally scheduled to take place online in March 2024, with each of the authors given a specialised area of education such as poetry and young adult fiction.
[13]In an interview with Jacobin, Qian stated: (The cancellation) struck me as very odd, given that the library has been running this program since 2021 and there were already robust child safety protocols in place.
[14]Library president Christine Christian told The Australian that "the deferment was made to ensure the safety of its program participants (as) the unique community service carried with it a duty to provide a safe environment.
"[15] Another SLV spokesperson told The Guardian that the workshop had been deferred “due to changes in the external environment (to ensure) the highest levels of child and cultural safety are in place”, but would not give further details.
On 14 March 2024, The Age published claims attributed to anonymous Library employees that Duldig told a meeting attended by 30 staff that the writers' public support of Palestine was the actual reason for the postponement.
[24] On 29 April 2024, The Age reported that numerous well-known Australian authors, including Tony Birch, Michelle de Kretser and Grace Yee, were boycotting the Library indefinitely until the matter is resolved.
[25] On 16 and 17 July 2024, The Age and The Guardian published numerous internal emails from the Library relating to the incident that had been obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.
These emails, while heavily redacted, confirmed that the Library had indeed scrutinised the political and religious views of the authors on various topics and especially Palestine when making the decision to cancel the workshops.
[27]McKew told The Guardian that her decisions were informed by "the policy of political neutrality which covers all the major Victorian cultural institutions" that the library had been "entirely consistent" in applying.
Another Library spokesperson stated that the emails affirm their position that a duty of care review was underway, and that "(upholding) the core value of respectful conduct... has come into sharp focus in the current geopolitical environment.
She reported that the Library repeatedly expressed an intention to request artists to sign the Victorian Public Servants Code of Conduct in future, which, Walton observed, would make it legally enforceable to fire them based on political commentary they have made on social media.
He also added that the Library "had done the work as an institution to be resilient around the drag queen story time but (wasn't) ready to face the challenges of dealing with hate speech and other things that related to Gaza."
