A reading of “My Name Is Rachel Corrie” was held at the CFA Cinema last Saturday. The provocative one-woman show was the centerpiece of a Homecoming WESeminar focusing on the increase of censorship during times of war; a short film created by Wesleyan alums and a panel discussing these issues followed the reading.
“My Name Is Rachel Corrie” is a one-woman play, currently off-Broadway, comprised of the writings of Rachel Corrie, a young activist who was killed in the Gaza Strip in March 2003. Corrie was only 23 when she was bulldozed to death while protesting in front of a Palestinian home that was about to be destroyed by the Israeli Defense Forces. Rachel’s writing from diaries, letters, and e-mails were collected by a British journalist and were compiled into the play it is today. While it opened to great success in London, the theater’s director pulled it two weeks before its American debut at the New York Theater Workshop.
The piece was viewed as too politically biased to be shown without another piece to balance its views. Nina Felshin, curator of exhibitions at the Zilkha Galleries, went on to talk about the absurdity of trying to balance art.
Six students then read selections of Corrie’s writing. The portions selected highlighted not only Corrie’s politics and activism, but also the enormous tragedy of the death of someone so young and inspired.
The WESeminar then showed a comedic short film created by two Wesleyan alums, Ned Resnihof and Abby Harton. The film, “Salesmanship,” plays off of the premise of the United States trying to sell its Iraq war plans to the American people door-to-door. The film hilariously depicted the issues of censorship and nationalism, and also provided a nice transition to a panel discussion on these issues, especially national security issues surrounding a nation at war.
The panel was comprised of parents and alumni who deal with institutional censorship in their various fields: Rachel Meeropol ’97, a staff attorney for the Center for Constitutional Rights and vice president of the New York City chapter of the National Lawyers Guild; Patrick Shaw P’06, labor lawyer and associate secretary, American Association of University Professors (AAUP), Department of Organizing and Services; and David Lindorff ’71, P’07, a freelance investigative reporter and writer, whose latest book is “The Case for Impeachment.”
They discussed the difficulties of professors publishing or even giving lectures about highly charged political topics, the censorship that exists in the media today, and the kinds of censorship raised by infringements on civil liberties. Following ten-minute talks from each of the presenters, the panel opened to questions from the audience.
The discussion eventually focused on the issue of censorship at Wesleyan, especially the controversial chalking ban. The panelists seemed to generally agree with the expressed sentiments of the student body.
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