Rightwing faction purges Socialist Scholars Conference coordinator

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Eric Canepa, who is a long-time coordinator of the yearly Socialist
Scholars Conference in NYC, has been fired. From what I understand, the
prime movers against him were Ian Williams, Bogdan Denitch and somebody
named Jeff Gold. Williams and Denitch were well-known supporters of the
war in the Balkans and Gold can be described as a Dissent magazine
"socialist".

After an 8 to 7 board vote to fire Eric, his supporters resigned. This
is their statement:

To: The Socialist Scholars Conference community.

From: Stanley Aronowitz, Nancy Holmstrom, Manning Marable, Leith
Mullings, Frances Fox Piven, Julia Wrigley.

At its meeting on the evening of May 19th, the Board of the Socialist
Scholars Conference voted by 8 to 7 to terminate the services of our
staff director, Eric Canepa. This move has been afoot for some
months, and we have tried hard to avert it. Now that this decision
has been made, we feel morally obligated to resign from the Board. We
note that the people leaving include a majority of the women and
people of color who have joined the Board.

It is with great regret that we, as members of the Steering Committee
and Board of Directors, have come to this decision. We are not
leaving because of the decision regarding Eric, although we opposed
his firing and we greatly value his contributions to the conference.
Rather, we are leaving because we feel that the campaign to
accomplish this was riddled with behavior we regard as politically
unethical, including grossly inaccurate charges that were repeated
even in the face of evidence of their inaccuracy, tirades that were
abusive to the point of derangement, and the recurrent implication
that those of us who objected to these procedures, being newcomers,
were not the "real" board. While these disagreements may not be
political in the large sense of having to do with big issues that
arise in the world outside of the SSC, they are disagreements about
politics -- about the ethics of how people should work together
politically. We feel the process has not conformed even minimally to
the ethical requirements of honesty and mutual respect that make
democratic exchange possible. Indeed, we have sadly come to the
conclusion that while we were invited to join the board in the name
of a more inclusive conference, some of the initial organizers do not
in fact want to share their control of the conference.

We feel that now, more than ever, we need a democratic and inclusive
Socialist Scholars Conference. It is our hope that the Board of
Directors will eventually evolve to represent the full political,
gender and racial diversity of all currents of the U.S. left.

If you have any questions or comments, they can be directed to:

<mailto:ResignedSSCdirectors at socialistscholars.org>

===

I will have more to say on this matter as events unfold, but suffice it
to say at this point that this is an attempt to push the SSC even
further to the right. As has been reported widely, the final plenary at
the last conference was practically a rally for John Kerry. If Denitch,
Williams and company have their way, all that inconvenient and
embarrassing talk about "imperialism" and "revolution" will be purged
altogether. Getting rid of Eric is a necessary first step to achieving
that goal. Just a word about the awful Ian Williams. At the SSC
conference 2 years ago, he spoke at a panel on George Orwell and told
the audience during the q&a something like this: "Wait until you people
(referring to the radicals there, including me) see Saddam use WMD's
(the war had not yet begun), then you'll see how foolish you were."
That's what we're up against.

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