Adelaide Writers’ Week 2024: Festival hit with new backlash as organisers strongly defend program

An Adelaide festival is under fire for the second year as outraged Jewish leaders claim it’s “stacked” with anti-Israel speakers – but organisers are defending their program.

Clementine Ford holds controversial views on a range of topics. She spent her teen years in Adelaide. Picture: Valeriu Campan/ NCA NewsWire

South Australia’s controversial author festival is “stacked” with anti-Israel speakers that is fuelling the country’s “demonisation”, outraged Jewish leaders claim, as organisers defend their program.

Adelaide Writers’ Week – part of the Adelaide Festival – is under fire for a second consecutive year amid a backlash over participants including author Clementine Ford, 43.

Clementine Ford at a pro-Palestine event in Melbourne in January. Picture: Valeriu Campan/ NCA NewsWire

But as Peter Malinauskas on Monday again rejected being a premier who “engages in censorship at arts festivals”, organisers of next month’s book event defended selection of more than 200 authors as they rejected calls to invoke bans.

Controversy erupted at the weekend after Jewish leaders called for Palestine supporter Ford, who grew up in Adelaide as a teenager and university student, to be banned for sharing details of 600 Jewish artists and creatives that sparked death threats.

Executive Council of Australian Jewry chief executive officer, Peter Wertheim, accused the festival of again being “stacked with anti-Israel speakers”.

Mr Wertheim, whose organisation is the peak body for the Australian Jewish Community, said: “Just for once, it would be refreshing to hear from some writers of genuine renown.

“At a time of unprecedented levels of antisemitic incidents in Australia and elsewhere, (the festival) will again be piling on the demonisation of Israel and denying any voice at all to the mainstream of the Jewish people.

Louise Adler was appointed director of Adelaide Writers’ Week in 2022. Picture: Kristoffer Paulsen

“This is not something that any government in Australia should be funding or supporting.”

But AWW director, Louise Adler, a “proudly Jewish” mother of two whose parents survived the Holocaust, denied claims her festivals were unbalanced or anti-Semitic.

She said speakers, including Ford, were chosen for what they had recently published rather than on a specific issue.

Ms Adler, a publisher for 30 years who was appointed for three years as director in 2022, said she took her “responsibility” extremely seriously.

“The issues are serious but we have been considerate and thoughtful about who are programming,” she said.

“I chose Clementine Ford because of her writing on contemporary Australian sexual politics and about her current book about marriage, which I thought was interesting.

“Her views on other issues – as expressed on social media – are immaterial as to why she was chosen and not part of her (book) conversation.”

“These attitudes are contrary to (our) ethos and values … and we will certainly not give oxygen to speakers with these views,” she said.

She said five writers out of 202 would discuss the Middle East so “if you get out a calculator it is factually incorrect” to say it was stacked with anti-Israel speakers.

“The writers … three of whom are Israeli or Israeli residents, have a variety of views of the past, of the long history of this tragic conflict, the current situation and what the future might look like.”

She said speakers proved last year robust but respectful debate was possible.

Ford, who is scheduled for one session at the event that is part of the Adelaide Festival, did not respond to inquiries for comment on Monday.