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Adelaide Festival chair Tracey Whiting has resigned, becoming the fourth board member to quit over the decision to remove Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah from the Writers’ Week program.
Tracey Whiting has resigned as chair of the Adelaide Festival Board.
Whiting announced her resignation in a post to LinkedIn on Sunday evening, writing “Recent decisions were bound by certain undertakings and my resignation enables the Adelaide Festival, as an organisation, to refresh its leadership and its approach to these circumstances.”
She did not offer further comment.
With only three remaining members – Leesa Chesser, Adelaide city councillor Mary Couros, and Brenton Cox – former Adelaide Writers’ Week director Jo Dyer said on BlueSKy the board was now in breach of the Adelaide Festival Corporation Act which states, “At least 2 members must be women and at least 2 must be men.”
Last Thursday, the Adelaide Festival board announced that while it was not suggesting “in any way” that Abdel-Fattah or her writing had any connection with the Bondi attack, given her past statements “it would not be culturally sensitive to continue to program her at this unprecedented time so soon after Bondi”.
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The move prompted dozens of authors to pull out of the festival, including best-selling Australian author Trent Dalton.
On Monday, Dyer – who ran the event from 2019 to 2020 – said on Radio National there had been pressure over the line-up in the past but that she and other directors pushed back. This time, however, she said the board had “buckled” and would no longer be able to legally function.
“Clearly, it puts the board in an invidious position to their discredit. They were not able to withstand that pressure as they should have. But now we don’t have a functioning organisation, and it is the people of Adelaide and South Australia who are the victims of this debacle,” she said.
In 2024, Abdel-Fattah was among the signatories to a letter to Adelaide Writers’ Week requesting the removal of New York-based opinion writer Thomas Friedman from the line-up because of his comments in a New York Times article comparing the situation in the Middle East to the animal kingdom.
However, in a response seen by this masthead, dated February 9, 2024, the festival board rejected this petition. Signed by the (now former) chair of the board Tracey Whiting, it reads: “Asking the Adelaide Festival and Adelaide Writers’ Week to cancel an artist or writer is an extremely serious request. We have an international reputation for supporting artistic freedom of expression.”
Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah.
Speaking to the Guardian on Sunday, Abdel-Fattah rejected any allegation of hypocrisy.
“Friedman’s widely criticised NYT article compared various Arab and Muslim nations and groups to insects and vermin requiring eradication at a time when talk of ‘human animals’ was being used to justify wholesale slaughter in Gaza,” she said in a statement.
“We were concerned about the impact of Friedman’s views on socially and historically marginalised people who have been dehumanised and discriminated against by the use of such racist tropes. Indeed, one of the examples we supplied was how Jewish people have historically been likened to vermin.
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“In contrast, I was cancelled because my presence and identity as a Palestinian was deemed ‘culturally insensitive’ and linked to the Bondi atrocity. I was cancelled because I, a Palestinian, have been a vocal advocate against the actual extermination of my people.”
The Adelaide Festival did not respond to questions about the incident.
The Adelaide Advertiser reports that former Adelaide Festival board member Tony Berg resigned in October, citing concerns Writers’ Week director Louise Adler “did not warn the board that she had already made an offer to Randa Abdel-Fattah” and, given her anti-Zionist stance, he could not “in all conscience” remain.
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