(Janet) Mock cancels lecture at Brown Univeristy amid student protest
Janet Mock, a black, native Hawaiian trans woman and activist, announced Wednesday morning that she had canceled her campus talk, Redefining Realness, which was originally scheduled for March 21. Mock was invited to be a keynote speaker by Moral Voices, in association with the Brown Center for Students of Color, Sarah Doyle Womens Center, LGBTQ Center, Sexual Assault Peer Educators, Swearer Center for Public Service, Office of the Chaplains, the Rhode Island School of Designs Office of Intercultural Student Engagement and Brown/RISD Hillel.
Moral Voices is a student group that aims to raise awareness about social justice issues of global importance each year, wrote Moral Voices co-chairs Natalie Cutler 16 and Rachel Levy 16 in a written statement published on medium.com.
After the group invited Mock to lecture on campus, students drafted a petition on Change.org asking Mock to disassociate her lecture from Hillel.
Hillel co-sponsored the lecture, and Moral Voices is a student group funded by a grant from within the Hillel budget, said Marshall Einhorn, executive director of Hillel. The statement published by Cutler and Levy states that the group is run through Brown/RISD Hillel and funded by a private donor.
The petition argued that the invitation was an attempt to pinkwash the history of Israel or improve Israels image and rebrand it as a liberal, modern and hip country. Petitioners saw the move as an attempt to deflect attention from Israels previous track record on LGBTQ rights, racism and the occupation of Palestinian territories, the petition stated.
We do not condone the use of queer people of color as props to hide occupation, the petition concluded. Petitioners did not intend for Mock to cancel her lecture but instead urged her to accept Brown students sponsorship instead of Hillels, the petition stated.
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