Public use of Nazi salute rocks archaeology conference [View all]
By Lizzie Wade
Jan. 11, 2021 , 3:30 PM
Attendees at last week’s annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology (SHA) were shocked by a public, online altercation that included a past president of the organization using a Nazi salute and phrase during the conference’s opening plenary session.
Liz Quinlan, a doctoral student at the University of York, was thrilled to be an invited speaker at the plenary on Wednesday, 6 January. She served as the accessibility and inclusion coordinator of both the January 2020 conference, held in person in Boston, and this year’s virtual conference. As she was talking about her work, which included an LGBTQ+ guide to Boston in 2020 and a push to provide live closed captioning and transcripts of the virtual sessions this year, she was interrupted by attendee Robert Schuyler, an archaeologist at the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) and SHA president in 1982. Schuyler unmuted himself on Zoom and asked for the floor. He urged members to attend 2022’s in-person meeting in Philadelphia, then asked how the pandemic had affected SHA’s membership renewal numbers.
“This is not the place for you to bring this up,” Quinlan responded. Schuyler then raised his voice and said, “I’m sorry, but I have freedom of speech and you’re not going to tell me this is not the place for me to bring this up.”
“I am attempting to utilize the position the SHA gave me to speak about important topics [of accessibility and inclusion],” Quinlan said.
Schuyler then thrust his arm in the air and said, “Sieg heil to you.”
More:
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/01/public-use-nazi-salute-rocks-archaeology-conference
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