UPDATE, April 22, 2008: Yale Pulls Student's 'Abortion Art' Project From Exhibit Opening
Senior Aliza Shvarts' controversial piece still could be included in the student show, which runs through May 1, Yale officials indicated.
"Her exhibit is not on display, but it's unresolved as to whether it will be," said Yale spokesman Tom Conroy, suggesting discussions were in progress between the university and Shvarts.
Discussions?
This is ridiculous. Maybe Jimmy Carter can help resolve the matter.
Shvarts kept mum through the weekend and early this week despite the school's calls for her to confess that she lied in describing how she constructed the project. She didn't respond to repeated calls or e-mails requesting comment.
Yale officials warned that unless the art major agreed to say in writing that she hadn't told the truth about artificially inseminating herself and then taking herbal drugs to try to induce miscarriages, they'd yank her piece from the student exhibit, which opened Tuesday morning and closes May 1.
Does this mean she gets an A on her project?
___________________
Aliza Shvarts' senior art project is turning into quite a battle.
What a performance artist!
From the Yale Daily News:
The University will not allow Aliza Shvarts ’08 to display her controversial senior art project at its scheduled opening Tuesday unless she confesses in writing that the exhibition is a work of fiction, Yale officials said Sunday.
The University, meanwhile, acknowledged that it has disciplined two faculty members for their role in allowing Shvarts to proceed with a project that she claimed included nine months of repeated artificial inseminations followed by self-induced miscarriages.
As news of Shvarts’ project swept across the Web last week and attracted the ire of students and private citizens alike, Shvarts and the University engaged in a match of he-said/she-said: Shvarts stood by her project as she described it earlier last week in a news release, while the University — claiming Shvarts had privately denied actually committing the acts in question — dismissed it as a hoax that amounted to nothing more than “performance art.”
And with the scheduled opening of her exhibition rapidly approaching, the University only intensified its criticism this weekend.
“I am appalled,” Yale College Dean Peter Salovey said in a statement Friday. “This piece of performance art as reported in the press bears no relation to what I consider appropriate for an undergraduate senior project.”
School of Art Dean Robert Storr also condemned the project in a written statement Friday.
“If I had known about this, I would not have permitted it to go forward,” Storr said in the statement. “This is not an acceptable project in a community where the consequences go beyond the individual who initiates the project and may even endanger that individual.”
...Meanwhile, Salovey said in the Friday statement that he and Storr would reassess what constitutes an “appropriate” senior project and the process through which such projects are overseen by faculty.
Two days later, Salovey and Storr announced that an investigation had found “serious errors in judgement” on the part of two unnamed individuals — ostensibly her thesis adviser, School of Art lecturer Pia Lindman, and School of Art Director of Undergraduate Studies Henk van Assen — who had been involved in her project before it incited mass condemnation across campus and across the country and that “appropriate action” had been taken against them.
“In one case, the instructor responsible for the senior project should not have allowed it to go forward,” Salovey said. “In the other, an adviser should have interceded and consulted others when first given information about the project.”
...In his statement Sunday night, Salovey called on Shvarts to produce a written confession admitting that her project did not actually include the graphic acts that she had first described. He added that Shvarts will not be allowed to install her project unless she admits she did not try to inseminate herself and induce miscarriages and promises that no human blood will be displayed in her exhibit.
...If the exhibition does go ahead, it will likely require heavy security. A Yale official said last week that the incident has drawn more press inquiries to the University than any episode since the controversy over the admission of former Taliban diplomat Rahmatullah Hashemi in 2006.
But if the art opening does not continue, the University is likely to face criticism that it has restricted freedom of expression.
In his statement, Storr emphasized that the University “has a profound commitment to freedom of expression” and that he, personally, supports the legality of abortion.
“That said, Yale does not encourage or condone projects that would involve unknown health risks to the student,” Storr said. “Nor does it believe that open discourse and inquiry can exist in an educational and creative community when an individual exercises these rights but evades full intellectual accountability for the strong response he or she may provoke.”
Exactly.
Shvarts is exhibiting intellectual dishonesty.
Yale is not banning her project, disgusting as it is.
The university is demanding that she simply be honest and not misrepresent the truth of her art project.
This isn't a case of trampling on Shvarts' freedom of expression. And certainly, members of Yale's faculty are strongly pro-abortion. It's not a matter of School of Art Dean Robert Storr acting in support of anything as controversial as respecting life.
Shvarts can display her project, but she can't profess it to be something it's not.
With freedom comes responsibility.
Yale is not going to be complicit in Shvarts' irresponsibility. She can't claim that the university signed off on an assignment that would have endangered her physically.
To those of you claiming a ban of Shvarts' project would be an assault on free speech: I say, "It's not. Duh."
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