Friday essay: ‘A future of dust’ – Jeff Sparrow on Gaza and why, in evil times, writers have a responsibility to take sides

By Jeff Sparrow, Senior Lecturer, Centre for Advancing Journalism, The University of Melbourne

We must ask for no references to Gaza/Palestine/Israel as it’s a very sensitive topic in our area. If these topics are included it drastically changes our risk management plans for events. Thus for safety and harmony we kindly ask the guest speakers avoid these topics and any questions about it that come up.

Sam Wallman and I received this message from our publicist, one day before an event at a suburban library about our coauthored book.

“Did they even read the damn thing?” Sam joked, as we strategised our response.

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