2012 Award Criticism
The 2012 award to Jewish academic Judith Butler has come under criticism from Israel’s Ambassador to Germany Yakov Hadas-Handelsman, the director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center office in Jerusalem, Dr. Efraim Zuroff, and the German Central Council of Jews because of Butler's remarks about Israel and specifically her "calls for a boycott against Israel." Butler responded saying that "she did not take attacks from German Jewish leaders personally." Phyllis Chesler says that the Adorno Prize committee understands that Butler is "very high profile" and has "public anti-Zionist politics" which, according to Chesler, "constitute part of what the ‘new anti-Semitism‘ is about." Gerald Steinberg said that giving the Adorno Prize to Butler is a "moral travesty."
Read more about this topic: Theodor W. Adorno Award
Famous quotes containing the words award and/or criticism:
“The award of a pure gold medal for poetry would flatter the recipient unduly: no poem ever attains such carat purity.”
—Robert Graves (1895–1985)
“The greater the decrease in the social significance of an art form, the sharper the distinction between criticism and enjoyment by the public. The conventional is uncritically enjoyed, and the truly new is criticized with aversion.”
—Walter Benjamin (1892–1940)