The event, which will take place on 2 July at the Troxy in East London, had originally been tentatively scheduled to take place at Logan Hall, a 900-capacity auditorium hired out by the IOE.
But after expressing strong interest in hosting the event, arranging logistics, and giving Frontline Club staff a tour of the venue, the Institute’s management performed a sudden about turn.
An email sent on 16 May from Michael Walker, the IOE’s Head of Conferences, Catering and Operations, informed Frontline: “There are ongoing issues concerning wi-fi access and the provision of a bar for your visitors, the first of which I feel may be too difficult to resolve at our end.
“This – and the fact that the meeting’s subject is of a nature which may attract considerable controversy – obliges me to inform you at this stage in the proceedings that we cannot offer hire of the Logan Hall on this occasion.”
Frontline Club founder Vaughan Smith was puzzled by the decision.
In an email sent on 17 May, he responded: “We do not feel that the issues with wi-fi and bar would prevent us from using your venue.
“However we are shocked that the Institute of Education would have difficulty accepting our event on the basis of a feeling that it may be controversial.
“The speakers have all spoken in London before several times and both generate significant interest and support from within the public. Neither generate any risk of violence at the event.”
Smith pointed to the IOE’s Research and Governance Policy, which states as part of its mission that it will be “guided by a concern for truth and justice, and make a positive contribution to the development of individuals, institutions and societies facing the challenges of change.”
But in a reply, Walker claimed that it was not the subject matter alone that was the reason for refusal.
“It seems I have mistakenly conveyed the impression that the nature of the event’s subject matter was in itself enough for us to decline to host it,” he wrote.
"This is not the case – and the concerns which have informed the decision centre around our ability to cope with the booking in the event that negative issues (including those connected to public order) are raised by it.”
He added: “The Institute reserves the right to withhold hire of its facilities and although I will certainly refer this matter to the Director of Administration here there will be no change in the position should the decision be ratified.”
Assange, who has been on strict bail conditions at the Norfolk home of Smith for over six months, was informed that the IOE had declined to hire the Logan Hall for the 2 July event on the grounds that it “may attract considerable controversy“.
He said in response: "This is how everyday political censorship works in the United Kingdom, not jackboots at the door, but through tawdry institutional pandering."
Chaired by award-winning investigative journalist Amy Goodman, the event will see Assange and Žižek discuss the “ethics and philosophy“ behind WikiLeaks. It will be broadcast live across the internet by independent US news broadcaster, Democracy Now!
On the same day, the IOE’s Jeffery Hall will host the Association of Church Accountants and Treasurers’ Summer Conference, which will feature a talk from Gareth Morgan, a senior leader at Everyday Champions Church, Newark. Morgan will discuss “the challenges of being an effective church in the 21st century.”
The IOE was founded in 1902 as a teacher training college in London, and says its “history and current mission are rooted in a commitment to social justice.”
It is part of the University of London: a publicly funded institution which was established in 1836, making it one of the oldest universities in England.
A spokesperson for the IOE denied that the event had been turned down because of controversy surrounding WikiLeaks, and stated the decision was taken due to concerns about public safety and ease of access for students and visitors.
"It is true that Mr Assange is a controversial figure at the moment, because of WikiLeaks but also because of attempts to extradite him to face criminal charges," the spokesperson said.
"As such, and given the proximity to Mr Assange’s next court hearing [on 12 July], it was felt that this event was likely to attract a significant amount of external interest from both the media and the broader public.
“While we can understand Frontline’s disappointment at not being able to host this event at the IOE, we must always put the welfare of our students, staff and guests first and we judged that we would not have the resources to safely steward an event of this kind without our students and other visitors having their access to facilities disrupted.”
As part of the build up to the event, which will focus on the ethics and philosophy behind WIkiLeaks, Frontline Club will this week be posting a series of blogs including extracts from essays written by both Assange and Žižek .
Today we are pleased to be posting an edited extract of Assange’s 2006 essay, Conspiracy as Governance. The essay gives an insight in to Assange’s thinking around the time that he founded WikiLeaks alongside others late the same year.
In it, he outlines the problem of authoritarian conspiracies and explains how technology may be able to help create a more humane form of governance…
*****
Conspiracy as Governance
By Julian Assange
To radically shift regime behaviour we must think clearly and boldly for if we have learned anything, it is that regimes do not want to be changed. We must think beyond those who have gone before us and discover technological changes that embolden us with ways to act in which our forebears could not.
We must understand the key generative structure of bad governance.
We must develop a way of thinking about this structure that is strong enough to carry us through the mire of competing political moralities and into a position of clarity.
Most importantly, we must use these insights to inspire within us and others a course of ennobling and effective action to replace the structures that lead to bad governance with something better.
Conspiracy as governance in authoritarian regimes
Where details are known as to the inner workings of authoritarian regimes, we see conspiratorial interactions among the political elite, not merely for preferment or favour within the regime, but as the primary planning methodology behind maintaining or strengthening authoritarian power.
Authoritarian regimes create forces which oppose them by pushing against a people’s will to truth, love and self-realisation. Plans which assist authoritarian rule, once discovered, induce further resistance. Hence such schemes are concealed by successful authoritarian powers until resistance is futile or outweighed by the efficiencies of naked power. This collaborative secrecy, working to the detriment of a population, is enough to define their behavior as conspiratorial.
Thus it happens in matters of state; for knowing afar off (which it is only given a prudent man to do) the evils that are brewing, they are easily cured. But when, for want of such knowledge, they are allowed to grow until everyone can recognise them, there is no longer any remedy to be found.
(The Prince, Niccolo Machiavelli [1469-1527])
Traditional vs. modern conspiracies
Traditional attacks on conspiratorial power groupings, such as assassination, cut many high weight links. The act of assassination — the targeting of visible individuals — is the result of mental inclinations honed for the pre-literate societies in which our species evolved.
Literacy and the communications revolution have empowered conspirators with new means to conspire, increasing the speed of accuracy of the their interactions and thereby the maximum size a conspiracy may achieve before it breaks down.
Conspirators who have this technology are able to out conspire conspirators without it. For the same costs they are able to achieve a higher total conspiratorial power. That is why they adopt it.
For example, remembering Lord Halifax’s words, let us consider two closely balanced and broadly conspiratorial power groupings, the US Democratic and Republican parties.
Consider what would happen if one of these parties gave up their mobile phones, fax and email correspondence — let alone the computer systems which manage their subscribes, donors, budgets, polling, call centres and direct mail campaigns?
They would immediately fall into an organisational stupor and lose to the other.
An authoritarian conspiracy that cannot think is powerless to preserve itself against the opponents it induces
When we look at an authoritarian conspiracy as a whole, we see a system of interacting organs, a beast with arteries and veins whose blood may be thickened and slowed until it falls, stupefied; unable to sufficiently comprehend and control the forces in its environment.
Later we will see how new technology and insights into the psychological motivations of conspirators can give us practical methods for preventing or reducing important communication between authoritarian conspirators, foment strong resistance to authoritarian planning and create powerful incentives for more humane forms of governance.
Reproduced with permission of the author.
The essay, which is in two parts, can be read in full here.
Julian Assange in conversation with Slavoj Žižek, moderated by Democracy Now!’s Amy Goodman, will take place on 2 July at the Troxy In East London. More information and tickets for the event can be found here.
]]>