Friday, June 23, 2006

This is my last post on the German Diaspora Conference

I received the following e-mail today from the conference organizer. I am posting it verbatium without any alteration. I will not be posting on the conference any more.

dear dr pohl,
i read the postings on your personal blogg regarding the conference
'diaspora experiences - german immigrants and their descendants. to say it
frankly at the beginning: i certainly do not share the political and
ideological persuasions which transpire in your postings, but i am
interested in hearing them expressed. however, i strongly object to you using
personal insults and ill-founded generalisations about a colleague in
academia. at a conference on history, linguistics and literature, i do
not expect any scholar to be familiar with the many different discources
in the various discplines and sub-disciplines, but i would hope that
everybody expresses their lack of familiarity with a particular discourse
in terms which others do not find insulting.
on a more general note: as somebody who recently received his phd, you
ought to be aware that conference presentations, in general and for
this conference in particular, are selected from a pool of submissions
through a careful vetting process which involves negotiated decisions by a
group of qualified people. if then an individual feels that certain
geographic areas and/or groups should be represented or other voices
should not be heard because they are not liked by this individual, then, i
can tell you from experience, this will neither increase the number of
paper submissions nor will it persuade the program committee to
reconsider its decisions.
best wishes
mathias schulze
conference program coordinator
'diaspora experiences - german immigrants and their descendants'

ps. i herewith give you permission to post the content of this e-mail
on your personal blogg (i was unable to post it there myself because i
am not a registered user.).

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