WORLD SOCIALIST WEB SITE
The International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) at the University of Michigan denounces the racialist smear campaign against renowned composer, conductor and pianist Bright Sheng. The claim by a group of students and faculty that he committed a “racist act” by screening a film version of Othello with Laurence Olivier is as badly informed as it is false. All serious and democratic-minded students should refuse to be intimidated and come to Sheng’s defense.
On Friday, David Gier, the dean of the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance (SMTD), announced that Sheng would stop teaching his undergraduate music composition course this semester but remain on faculty. The decision came a month after Sheng screened for the class the 1965 film adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Othello, directed by longtime theater and television personality Stuart Burge and featuring the great Shakespearean actor Laurence Olivier playing Othello with black make-up.
Sheng, the Chinese-born Leonard Bernstein Distinguished University Professor of Composition, is a world-class composer, who has been teaching at the University of Michigan since 1995. He was a Pulitzer Prize finalist and was given a MacArthur “genius” fellowship in 2001. The Foundation described him as “an innovative composer whose skillful orchestrations bridge East and West, lyrical and dissonant styles, and historical and contemporary themes to create compositions that resonate with audiences around the world.”
The “crime” for which Sheng has been forced out of teaching the class has only been made possible by the whipping up of racialist frenzy on the university campuses and in the media. No honest or fair-minded individual could find anything remotely offensive about Olivier’s performance or the film as a whole.
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