Award-winning journalist and professor Peter Greste has made the difficult decision to withdraw from this year's Adelaide Writers' Week. His move is a direct protest against the festival board's controversial decision to remove writer and academic Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah from the programme.
A Decision Driven by Fear
The Adelaide Festival board announced Abdel-Fattah's removal on Thursday. The board stated its action was not due to anything she planned to say at the event, but because of past statements, reassessed in the tense aftermath of the recent Bondi attack. They argued that continuing to programme her would not be "culturally sensitive" at this "unprecedented time."
Greste, a professor of journalism at Macquarie University and executive director of the Alliance for Journalists' Freedom, calls this a "grave mistake." While he acknowledges the horror of the Bondi attack and the real fear it has generated, he warns that such fear dangerously narrows moral and intellectual horizons.
"Fear also has a way of reducing our moral and intellectual horizons," Greste writes. "We tend to simplify: to divide the world into safe and unsafe voices, acceptable and unacceptable ideas, good people and bad ones."
The Vital 'Grey Zone' Under Threat
Greste's argument centres on a concept he draws from a 2015 Islamic State essay titled 'The Extinction of the Grey Zone'. The 'grey zone' represents the essential civic space where people of different identities and beliefs can coexist and debate without being forced into opposing camps.
He notes that extremist groups like IS explicitly aim to destroy this zone through violence designed to polarise societies. "Its power lies not only in creating bloodshed and trauma but in shaping our response to it," Greste argues.
He contends that by cancelling voices like Abdel-Fattah's—or any writer who does not explicitly incite violence—cultural institutions inadvertently do the work of extremists. "In cancelling Abdel-Fattah... we are undermining our capacity to hold those difficult conversations and, in the process, doing the work of Islamic State for them," he states.
A Matter of Principle, Not Agreement
Greste is careful to clarify that his protest is not an endorsement of Abdel-Fattah's specific views. "I do not need to agree with Abdel-Fattah’s views to believe that removing her in this way is wrong," he explains. For him, the issue is one of principle and dangerous precedent.
He warns that if a writer's participation can be revoked based on past statements reinterpreted through the lens of current events, then public discourse becomes hostage to "institutional nervousness rather than intellectual integrity."
Greste's withdrawal follows the resignation of three board members and the board chair from the Adelaide Festival, highlighting deep internal divisions over the decision. Abdel-Fattah has also sent a legal notice to the festival.
Greste concludes by framing his action as a defence of the foundational space for democracy. "My withdrawal is not a repudiation of Adelaide writers’ week as a whole... It is a protest against a decision that undermines the festival’s role as a guardian of the grey zone." He steps away to insist that fear must not be allowed to shrink the civic space that extremists seek to destroy.
