Tanith Lee in a Cairo shitstorm
Jul. 6th, 2011 08:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
desperancePost-Mubarak, the universities in Egypt have been having their own quiet revolution. In Cairo, for the first time ever, a dean of faculty has been democratically elected by majority vote. They voted for a woman.
Now the department is under attack, for including a Tanith Lee short story on a reading-list.
"The short story, according to the al-Akhbar journalist, teaches nothing but depravity and moral degradation. It encourages perversion and is therefore "a crime in the full sense of the word". Brandishing his moral sword, he threatened to file a complaint of moral corruption to the public prosecutor and to sue all those involved in allowing this short story to corrupt innocent minds."
Is it a coincidence, we wonder, that this attack comes while the president of the university is still dithering over whether or not to ratify the dean's election?
Now the department is under attack, for including a Tanith Lee short story on a reading-list.
"The short story, according to the al-Akhbar journalist, teaches nothing but depravity and moral degradation. It encourages perversion and is therefore "a crime in the full sense of the word". Brandishing his moral sword, he threatened to file a complaint of moral corruption to the public prosecutor and to sue all those involved in allowing this short story to corrupt innocent minds."
Is it a coincidence, we wonder, that this attack comes while the president of the university is still dithering over whether or not to ratify the dean's election?