SEM dates

[Judith R Cohen <judithc...>]

Hi,
the Society for Ethnomusicology (SEM) usually meets inb late October,
after the HIgh Holidays, not of course because of the HIgh Holidays, but
just because decades have established those dates as the ones members
keep aside for the meeting.

This year, in order to meet together with the COllege Music SOciety,
they changed the dates to Oct 2-5. As these dates are set far ahead of
time, no one (or hardly anyone) checked the Jewish calendar until it was
far too late to propose changing them. So the meeting begins Wednesday
night during the days between Rosh Hashanah and Kippur, and ends at noon
on Erev Kippur. This means observant members have to leave early to be
home on time if they live at any distance from Miami (as is the case for
everyone except those who happen to live there), sometimes even Saturday
night, missing the Saturday night airfares; or perhaps not go at all. IN
my case, it means the Jewish community concerts and lectures I'd
originally been setting up to break even on the costs of the airfare,
lodging etc, couldn't take place after all, and I probably won't be able
to go.

There are many Jewish members, including rabbis,and INCLUDING THE
PRESIDENT of the society -  of SEM. No one publically (on the SEM-L
forum) protested. I wrote to the forum some months ago, and no one
answered. Then I wrote again a little while ago and this time a few
members did write into the forum expressing their concern, including a
very observant CHristian who said she was appalled that the Society had
not checked the dates in the Jewish calendar.

The reason it is disturbning is that the SEM prides itself, indeed it is
one of its vaunted (and generally, with reason) attributed , on its
multicultural sensitivity and awareness. 

At last year's meeting, there were a number of disturbing things -
small, and I won't bother with details here, but they add up. In fact,
when I arrived , on the shuttle bus from the airport to the conference
site, a doctoral student was sitting next to me; we were talking about
our respective research areas, and she said, "oh you're Jewish. But
that's ok, I'm sure you hate Israel anyway, like we all do, right?"

Together with what I;ve been seeing in Spain these past months, it adds
up to a lot of worries.
Judith

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