New York’s Holocaust museum has said that “no one was banned or cancelled,” in response to reports that Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, was barred from attending the museum for a corporate event.
According to Elliot Abrams and Eric Cohen, the chairman and CEO of the Tikvah Fund, a leadership conference set for June 12 and set to feature DeSantis was pulled after the museum said that the governor didn’t “align with the museum’s values and its message of inclusivity”.
Writing in the
Wall Street Journal, Abrams and Cohen said they were told that they must “either disinvite the governor or our event was unwelcome”.
This wouldn’t come as a surprise to many, with DeSantis failing to condemn neo-Nazi protesters in his state and more recently introducing the controversial ‘Don’t Say Gay Bill’, which limits discussion of LGBTQ issues in schools.
The museum however refutes the allegations, posting a social media statement, which reads:
“Today we responded to a factually inaccurate opinion piece in WSJ about a proposed rental event. Let us be clear: No one was banned or cancelled. No contract with the Tikvah Fund was ever signed for this rental event to be held at the Museum and no deposit was ever made.
“This is not a free speech or censorship issue. The Tikvah Fund is trying to create a fight where none exists. This was simply a contractual and logistical decision.
“We welcome Governor DeSantis and elected officials from across the spectrum to visit the Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust for a tour of our new exhibition, The Holocaust: What Hate Can Do, when it opens this summer.”
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