Louise Adler steps down as director of Adelaide Writers’ Week

Louise Adler has resigned as director of Adelaide Writers’ Week (AWW) after the festival faced intense backlash for abruptly axing a Palestinian author from its line-up. On Tuesday, Ms Adler announced she would step down as director in an open letter published by the Guardian. “The Adelaide festival board’s decision – despite my strongest opposition – to disinvite the Australian Palestinian writer Randa Abdel-Fattah from Adelaide Writers’ Week weakens freedom of speech and is the harbinger of a less free nation, where lobbying and political pressure determine who gets to speak and who doesn’t,” she wrote. Dr Abdel-Fattah had been invited to the event to discuss her newest novel, Discipline. On Thursday, the author was advised she would no longer take part in the 2026 event, and her profile quietly taken down from the Writers’ Week website the same morning. In an earlier statement, the Adelaide Festival board confirmed it had made the decision after weeks of internal review, citing cultural sensitivity concerns in the wake of the Bondi terror attack. Despite support from SA Premier Peter Malinauskas, the decision has prompted a furore of criticism from the arts sector. By the time of Ms Adler’s resignation, about 180 writers and commentators – including former New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern, writers Helen Garner, Zadie Smith, Trent Dalton, Peter Greste, Hannah Kent and Evelyn Araluen – had withdrawn from the event in protest. Ms Adler said the board’s reference to community cohesion in its justification should be “treated with scepticism”. “This is a managerialist term intended to stop thinking. Who, after all, would argue in favour of social division? Presumably only a terrorist or a nihilist,” she wrote. “The raison d’être of art and literature is to disrupt the status quo: and one doesn’t have to be a student of history to know that art in the service of ‘social cohesion’ is propaganda.” She claimed the board had succumbed to an “atmosphere of intense political pressure”, and that her resignation came after concluding that she could not “be party to silencing writers”. The controversy surrounding Dr Abdel-Fattah includes a number of past comments which critics have labelled anti-Semitic, a claim the lawyer-academic has vociferously denied. “I stand for the rights of all people. I stand for the principle that we are all equal, I stand for the rights of Jews, Palestinians, Muslims, everybody of every racial and religious group to live in,” she told the ABC on Tuesday. She also defended her previous claim that Zionists had “no claim or right to cultural safety”, a phrase that has been widely circulated in the media. “I have never, ever called for Jews to be unsafe,” she said, before later adding: “Zionism is not a racial or religious identity, it is a political ideology.” “It is as absurd as saying that communists have the right to cultural safety or Islamism or white supremacy or misogyny. “I’m talking about the espousing of Zionist ideology. I have sat in rooms where people have said that ethnic cleansing of Palestinians is justified. “I am entitled to say there should be no space for people to call for genocide.” Her comments refer to allegations brought by a number of humanitarian organisations, genocide scholars and an independent UN inquiry that have accused Israel of committing genocide in the Gaza Strip. Israel has rejected these accusations, including when a case was brought by South Africa at the International Court of Justice. Dr Abdel-Fattah’s removal from AWW follows a lengthy investigation into her academic work. Last month, she was cleared of any wrongdoing after a 10-month probe into her research at Macquarie University. The investigation was triggered in February 2025 after Federal Education Minister Jason Clare asked the Australian Research Council to examine her spending and any potential conflicts of interest. An $870,000 council grant awarded in 2022 for research into Arab and Muslim-Australian social movements was suspended earlier in 2025 and reinstated in December.