http://www.kedem-auctions.com/en/auction-items/5699/PostersPosters
"Anti-Semitism is against the Revolution. The Anti-Semitist is our Enemy" – early reproduction of a Soviet poster of 1929.
Illustration in color by Alexander Tishler (1898-1980), presenting Russian figures with animals' heads, and the writing: "See, these are the animal-like who introduced anti-Semitism to the Tsardom of Russia. Here are all your enemies – the Tsar, the minister, the priest, the land-owner, the general, the gendarme, the policeman…all organizers of pogroms and the persecution of Jews". 68.5X49 cm. Good condition, Some damages to upper part and borders, professionally restored. Pasted to linen fabric for display and preservation.Hello Deena,
Thank you for your note. I was able to open the Registration doc as Shulamith sent it. No need to send it again. I was pleased to receive this document as it clarifies and reinforces everything I have been saying.
There are three key points I will raise and elaborate on in this letter that go to directly to the heart of the matter.
1) The first point has to do with the text you quoted from my email of October 14, 2010.
2) The second point goes to the Registration form itself…what is says, what it implies, how it is organized, when it was signed and what can reasonably be implied by its content, as well as what it does not say. You say that it “provides that you are required to obtain permission prior to publishing the materials. Thus you were so informed that permission is required…” I say that it says nothing of the kind.
3) The third point has to do with the second voice message you left on my cell phone on Tuesday, October 12, 2010. Though initially incomprehensible, when I installed a new battery I was able to retrieve this message and all the other ones still in my voice mailbox. I have transcribed it in toto and referenced the significant elements below. The entire transcript is available if you wish to have it.
I will go through each point in detail.
Excerpt from my email to you of October 12, 2010:
“However, I reiterate my point, made in my letter to you of yesterday, that the fact that I did not "receive the required permission from us to publish the posters" is a reflection of Yeshiva University's failure to raise the issue of its permission process prior to publication and not a reflection of my intention to avoid, violate or contest them.” (emphasis added)
Your response of October 15, 2010:
“The registration form you signed when you arrived at the Archives (a copy is attached) provides that you are required to obtain permission prior to publishing the materials. Thus you were so informed that permission is required and, as you agree, you did not receive this permission. Please remove the materials promptly from the website, and, if you’d like to request permission to re-post them, please contact me to discuss per my prior email.”
As to the first point…when I said that I had not received the “required permission” I meant, as I elaborated later in that same sentence, that I had no idea that there were additional, separate, distant and invisible steps in YU’s “permission process”. This is key. Bear in mind that we revisited the Registration form at the end of the photography session: after I informed you that I intended to publish the images: after I offered to show you what it would look like at the PPPA site: and after I informed you that the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry posters would soon be available to teachers, students and others via the PPPA site and my New Curriculum Project. I even offered to show you the existing “scaffolding site”—the very place at the site, already titled and waiting—where the SSSJ posters would be posted. We discussed my thesis project for more than ten minutes. During that time you carefully wrote down the PPPA’s url and said you would view it later.
Given this chronology how would I, or anyone not intimately knowledgeable about YU’s internal, esoteric archival operations, have known that YU had additional steps in its “permission process”? Why would anyone think that the Registration form (the content of which I address in the next section), filled out and signed in the presence of a librarian coupled with an extensive verbal discussion of my intention to publish as well as the provision of the relevant url did not completely satisfy YU’s requirements relative to “permissions”?
I left YU believing, and I believe to this moment, that I was utterly forthcoming, transparent and ethical in all my actions. I provided YU with as complete a picture of my intentions as I believe is humanly possible. Given that this research is related to my thesis I tend to over-inform rather than under-inform. I believe I did so in this instance as well.
In summation of this point I hold that the disagreement stemming from my publication of the 64 SSSJ posters is directly and exclusively the product of Yeshiva University’s failure to make its permission process either apparent or accessible, at any point prior to publication. Had YU done so we would not be having this exchange.
As to the second point…the way the Registration document is written it reads, and I read it as such, to be GRANTING, three forms of access:
Permission to Evaluate - YU granted me this privilege by allowing me to examine the posters (email available). The second sentence in this section “It does not include permission to reproduce or publish the material consulted by the reader” is nullified by the first sentence of the “Permission to publish” section: “Permission to publish all or any part of the materials must be obtained from the librarian.” The form itself, as I interpreted it, WAS the permission form and it was obtained from you, the librarian. There is no mention of additional documentation/permissions required for publication. Indeed, having granted me two of the permissions listed—to examine and to photograph—by what logic would I have assumed that I had not concomitantly been granted permission to publish?
Permission to Publish – It was my assumption that upon signing the Registration form after having explained my publication plans to you that I had been granted permission to publish. You said nothing at the time regarding additional, separate steps in the permission “process”. A simple step towards obviating the species of disagreement we are having would be for YU to either have the Librarian cross out this section prior to the researcher signing (thereby making it clear that permission was not being granted) OR adding text to the effect that the Registration form was not part of the permission process and that that the complete “process process” must be engaged elsewhere via additional documentation and distant offices. As written, the Registration form appears to be misleading, incomplete and poorly written.
Permission for Photographic or Other Reproduction – YU granted me this privilege in writing (email available)
In summation of this point I hold that by listing three forms of permission on the Registration form without any clarifying text as to YU’s additional and distant “permission process” YU has created the impression that it is granting these rights, not restricting them. Furthermore, since there is absolutely no mention of a distant, additional permission “process” anywhere on the Registration form reasonable people cannot be expected to divine that one exists. It is the responsibility of any archives to proactively ensure that the research community understands its processes. It is not the responsibility of the research community to guess at or infer their existence.
As to the third point…the message you left on my cell phone on Tuesday, October 12, 2010:
“I have to tell you was pretty surprised to see our posters on the web since we had never kind of talked about publishing them…”
This is counterfactual. I discussed my plans to publish the SSSJ posters at the PPPA web site with you at length and in detail in the room where the posters are stored. In response you asked for and wrote down the PPPA’s url and said you planned to review it and get back to me. In the event, I did not hear from you. If no other action as listed in this letter had ever taken place this single transfer of information—my providing you with my thesis’ web address—established beyond the shadow of a doubt both my commitment to compliance with YU’s apparent processes while simultaneously creating for YU an opportunity to assert its “permission processes” even after I had finished my research en situ. If at any time prior to actual publication I had received word of the existence of YU’s secondary permission processes and its wish that I comply with them, the publication of the SSSJ posters at the PPPA site would not have occurred.
“I looked back at some of my notes and forms and really was under the impression you were doing thesis research on perestroika relations and really didn’t make the leap from there to things getting published on the web…”
I don’t see that any “leap” was necessary. All the information that YU asked for related to my thesis, research and intentions was provided. I left nothing out.
“We have all sorts of procedures for permissions and forms and evaluations in terms of addressing the various types of issues when people want to actually publish our things in either printed form or on the web…”
I take your word as a professional librarian that YU does indeed have “all sorts of procedures for permissions and forms and evaluations” relative to its “permission process”. However, as I have said several times in our exchanges, it is the responsibility of YU to render these procedures apparent. If YU had done that, if it had either informed me verbally of its more complex secondary permission processes or added text to the Registration form to that effect, we would not be having this exchange. If YU had at any time prior to publication made known to me that it had “all sorts of procedures for permissions and forms and evaluations” my commitment to ethical scholarship would have demanded of me that I submit to that process and abide by its particulars. At any time from April to October 2010 Yeshiva University could have proactively informed me of its processes, but it did not.
In light of the specifics of this matter I cannot acquiesce to your Dean’s order to unpublish the posters of the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry from the Palestine Poster Project Archives website.
Respectfully,
Dan Walsh
MAAS 2011