The University of Georgia cancelled a guest lecture by an award-winning Liberian journalist over concerns of Ebola virus exposure, just days after Syracuse University similarly disinvited an esteemed photojournalist who had been working in Liberia.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported Sunday that the university cancelled a guest lecture by Wade C.L. Williams that was slated for Thursday out of an abundance of caution. Williams is an editor for Front Page Africa, a news website and newspaper based in Monrovia, and was Liberian Journalist of the Year in 2013.
“She was disappointed but greatly understanding,” the dean of the university’s journalism school, Charles N. Davis, said in a statement, as quoted by the Journal-Constitution. “We will have her here after the crisis is over. We are deeply dedicated and committed to learn from her perspective.”
Williams wrote in a blog post that the university told her that the appearance was dropped because parents and the general public were panicking about her visit, according to Front Page Africa. She wrote that she wasn’t angry at the school, but condemned the U.S. press for spreading misinformation and hysteria about the deadly virus.
“But the hysteria in the U.S. media about the virus and the possibility of it spreading is counterproductive and must stop,” she wrote, as quoted by Front Page Africa. “I worry that my fellow Liberians and Africans traveling abroad will be treated like pariahs and unfairly discriminated against as the region and word tries to battle this deadly virus.”
