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Goldstein resigns in protest against SF caving to PT pressure

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Gary Goldstein resigned from the Shakespeare Fellowship board of directors and from the fellowship in protest against the board's decision to rescind their June 15, 2011 statement titled, "The Shakespeare Fellowship commends Roland Emmerich for directing the film,Anonymous, but stresses that this production's 'Prince Tudor' narratives are not essential to the theory that the Earl of Oxford was the writer 'Shakespeare'" 


Shakespeare Fellowship President Earl Showerman said yesterday about the board's action, "While a number of trustees still support the language on the posted statement, the board moved unanimously to withhold the statement on Anonymous and to remove it from the Fellowship website until a later date when members of the board have actually seen a preview of the film." 


In a letter submitted yesterday to Nina Green's Phaeton email list, Goldstein reported his objection to Showerman's characterization of the board action as unanimous, and announced that he had resigned from the SF board and organization.


Goldstein gave Oberon permission to publish his remarks:
One fact needs to be amended to that communication. I did not participate in the vote as a member of the SF Board in protest at the appeasement of the minority PT faction of the Fellowship, who demanded the Board immediately reconsider the motion, which was critical of the PT hypothesis. The president acquiesced to this demand and, furthermore, supported their other demand to have the statement retracted in its entirety.



The Board of Trustees took two months to debate a proposed statement on PT and the movie Anonmyous before voting to approve it in June; it also went through half-a-dozen revisions before being submitted to a Board vote. That statement has now been rescinded by all but one member of the Board (myself). For this reason, I am resigning as a member of the SF Board of Trustees and as a member of the Fellowship, effective immediately. I find the Board's abdication of their intellectual responsibility to both members of the Fellowship and the larger Oxfordian community to be reprehensible.


Update July 18, 2011:
Gary Goldstein will remain as managing editor of the Shakespeare Fellowship online journal, Brief Chronicles, through the current 2011 issue. Goldstein said, "I notified the Shakespeare Fellowship president that I will resign with the upcoming issue of Brief Chronicles; in turn, he asked me to reconsider. I informed him I will take the summer to do so."


Shakespeare Fellowship board members include: Earl Showerman, Alex McNeil, Ted Story, Tom Regnier, Sam Saunders, Bonner Cutting, Ian Haste, Pat Urqhart, Gary Goldstein (installed 2008, resigned July 2011)



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