Every year, artisans and creatives gather to sell crafts and enjoy the holiday spirit at the West Holiday Craft Fest. Vendors displaying their handcrafted goods and families excitedly shopping for unique holiday gifts fill the Rotunda, a performing arts space utilized by community members and students.
However, last year on Dec. 10, 2024, four days before the Fest, an anonymous individual notified Rotunda manager Gina Renzi and Penn Human Resources of items that expressed support for violence against Jewish people—both explicitly or implicitly—and celebrated acts of terrorism. Although it’s primarily used for local arts events, the Rotunda falls under Penn’s ownership, giving them ultimate authority over these events. The Fest has been held there since 2010, with the Rotunda being an ideal location—at least until now.
In emails obtained by Street sent between the West Holiday Craft Fest organizers and vendors, the organizers specified that Penn stated that vendors’ products could not “depict, glorify, or incite violence of any kind whatsoever AND/OR are politically sensitive.” Otherwise, they would be required to cancel the event. In order to save the festival, the West Philadelphia Craft Fest organizaers, Emily Dorn and Wilder Scott–Straight initially required vendors to fill out a form confirming that they would not sell anything that violated the new regulations. They also negotiated with Penn to remove the second requirement banning any art of a politically sensitive nature.
Ultimately, Dorn and Scott–Straight decided to move the festival in order to prevent what seemed like unfair censorship of certain vendors. As a result, 88 vendors were unable to attend. This is the first time in over 20 years of operation that the Rotunda has had an event canceled for political reasons. In a statement published after the Fest's relocation, Dorn and Scott–Straight said, “This has always been a cherished annual event for us and so many others, for over a decade—though never again at any Penn property.”
A University spokesperson told Street, “We asked the organizers not to permit crafts extolling violence of any kind. Rather than complying with this request, the organizers decided to move the event to another location.”
As Dorn told Street, “What is art, if not political commentary?” Indeed, the censorship of art by Penn brings up numerous questions about what exactly is acceptable and how our short–tempered political climate reacts to what is arguably one of the most salient functions of art: commentary and critique.
The abrupt relocation of the West Craft Fest from the Penn Rotunda to Black Hound Clay Studio left many vendors in a precarious state, scrambling to adjust. The relocation was more than a minor inconvenience for vendors who now found themselves inundated with logistical shifts and external pressure. Because the Fest features a diversity of art ranging from intricate pottery to vivid glass sculptures, a significant portion of the vendors were hesitant to move their delicate artwork to an outside venue where it ran the risk of being damaged by strong winds or inclement weather. However, those who ultimately opted out of the Fest suffered devastating financial losses and were left feeling unsupported by the event’s organizers.
Identified as one of the two vendors specifically targeted by Penn’s censorship request, Raffi Marhaba believes that Penn’s mandate was extremely arbitrary and subjective. He points out that while he makes political art centered around Black Lives Matter, transgender rights, and queer activism, the only piece of artwork flagged by Penn as too politically sensitive was a wallet depicting four Palestinian freedom fighters—a piece he had previously sold in 2023, at another one of Dorn and Scott–Straight’s fest held in Woodlands.
The front of the wallet features Leila Khaled, a political activist who has emerged as a cultural symbol of Palestinian Liberation. As a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, she gained international notoriety in 1969 for becoming the first woman to hijack an airplane in an attempt to garner worldwide attention for the Palestinian cause. Marhaba’s wallet uses an image captured during the hijack, showing Khaled carrying an AK–47 while flashing a wide smile.
“You’re telling me that I can’t bring this item that I’ve sold at your festival before that in no way, shape, or form is anti–Jewish,” Marhaba says. “You’re not going to flag any of my other ‘political’ items depicting similar things like the Black Panther Party or other political fighters like Angela Davis and Assata Shakur who were deemed terrorists by this very government and this very country?”
The criteria by which Penn deems certain pieces as glorifying or depicting violence or being “politically sensitive” is extremely subjective, lending itself to institutional biases aimed at pro–Palestinian artists. It raises the question of whether a depiction of any person who has committed or sanctioned violent acts of any kind is deemed as glorifying violence or not. If that were the case, this would preclude nearly any controversial world leader from being depicted in art at all.
Despite the image’s controversial nature, Penn Graduate School of Education Professor Jonathan Zimmerman draws a legal distinction between a violent image versus an image that incites violence.
“The concept of inciting violence is a very important and distinct one in free speech law because what the law says under our constitution is that you can actually ban speech that is going to incite violence, but you have to be able to show an immediate and direct threat of it,” Zimmerman says. “You can’t just say, oh, I think that this might incite violence because, if that was your standard, you could just censor anything and that seems to be more or less what is happening here.”
Following Penn’s initial censorship request, there were critical gaps in transparency and communication between the Penn administration, the Fest’s organizers, and vendors. Scheduling a meeting with Dorn and Scott–Straight, Marhaba was the individual who initially pushed them to cancel the event. After he suggested to them that the vendors could mobilize and work together to help find another suitable venue, it was unclear whether or not they were planning to definitively cancel the event or succumb to institutional pressure from Penn; however, Marhaba shares how their public declaration on their instagram story later that week denouncing Penn was misleading given the ambivalent nature of their private meeting.
“When they decided that they were going to cancel, I was really happy about it, but then they made a wishy–washy post about it and framed it like they knew all along that this was the right move to do … but [during our conversation] she [said] ‘no, you’re not being targeted’ and I was like ‘no, no, this is literally the definition of a racist targeted attack. I want people to stop using the language of politically sensitive. This isn’t politically sensitive. This is a racist attack by someone saying that art that depicts Palestinian people is a threat to Jewish people.”
For many vendors, the Fest was a major source of their annual revenue. In preparation, artists plan their inventory months in advance with an expectation of high consumer turnout. Despite their meticulous planning, vendors were left blindsided by Penn’s sudden demand for artistic censorship just days before the event. Unable to attend the relocated festival, Marhaba reached out to the organizers asking if they would consider offering financial support or highlighting him and other blighted vendors on their Instagram page to assist them with online sales. However, after not hearing from them for a prolonged period of time, he drew the conclusion that “they clearly don’t care.”
“If I was running this thing, I would approach it from a holistic, trauma–informed, and sensitive way which is not what they’ve done at all,” Marhaba says. “A whole bunch of the vending community really came through for me, like folks highlighted me on their page and others gave me some money, but I didn’t want to get it from other vendors because we were kind of in the same boat. It’s just disappointing that it didn’t come from the top.”
Although both organizers eventually agreed to refund vendors, retain their listings online, and help circulate vendors’ Instagram posts across social media platforms, Marhaba still felt that organizers should have been more proactive in implementing a broader range of support services for vendors impacted by the fest’s relocation.
Despite the seemingly insurmountable setbacks confronting vendors at every turn, both the vendors and organizers were committed to continuing the festival in a space that embraced artistic freedom. Dorn and Scott-Straight eventually settled on the Black Hound Art Studio but emails obtained by Street sent between the Fest organizers and the vendors disclosed that the space was unable to “accommodate more than 25 vendors per day,” leading the organizers to select vendors on a first come first serve basis.
On a broader scale, Penn’s decision to distance themselves from politically engaged artists could set a dangerous precedent for future art markets and public gatherings on a broader scale. This is not the first time that Penn has weighed in on contentious arts events around campus. Last fall, former Penn President Liz Magill released a statement discussing the “troubling” nature of past rhetoric employed by some of the speakers slated to appear at the Palestine Writes Literature Festival. Faculty members were concerned because Penn seemed to be taking a political stance on an ongoing conflict at the expense of academic and artistic freedom.
“Who’s going to be the judge of that?” Zimmerman says. “Do you want some University administrator to be sitting in judgment about which art is politically sensitive and which isn’t?”
Throughout history, art has been employed as a powerful tool to galvanize social change and illuminate stories that have been historically neglected. Discussing the interplay between art and social progress, Marhaba shares his own experience using art as a way to shape discourse around Palestinian liberation and broader societal movements.
“I really believe in the role of art, as far as shaping culture and changing it, as being used as a powerful [way] to uplift voices and stories that would otherwise just be completely buried and potentially erased. I think it’s a powerful vehicle to get people to pay attention and to want to be invested in these causes,” Marhaba says.
The controversy surrounding the Fest underscores ongoing tensions between art, activism, and institutional censorship—a conversation that has become increasingly relevant in today’s political climate. Under the guise of ‘institutional neutrality’, Penn has continued to remove, relocate, and suppress works that challenge mainstream narratives surrounding Israeli military actions and Palestinian resistance.
However, universities' selective policing of political expression raises a fundamental contradiction: by silencing certain perspectives while allowing others, institutions are implicitly taking a stance—one that avoids alienating donors at the expense of artistic freedom.
Inequitable censorship policies not only suppress open expression but reinforce racial and political hierarchies. Art that critiques Israeli occupation tends to be labeled as "dangerous" and “politically sensitive,” leading to the erasure of artistic depictions of Palestinian grief and resistance. In this way, institutional censorship emerges as a tool for racial and political exclusion.
“Every great advocate for this thing called social justice was a free speech absolutist—Frederick Douglas, W.E.B Dubois, Eugene Debs, Jane Addams, right up to Martin Luther King,” Zimmerman says. “Why? Because they realized that in situations of inequality and injustice, the only way that you could change your situation was via speech … the idea of a university saying that something is too politically dangerous or sensitive to be displayed is deeply troubling and sets a precedent that I don’t think we want to set.”
The idea of institutional neutrality is a myth. Universities like Penn do not exist in a vacuum but are continually shaped by historical, financial, and political pressures that determine what speech is protected and which is suppressed. As student movements and artists continue to push back against these constraints, the question remains: who gets to decide what is too political and whose perspectives are deemed expendable for the sake of feigned neutrality?
