ATypI 2026 Sharjah – who is going?

jfporchez

I have read the statement made by ATypI board https://atypi.org/2026/11/03/statement-from-the-board-of-directors-of-atypi/

The response of the ATypI is already a Ukrainian victory. 🇺🇦
Because the pressure exerted for months by Oleksandra Korchevska-Tsekhosh, Kateryna Korolevtseva and many others will have produced a useful effect within the type community that far exceeds the case of the ATypI board alone. This board statement confirm the silence for nearly four months on serious, good-faith questions can be seen as indifference. The absence of public comment when Ukrainian colleagues withdrew suggested apathy, but nothing.

Starting with excuses was an important point; acknowledging that “Ukrainian colleagues withdrew from a conference they felt at home in” was a beginning. However, it’s worth remembering the ATypI Code of Conduct: “Association, its members and participants at our events are expected to help ensure a friendly and safe environment for everyone.”  To clarify, Ukrainian speakers cancelled their participation to ATypI 2026 Sharjah, UAE, because ATypI couldn’t guarantee what the association claims. This was a significant failure and I’m unconvinced by ATypI’s attempt to reverse the situation few months after to avoid to face the initial problem: When EU, USA and many others countries have sanctions against Russia, it is probably not a got idea to accept speaker from this country.

References

• Code of conduct https://atypi.org/about-atypi/rules-regulations/code-of-conduct/
• Bylaws of ATypI, a California Non-Profit Public Benefit Corporation https://atypi.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/ATypIBylaws_adopted091616.pdf
• Executive Order N-6-22, State of California, Gavin Newsom https://www.gov.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/3.4.22-Russia-Ukraine-Executive-Order.pdf
• Open letter to ATypI board, 7 September 2026 https://docs.google.com/document/d/1bekSD3Vb6VWGjr4SfuDMZY7ooXlPal7mkAevmRFtmhk/
• The West eyes the UAE in the crackdown on Russia https://frontierview.com/insights/the-west-eyes-the-uae-in-the-crackdown-on-russia/
• U.S., allies press UAE over Russia trade, sanctions https://www.reuters.com/world/us-allies-press-uae-over-russia-trade-sanctions-2024-05-01/

Simon Cozens

None of that excuses what we have described above; we say it only so you know you are talking to colleagues, not a faceless institution.

The Board of Directors, ATypI

Guys, guys.

Ramiro Espinoza

Beyond the concerns surrounding the ATypI board’s handling of several important issues (including its response to concerns raised by numerous members, its lack of visible solidarity with oppressed countries and communities, and the limited attention given to human rights as a criterion in selecting host locations) I believe there is another aspect worth addressing.

ATypI also provides a platform for promoting and legitimising companies whose business practices can be detrimental to independent type foundries and designers, particularly through abusive distribution agreements and confidential “enterprise licensing” schemes.

You might call me a dreamer, but I genuinely believe that the association should provide a space for discussing ways to address and mitigate these practices. ATypI has an opportunity to represent the interests of independent foundries more actively, rather than focusing predominantly on those of its main sponsors.

Chris Lozos

I understand that the organization needs sponsors, but they do not have to be dominating and controlling. If a sponsor or host entity tries to impose its will on the organization, they should be ignored.

Christine Bateup

I had posted the below on Mastodon earlier today under our Frere-Jones Type account. Republishing here at the request of John Hudson:

While I'm also glad to see a statement, it leaves me with many questions. I am a lawyer, though not in the UAE and certainly not a UAE law expert, so I start with that proviso. (This is also clearly not legal advice for ATypI, just my general observations.) In general, threats of litigation don't completely gag organizations from speaking. I am also very unclear about whether ATypI was actually facing the threat of legal action, or just worried about its potential, which I would treat differently. Saying they couldn't make public comment "on the merits of a live dispute" suggests an actual threat of litigation, but given some other language in the statement (which I'll discuss below), I'm very uncertain about this.

I understand ATypI has faced existential legal problems before and the fear that potential legal disputes can create. However, there is always a danger when obtaining legal advice of letting the risk tolerance level of counsel dictate how a board responds — a board still needs to make its own independent judgment of the best course in order to fulfill its fiduciary obligations to the organization. The language in this statement seems to suggest the Board deferred completely to counsel's advice, rather than used their own judgment, and they may be creating a different legal risk by framing their actions this way — even aside from the impression they create of hiding behind legal advice rather than taking full responsibility for their actions.

Regarding the potential legal risks they purportedly faced and the advice received, I also have many questions. To quote the statement, the Board says they contacted counsel to obtain written legal advice "[w]hen the request to remove the speaker was received on July 11". "That [legal] advice was clear: removing a speaker on the basis of professional work for institutions of their own country, or on the basis of comments by a colleague or business partner, would have carried a serious risk of unlawful discrimination under the law of the country hosting the conference, with consequences for the Association and for individual Board members."

This may not be the wisest information to reveal publicly, as by disclosing the substance of the legal advice they received, it may be that any privilege the Board had over that advice is now gone. But what is actually being said here? At first I thought the speaker in question may have threatened legal action if she were removed from the program. Perhaps she had a potential claim in some jurisdiction that she was discriminated against on the basis of national origin, or some tort claim based on such an allegation. Though if a decision were made to rescind her invitation, it would seem this would have been based on political views/affiliations rather than national origin, which is generally not protected under national anti-discrimination laws.

However, looking at the language quoted above and thinking more about the UAE (though again, I'm not an expert), the problem may have been that they feared potential criminal exposure under UAE's Federal Decree-Law No. 34, which is its key anti-discrimination law. This law is very different to anti-discrimination laws in liberal democracies, under which discrimination claims are mostly handled through civil claims. In the UAE, by contrast, enforcement is criminal, through imprisonment and fines. And while the UAE law has been framed by the UAE government as being about social cohesion, religious tolerance and countering extremism, human rights organizations have uniformly pointed out that this and similar UAE laws are instead tools of repression that severely limit freedom of expression and are used by the government to stamp out dissent. See, for example, https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/06/05/uae-sweeping-legal-reforms-deepen-repression and https://www.newarab.com/opinion/saudi-critic-uae-faces-prosecution-under-anti-discrimination-law

In combination with the UAE's apparent support for, and beneficial financial ties with, Russia despite its purported stance of "neutrality" on the Russian-Ukrainian war, perhaps ATypI did have something to fear about potential targeting by the UAE government if they rescinded their invitation to Korolkova. But if that is true, this raises even deeper questions than those posed by the Board's statement about whether it should host conferences in countries that severely repress political rights and civil liberties, and if they should have cancelled the conference or just taken it online if these were the risks they faced.

It is not enough to offhandedly say "We will always follow the laws of each locality in which we operate, and that is the standard that will apply to every participant, from every country, in every comparable case" without considering the deeper ethical and reputational risks that come from holding conferences in countries that suppress political speech and human rights more broadly. Especially if ATypI is then also using those laws as a shield to justify not standing with and supporting our Ukrainian colleagues.

In addition to reviewing their Code of Conduct and urgently reviewing their speaker agreements so they have the right to rescind speaker invitations if the speaker engages in any conduct that potentially damages ATypI's reputation or brings it into disrepute, I can't see how broader questions about where conferences should be held can be avoided.

Dave Crossland

I agree a foundational question is about where conferences should be held. What criteria ought to be used for such a list?