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The International Freedom Center (IFC) was a proposed museum to be located adjacent to the site of Ground Zero at the former World Trade Center in New York City, USA. It was selected in 2004 to comprise a "cultural space" near to the memorial for victims of the September 11 attacks, called Reflecting Absence. However, opponents reacted against the IFC's mission, saying that plans to promote international freedom through exhibits and displays about various genocides and crimes against humanity through history, including genocide of Native American and the slave trade in the United States, were inappropriate at a site that many people consider to be sacred. On September 28, 2005, New York Governor George E. Pataki barred the IFC from the World Trade Center site." George Soros, Tom Bernstein, Anthony Romero, and Eric Foner were promoters of the IFC. Within an hour of being barred from the WTC site, the IFC museum declared itself to be out of business, making no effort to find a new location. "We do not believe there is a viable alternative place for the I.F.C. at the World Trade Center site," said the statement from the center's executives, Tom Bernstein, Peter Kunhardt and Richard Tofel. "We consider our work, therefore, to have been brought to an end."〔 ==Complaints and defense== The IFC proposal had received complaints from some families of September 11 victims. In August 2005, officials stated that the Center would have been required to respond to objections raised by victims' families before it was approved to go forward. Many relatives of 9/11 victims had denounced the International Freedom Center plan as an insult to the 2,749 people who died at the WTC, because it would paint them as a little more than a footnote to the world's march toward freedom. The families, police, and firefighters said that the IFC's plan to use hallowed land at Ground Zero to highlight poverty as a barrier to freedom diminishes the events of 9/11. It has also been disparagingly compared to comedian and political commentator Bill Maher's suggestion immediately after 9/11 that reconstruction should include a "Why They Hate Us Pavilion." A non-profit organization called Take Back The Memorial was started by blogger Robert Shurbet and 9/11 family member Debra Burlingame, to block the International Freedom Center from being located on the WTC site.〔(Take Back The Memorial )〕 This group protested any linkage between what occurred on 9/11 with political activism〔 or with any previous historical event that could contextualize the attack. Jeff Jarvis, a journalist and 9/11 survivor, noted that the IFC's proponents stated they "will tangibly link September 11 and the lives of its victims to humanity’s greatest idea: freedom", but objected: The New York Times, in an editorial, criticized the protests against the IFC, arguing that the IFC's opponents had made trivial and unconvincing suggestions that both the IFC and the "cultural component" of architect Daniel Libeskind's plans would somehow diminish the scope of the Memorial Museum: "To argue over the size of these two spaces is to assume that emotional power is solely the result of square footage. It is also to forget the profound effect that going to the roots of the World Trade Center will have on most visitors." The ''Times'' concluded that beneath the superficial arguments and their irrational implications lay an even more disturbing motivation: But this is not really a campaign about money or space. It is a campaign about political purity—about how people remember 9/11 and about how we choose to read its aftermath, including the Iraq war. On their Web site...critics of the cultural plan at ground zero offer a resolution called Campaign America. It says that ground zero must contain no facilities "that house controversial debate, dialogue, artistic impressions, or exhibits referring to extraneous historical events." This, to us, sounds un-American.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「International Freedom Center」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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