‘Censorship’: over 115 scholars condemn cancellation of Harvard journal issue on Palestine

More than 115 education scholars have condemned the cancellation of an entire issue of an academic journal dedicated to Palestine by a Harvard University publisher as “censorship”.

In an open letter published on Thursday, the scholars denounced the abrupt scrapping of a special issue of the Harvard Educational Review – which was first revealed by the Guardian in July – as an “attempt to silence the academic examination of the genocide, starvation and dehumanisation of Palestinian people by the state of Israel and its allies.”

The writers note that the issue’s censorship is also an example of “anti-Palestinian discrimination, obstructing the dissemination of knowledge on Palestine at the height of the genocide in Gaza”.

The special issue of the prestigious education journal was planned six months into Israel’s war in Gaza to tackle questions about the education of Palestinians, education about Palestine and Palestinians, and related debates in schools and colleges in the US, as the Guardian previously reported.

“The field of education has an important role to play in supporting students, educators, and policymakers in contextualizing what has been happening in Gaza,” the journal’s editors wrote in their call for abstracts – which came against the backdrop of the devastation of Gaza’s educational infrastructure, including the shuttering of hundreds of schools and destruction of all of the territory’s universities.

More than a year later, the special issue was just about ready – all articles had been edited, contracts with most authors had been finalized, and the issue had been advertised at academic conferences and on the back cover of the previous one. But late in the process, the Harvard Education Publishing Group, a division of the Harvard Graduate School of Education which publishes the journal, demanded that all articles be submitted to a “risk assessment” review by Harvard’s general counsel – an unprecedented demand.

When the authors protested, the publisher responded by abruptly cancelling the issue altogether. In an email obtained by the Guardian, the group’s executive director, Jessica Fiorillo, cited what she described as an inadequate review process and the need for “considerable copy editing” as well as a “lack of internal alignment” about the special issue. She said that the decision was not “due to censorship of a particular viewpoint nor does it connect to matters of academic freedom”.

The authors and editors flatly rejected that characterization, telling the Guardian that the cancellation set a dangerous precedent and was an example of what many scholars have come to refer to as the “Palestine exception” to academic freedom.

“The decision by HEPG to abandon their own institutional mission – as well as the responsibilities that their world-leading stature demands – is scholasticide in action,” the dozens of scholars who signed the recent letter also wrote, using a term coined by Palestinian scholars to describe Israel’s “deliberate and systematic destruction” of Palestine’s educational system.

“It is unconscionable that HEPG have chosen to publicly frame their cancellation of the special issue as a matter of academic quality, while omitting key publicly-reported facts that point to censorship.”

Arathi Sriprakash, a professor of sociology and education at the University of Oxford and one of the letter’s signatories, told the Guardian that the special issue’s cancellation has mobilised so many education scholars “precisely because we recognise the grave consequences of such threats to academic freedom and academic integrity”.

“The ongoing genocidal violence in Gaza has involved the physical destruction of the entire higher education system there, and now in many education institutions around the world there are active attempts to shut down learning about what’s happening altogether. As educationalists, we have to remain steadfast in our commitment to the pursuit of knowledge and learning without fear or threat.”

‘Assault on academic freedom’

The ordeal around the special Palestine issue played out against the backdrop of the Trump administration’s crackdown on US higher education institutions’ autonomy on the basis of combating alleged antisemitism on campuses.

Harvard is the only university that has sued the administration in response to it cutting billions of dollars in federal funds and other punishing measures it has unleashed on universities. But internally, Harvard has pre-empted many of the administration’s demands, including by demoting scholars, scrapping initiatives giving space to Palestinian narratives and adopting a controversial definition of antisemitism that critics say is antithetical to academic inquiry.

In conversations with the Harvard Educational Review editors, the journal’s publisher acknowledged that it was seeking legal review of the articles out of fears that their publication would prompt antisemitism claims, an editor at the journal said.

Harvard is reportedly close to finalizing a settlement with the Trump administration along the lines of those reached by other top universities.

Thea Abu El-Haj, a Palestinian-American anthropologist of education at Barnard College and one of 21 contributors to the cancelled special issue, criticized the university’s handling of the matter as yet another sign of institutional capitulation.

“If the universities – or in this case a university press – are not willing to stand up for what is core to their mission, I don’t know what they’re doing,” she told the Guardian last month. “What’s the point?”

A spokesperson for the Harvard Graduate School of Education did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the latest letter but in an earlier statement to the Guardian wrote that the publisher “remains deeply committed to our robust editorial process”.

Last month, the free speech group PEN America also condemned the special issue’s cancellation as a “blatant assault on academic freedom”.

“Canceling an entire issue so close to publication is highly unusual, virtually unheard of,” Kristen Shahverdian, the program director for the group’s Campus Free Speech initiative, said in a statement.

“Silencing these scholarly voices robs academics, students, and the public of the opportunity to engage with their insights. It also sends a chilling message in the context of the Trump administration’s unrelenting pressure on Harvard University and mounting political interference in higher education, including efforts that target scholarship on Palestine.”