<
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2025/jul/22/harvard-educational-review-palestine-issue-cancelled>
"In March 2024, six months into Israel’s war in Gaza, education in the
territory was decimated. Schools were closed – most had been turned into
shelters – and all 12 of the strip’s universities were partially or fully
destroyed.
Against that backdrop, a prestigious American education journal decided to
dedicate a special issue to “education and Palestine”. The
Harvard Educational
Review (HER) put out a call for submissions, asking academics around the world
for ideas for articles grappling with the education of Palestinians, education
about Palestine and Palestinians, and related debates in schools and colleges
in the US.
“The field of education has an important role to play in supporting students,
educators, and policymakers in contextualizing what has been happening in Gaza
with histories and continuing impacts of occupation, genocide, and political
contestations,” the journal’s editors wrote in their call for abstracts.
A little more than a year later, the scale of destruction in Gaza was
exponentially larger. The special issue, which was slated to be published this
summer, was just about ready – contracts with most authors were finalized and
articles were edited. They covered topics from the annihilation of Gaza’s
schools to the challenges of teaching about Israel and Palestine in the US.
But on 9 June, the Harvard Education Publishing Group, the journal’s publisher,
abruptly canceled the release. In an email to the issue’s contributors, the
publisher cited “a number of complex issues”, shocking authors and editors
alike, the
Guardian has learned.
US universities have come under intensifying attacks from the Trump
administration over accusations of tolerating antisemitism on campuses. Many
have responded by restricting protest, punishing students and faculty outspoken
about Palestinian rights, and scrutinizing academic programs home to
scholarship about Palestine.
But the cancellation of an entire issue of an academic journal, which has not
been previously reported, is a remarkable new development in a mounting list of
examples of censorship of pro-Palestinian speech.
The
Guardian spoke with four scholars who had written for the issue, and one
of the journal’s editors. It also reviewed internal emails that capture how
enthusiasm about a special issue intended to promote “scholarly conversation on
education and Palestine amid repression, occupation, and genocide” was derailed
by fears of legal liability and devolved into recriminations about censorship,
integrity and what many scholars have come to refer to as the “Palestine
exception” to academic freedom."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
