[Salon] Academic Freedom: How Universities Lost Their Way




    

Tuesday, August 5, 2025 Newsletter


A canceled issue of a Harvard scholarly journal illustrates the dangers of the Trump era.


by Jonathan Zimmerman


We’ve got this, say some colleges and universities. Yes, we’re cutting deals with Donald Trump’s administration. But we are also preserving our core value: academic freedom. We’ll be OK.


That’s what Columbia University declared last month, when it agreed to pay the administration $200 million for allegedly failing to protect students from antisemitic harassment. And it’s what Harvard said last week, when it canceled a journal’s special issue devoted to education in Palestine.


Don’t believe them. The Harvard episode is a textbook case of censorship, brought to you by those who proclaim fealty to academic freedom. And once we have turned our back on that principle, we won’t have any reason to exist.


Both Columbia and Harvard have adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism, which says that calling the state of Israel a “racist endeavor”—or comparing its behavior to Nazism—is antisemitic. So is “applying double standards by requiring of [Israel] a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation,” the IHRA says.


When Columbia announced its deal with the White House, critics asked whether scholars would remain free to speak their minds about Israel. At Harvard, the answer is no.


Witness the fate of the Harvard Educational Review, a scholarly journal of opinion and research in education, and its special issue, slated for publication this summer. According to its call for papers, the special issue sought essays that would advance “the scholarly conversation on education in Palestine amid repression, occupation, and genocide.”


As one might guess, submissions to the special issue were highly critical of Israel. One essay explored the “centrality of education in the struggle for Palestinian liberation.” Several articles examined Israeli “scholasticide” in Gaza, which refers to the systematic destruction of educational institutions by Israel’s armed forces. 


I’ve always been skeptical of the “scholasticide” charge that Israel is systematically seeking to destroy schools and universities. It ignores that Hamas has used schools as bases of military operations, inevitably making them bombing targets. The charge singles out Israel for wartime actions that many other nations have taken. 


That’s precisely why I was looking forward to reading the special issue: so I could encounter views different from mine. But now I can’t do that, at least not in the Harvard Educational Review.


After accepting several essays and submitting them to two rounds of edits, the Harvard Educational Review told authors that it had requested a “risk assessment” legal review from Harvard’s lawyers. And in June, the journal’s publisher said it was cancelling the entire issue. 


Last week, after the first reports of the incident surfaced, a spokesperson for the Harvard Graduate School of Education—where the journal is housed—said the decision was made because of “an overall lack of internal alignment” and “an inadequate editorial review process.” And the Review’s executive editor insisted that the cancellation was not “due to censorship of a particular viewpoint nor does it connect to academic freedom.”


If you believe that, I’ve got a $500 million bridge to sell you. That’s the amount that Harvard is reportedly considering paying to end its dispute with the Trump administration, which has charged that Harvard—like Columbia–failed to address antisemitism.


I’ve been a college professor since 1992, and I’ve never heard of an entire issue of a scholarly journal getting canceled. Now and again, an article is withdrawn or retracted because of plagiarism or inaccuracies. But a whole volume is unprecedented.


To imagine that this once-in-a-lifetime call had nothing to do with the essays’ “particular viewpoint” is absurd. Indeed, it’s almost as dishonest as Trump, who talks rot about “radical lunatics” and “Marxists” on our campuses. We cave to his whims, turning our backs on academic freedom, and then we say we upheld it. Problem solved.


We don’t know what the Harvard lawyers’ “risk assessment” found, because they’re not talking, and the Review has chosen not to release it, as is their right. But as one editor admitted, the Review feared the special issue would provoke charges of antisemitism, which, they said, is too big a risk in today’s climate.


But there’s a bigger risk to American universities’ broader role and purpose. For the past century, we have insisted that academic freedom is our “north star,” as Columbia acting president Claire Shipman eloquently wrote last month. But as the Harvard episode demonstrates, we have lost our way.


“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,” one of the contributors to the cancelled Harvard Educational Review issue said. “What’s the point?”


That’s the real question we need to be asking. Look, I do worry that some criticism of Israel veers into antisemitism. But an academic journal should be free to publish whatever it wants. And if I think it’s biased or bigoted, I should also be free to say that. That’s how we advance knowledge: by writing, debating, and arguing.


But there’s no argument for the university once we let politicians determine what we can argue. This isn’t about Israel, or antisemitism, or Harvard. It’s about whether we regain our north star or descend into darkness.


Jonathan Zimmerman teaches education and history at the University of Pennsylvania and serves on the advisory board of the Albert Lepage Center for History in the Public Interest.




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