NEW YORK — The student editors of the Columbia Law Review say they were pressured by the magazine’s board of directors to suspend publication of an academic article written by a Palestinian human rights lawyer who accuses Israel of committing genocide in Gaza and advocating a regime of apartheid.
When the editors refused the request and published the article on Monday morning, the board – made up of Columbia University law school professors and alumni – shut down the law magazine’s website entirely. It remained offline as of Tuesday evening, with a static homepage informing visitors that the domain “is undergoing maintenance.”
The episode in one of the country’s oldest and most prestigious law journals marks the latest flashpoint in an ongoing debate over academic discourse that has deeply divided students, staff and university administrators since the start of the Israel-Hamas war.
Several editors at the Columbia Law Review described the board’s intervention as an unprecedented violation of the editorial independence of the journal, which is run by Columbia Law School students. The board of directors oversees the nonprofit’s finances but has historically played no role in selecting parts.
See more information: My Columbia Writing Students Must Be Able to Tell the Truth
In a letter sent to student editors on Tuesday and shared with The Associated Press, the board of trustees said it was concerned that the article, titled “Nakba as a Legal Concept,” had not gone through “the usual review or review processes.” selection of articles”. in the Law Review and, in particular, that several student editors were unaware of its existence.”
“In order to preserve the status quo and provide student editors some window of opportunity to review the article, as well as allow time for Legal Review to determine how to proceed, we have temporarily suspended the site,” the letter continued.
Those involved in soliciting and editing the article said they followed a rigorous review process, although they acknowledged that they took steps to avoid expected backlash by limiting the number of students aware of the article.
In the article, Harvard doctoral candidate Rabea Eghbariah accuses Israel of a litany of “crimes against humanity,” arguing for a new legal framework to “encapsulate the ongoing structure of subjugation in Palestine and derive a legal formulation of the Palestinian condition.” ”
Eghbariah said in a text message that the suspension of the law magazine’s website should be seen as “a microcosm of a broader authoritarian crackdown taking place on U.S. campuses.”
The editors said they voted overwhelmingly in December to commission an article on Palestinian legal issues, then formed a smaller committee — open to the publication’s entire editorial leadership — that ultimately accepted Eghbariah’s article. He had submitted an earlier version of the article to the Harvard Law Review, which the publication later chose not to publish amid internal backlash, according to a report. report on The Intercept.
Anticipating similar controversy and concerned about a leak of the draft, the committee of editors who worked on the article did not upload it to a server that would be visible to the law journal’s wider audience and some administrators. The article was not shared until Sunday with the entire Columbia Law Review staff — something the editorial team said was not unusual.
“We never distribute a specific article in advance,” said Sohum Pal, articles editor at the publication. “So the idea that this is all a process concern is a total lie. It’s content-based in a very transparent way.”
In the letter to students, the board of trustees said student editors who did not work on the article should have had the opportunity to read it and raise concerns.
“Whatever your opinion of this article, it will clearly be controversial and will potentially have an impact on everyone associated with the Review,” they wrote.
Those involved in publishing the article said they heard from a small group of students over the weekend who expressed concerns about threats to their careers and safety if the article were published.
Some alluded to trucks that circled Columbia and other campuses following the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, labeling students as anti-Semitic for their past or current affiliation with groups seen as hostile to Israel.
The board’s letter also suggested that a statement be attached to the article stating that the article had not been subject to a standard review process or made available for all student editors to read in advance.
Erika Lopez, an editor who worked on the article, said many students strongly opposed the idea, calling it “completely false to suggest we didn’t follow the standard process.”
She said the student editors have spoken regularly since they began receiving pushback from the board on Sunday and have remained firmly in support of the article.
When they learned the site had been shut down on Monday morning, they quickly sent Eghbariah’s article to a publicly accessible website. It has since spread widely across social media.
“It’s really ironic that this article probably got more attention than anything we normally publish,” Lopez added, “even after they destroyed the site.”
This story originally appeared on Time.com read the full story
