Do Academic Announcements Need to Be Truthful?

My earlier post on the censoring of Leila Khaled, with a few updates, has been posted on the AAUP’s Academe Blog. In that essay, as readers may recall, I objected strongly to the canceling of Khaled’s webinars by Zoom and other tech companies. I also observed that the sponsors of the program had been disingenuous in their descriptions of Khaled as a “Palestinian activist” or something equally anodyne, while omitting her background as a two-time airplane hijacker and current PFLP operative. My point was that respect for academic freedom requires a reciprocal commitment to honesty and candor by academics. I did not expect that latter point to be controversial, but that was before I read the comments on the Academe Blog.

Professor Heike Schotten, a political scientist at UMass Boston, defended the elided description of Khaled in SFSU’s promotional materials, writing “the original SFSU webinar was not lying or being dishonest in describing Khaled as a “Palestinian militant, feminist, and leader,” but rather making an argument as to who she is and how she is best described.”

As I responded on the Academe Blog, Professor Schotten had unintentionally proven my point. If the promotional materials were intended as an argument, it was a stealth argument indeed, and one that deceptively omitted the most salient facts about Khaled. I have no quarrel with presenting advocacy on Khaled’s behalf, including the argument, clearly identified, that airplane hijacking, and other PFLP attacks over the past 40 years, ought to be considered militancy or activism.

But omitting the facts about Khaled is precisely the sort of misleading practice that must end if we are to expect businesses like Zoom to respect academic freedom. Describing Leila Khaled as only a “Palestinian militant, feminist, and leader” is a bit like describing Stephen Miller only as an “immigration reformer,” or David Duke as a “vigorous critic of international banking,” and rationalizing that as argument.

Mind you, I was not calling for screening or prior restraint, or any sort of ex post consequences for deceptive announcements. I have not argued that Khaled should be described as a “terrorist” in webinar announcements, given the disputed meaning of that term, but rather as a hijacker and PFLP operative, which would be an accurate statement of historic fact. Thus, I was simply making a normative claim that webinar announcements should accurately describe the speakers, which allows students to make an informed decision about attending.

I did not think there would be any controversy about enabling students to make an informed choice about listening to extra-curricular speakers, but that was before I read John K. Wilson’s comment. Wilson – an editor of the Academe Blog and recently a fellow at the University of California National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement – wrote that “When it comes to descriptions of events, the organizers decide. End of Story. Nobody is ‘entitled’ to a description they prefer. Accuracy is only an aspiration.”

Wilson is a well-known advocate of nearly absolute academic freedom, but it is hard to take his comment seriously. My blog post did nothing more than criticize Khaled’s SFSU sponsors, noting that a lack of academic candor can have consequences in the outside world. Wilson’s response verged on a schoolyard taunt: “They can say whatever they want, and you can’t stop them.” Well, sure. That is descriptively true – nor would I ever try to suppress campus speech – but it expresses a distorted value in which speech is decoupled from any sense of responsibility.

Academic freedom does not exist in a void, in which educators are miraculously gifted with a warrant to speak however they wish by mere virtue of association with a university. Rather, academic freedom rests on the crucial assumption that teachers and scholars will sincerely endeavor to discover and tell the truth, to the best of their ability. I believe that is a bedrock responsibility. The whole point of academic freedom is that scholars should be able to exercise that responsibility without fear of retaliation. Unless the commitment is taken seriously, academic freedom makes little sense.   

I called on Khaled’s sponsors to be transparent, and nothing more. Other organizations, including the National Coalition against Censorship and the Center for Free Expression, had no trouble describing Khaled accurately, while still defending, as I did, the right to present her at a university-based webinar.

Schotten and Wilson have a different and impoverished view, in which stealth arguments may conceal undisputed facts and university students are not even entitled to expect truthful descriptions from their own instructors. And then they wonder why for-profit companies do not share their absolutist approach to academic freedom.

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[LawProf John Banzhaf]

HOW I SAW IT AND REPORTED IT

Zoom Censoring University Meetings, and Scholars Can’t Even Discuss It;
Policy – in U.S., Not Just in China – Condemned by Major Academic Bodies

Zoom is apparently going beyond what other tech giants are accused of - censoring news and comments which they find objectionable - by not permitting campus scholars and academic organizations to hold meetings on some topics the company is concerned about, even including meetings to discuss such censorship.

Zoom reportedly cancelled a meeting about Palestine organized by San Francisco State University, and then cancelled two meetings that were then called about the cancellation, organized by University of Hawaii and NYU.

In other words, argues one professor, we cannot even discuss Zoom's censorship policies on Zoom. The AAUP chapter at NYU wryly noted that it is “an act of sick comedy to censor an event about censorship.”

This form of censorship is especially disturbing now when so many academic conferences, symposiums, and other important meetings must be held on line, rather than in person as in the past.

Indeed, many if not most college classes are now being taught on Zoom, so cancellation of events based upon what is planned to be discussed can have a devastating effect on free speech and academic freedom.

Scholars and their organizations - for example, the Association for Asian Studies, the Middle East Studies Association, Council of University of California Faculty Association, and the National Coalition Against Censorship - have all protested bitterly.
[https://bit.ly/361AZN6]