Faculty members at the University of Minnesota are accusing university leaders of censorship after statements in support of Palestinians were removed from the websites of six U departments and centers.
The University of Minnesota Twin Cities chapter of the American Association of University Professors said the statements were “suddenly and forcibly removed” on Saturday night from the sites within the College of Liberal Arts.
The organization said statements were removed from the sites of the departments of American Indian Studies; American Studies; Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature; Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies; and Asian American Studies, as well as the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.
“This not only violates academic freedom but also incinerates First Amendment rights. The answer to disagreement is not censorship. The answer to disagreement is more speech,” said Michael Gallope, who served as the chair of the department of Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature when the department issued a statement on Israel’s war in Gaza in the fall of 2023.
Gallope said he believes U President Rebecca Cunningham singled out Israel’s war in Gaza as “off-limits” for public comment by university scholars.
The statement that had been posted to the website of Gallope’s department read, in part: “We stand on the principle of academic freedom to speak truth to power and to call for the declaration of an immediate ceasefire, a complete halt to illegal settlements, and an end to the siege.”
But that statement — and the five other statements cited by the professors’ organization — now appear to have been removed from their respective websites.
The university did not respond to a request for comment about the removal of those statements.
Faculty leaders said they learned about the decision to take down the statements from CLA Dean GerShun Avilez during a Zoom call on Saturday.
“It’s unclear why statements related to Palestine were removed while statements on other matters of public concern were not. The provost didn’t even have the courtesy to invite the affected departments to have a conversation first,” Aren Aizura, associate professor and chair of Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies, said in the American Association of University Professors press release.
In March, the university’s Board of Regents passed a controversial resolution prohibiting U colleges, centers, institutes and “other academic or non-academic units” from making statements on “matters of public concern or public interest.”
That resolution prohibited colleges, centers and other university units from sharing such statements through university channels. The resolution said it was not intended “to curtail the free expression of individuals within the University community, including faculty exercising academic freedom or other individuals expressing their views on matters of public concern or public interest.”
Gallope said he can’t understand the university’s reasoning for singling out the six statements on Israel, Palestinians and the war in Gaza, and removing them with little notice. He said the statements were attributed to individuals or groups of faculty, and accompanied by disclaimers stating they were not speaking for the university.
“Our expectation at a public university is that we do not engage in arbitrary and capricious censorship of faculty views on the website — instead that we develop a policy, as we have for any other matter, and a policy that can be understood and debated by shared governance, so we understand what the criteria are for public speech of matters of public concern,” Gallope said.
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