Letter to the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture regarding its cancellation of a planned special journal issue on Palestine

Cathi Ho Schar
President, Board of Directors

Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture

president@acsa-arch.org, cathi@hawaii.edu

 

José L. S. Gámez

First Vice President, Board of Directors

Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture

vicepresident@aias.org, jlgamez@charlotte.edu

 

Michael J. Monti
Executive Director

Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture

mmonti@acsa-arch.org

 

Dear President Ho Schar, Vice President Gámez, and Executive Director Monti:

 

We write on behalf of the Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA) and its Committee on Academic Freedom to express our grave concern about the decision of the Board of Directors of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) to cancel a planned issue of the Journal of Architectural Education (JAE) focused on Palestine. We are equally disturbed by the board’s termination of JAE Interim Executive Editor McLain Clutter for protesting this decision. The board’s actions, apparently the result of pressure by political groups based outside of ACSA and the world of architectural education and publication, threaten free scholarly inquiry on a legitimate topic. As such, they are clear violations of the principles of academic freedom, a direct attack on teaching and learning, and a dangerous assault on the integrity and autonomy of JAE.

 

MESA was founded in 1966 to promote scholarship and teaching on the Middle East and North Africa. The preeminent organization in the field, the Association publishes the prestigious International Journal of Middle East Studies and has nearly 2,800 members worldwide. MESA is committed to ensuring academic freedom and freedom of expression both within the region and in connection with the study of the region in North America and outside of North America.

 

In March 2024, the JAE Editorial Board unanimously voted in favor of a Palestine-focused issue scheduled for the fall 2025 issue. The call for papers for the special issue, which was also unanimously approved, noted the “ongoing Israeli genocidal campaign against Palestinians in Gaza” and asserted that the situation “calls for urgent reflections on this historical moment’s implications for design, research, and education in architecture.” The call went on to “invite contributions that document the architectural and spatial tools that participate in or are complicit in imperial formations of settler-colonial apartheid and genocide.”

 

According to email correspondence between members of the JAE Editorial Board and ACSA’s Board of Directors, on 7 August 2024 the former submitted the call for papers for publication on the JAE website and circulation through its email list and social media channels – which are controlled by ACSA. When publication and circulation of the call was delayed, a meeting was held in September 2024 between representatives of the ACSA board and the JAE editors. This meeting included discussion of a list of questions and concerns submitted by the ACSA board taking issue with the “political framing and theoretical point of view” of the call, a clear intrusion on the prerogatives of the JAE Editorial Board. At least some of the concerns apparently were raised as a result of consultation by board members with individuals who were not board members; their identities and professions were not disclosed. In these meetings and related correspondence, members of the JAE Editorial Board conveyed to the ACSA Board that they saw it as having intervened in ways that undermined the academic freedom and editorial procedures of JAE and thus as having violated ACSA’s ethical standards. On 18 September 2024, the ACSA Executive Committee communicated to the JAE Editorial Board that it would not take any action on the call for papers and recommitted itself to the editorial independence of the journal; it also apologized for its behavior and indicated its desire to repair the relationship between the ACSA Board and the JAE Editorial Board. The call for proposals was finally published on the JAE website on 19 September 2024, with a 21 January 2025 submission deadline, later extended to 3 February 2025.

 

Almost immediately after the call’s publication, ACSA Board and JAE Editorial Board members began receiving messages taking issue with the call and the fall 2025 issue’s focus on Palestine. Beginning on 15 January 2025 these scattered messages developed into what appears to have been an organized campaign to harass and intimidate JAE Editorial Board and ACSA Board members, accusing them of antisemitism, calling for the dismissal of the four theme editors and demanding the cancellation of the issue. The campaign appears to have been orchestrated by right-wing groups that have targeted individuals and institutions that platform scholarship critical of Israeli policies and supportive of Palestinian human rights. According to one JAE editor, over 2000 emails were received, though no more than a few dozen were from individuals who worked in the field of architecture or architectural education.

 

ACSA’s leadership ultimately capitulated to this campaign of harassment and intimidation in an unprincipled manner. According to media reports, the ACSA Board voted on 21 February 2025 to stop publication of the Palestine issue. Days later, ACSA President Cathi Ho Schar, incoming president José L. S. Gámez and Executive Director Mike Monti met with Interim Executive Editor Clutter and notified him of the decision. They invited Clutter to endorse their decision and work on a “replacement” issue to satisfy their contractual obligations with Taylor & Francis, the journal’s publisher. Clutter reportedly refused to implement the cancellation of the Palestine issue, noting that both the cancellation and the proposal for a replacement issue failed to follow JAE editorial processes and standards. On 28 February 2025, with no prior communication or discussion with the JAE Editorial Board, ACSA President Ho Schar informed Clutter in writing that he had been terminated as Interim Executive Editor. Later that day, ACSA announced publicly that it had decided to “halt the planned Fall 2025 issue” on Palestine.

 

In response to these decisions, the JAE Editorial Board sent a letter to the ACSA Board, dated 3 March 2025, condemning the board’s actions and outlining the damage they had done to the principles of academic freedom, the journal’s autonomy and the integrity of the ACSA as the flagship organization for architectural education – to say nothing of Clutter’s professional wellbeing. On 10 March 2025, not having received a satisfactory response from the ACSA board, the members of the JAE Editorial Board submitted their collective resignation, effective immediately.

 

The terms used in the JAE’s call for articles for its special issue on Palestine, including genocide, settler colonialism and apartheid, have for decades been widely deployed by scholars in disciplines across the social sciences and the humanities. In the interdisciplinary field of Palestinian Studies, which includes practitioners and researchers of architecture, scholars – including Israeli scholars – have used these terms, rigorously defined and applied, to study and elucidate a range of political and social issues, including the experiences of Palestinians living under Israeli rule. The call was therefore professionally and intellectually legitimate, and there is no evidence (or even a claim by the ACSA board) that there had been any deviation from established editorial processes in issuing the call for papers, planning the issue or processing the submissions. Moreover, the justifications advanced by the ACSA Board for cancelling the issue (including at the association’s March 2025 Annual Business Meeting) – among them personal threats, and legal and financial risks to the association – do not hold up under scrutiny. We emphasize that no such legal and financial concerns were communicated to the JAE Editorial Board, nor does there appear to have ever been any transparent and collaborative effort by the ACSA Board to navigate the changing political landscape while upholding a principled commitment to academic freedom and editorial independence.

 

Investigating complex and controversial issues in a scholarly manner, and educating professional communities about how to engage with them in the same manner, must be a critical dimension of research and pedagogy in architecture as in all of the disciplines and professions that are part of this country’s institutions of higher education. Capitulation to politically motivated groups seeking to suppress critical scholarly engagement with certain issues will only encourage such groups to become even more aggressive and embolden them to intensify and extend their attacks. 

 

We therefore call on the ACSA Board of Directors to immediately reinstate McLain Clutter as Interim Executive Editor of JAE and to reverse the decision to halt the publication of the Palestine issue. We further call on the ACSA Board to reconstitute the JAE Editorial Board as it was prior to the ACSA Board’s regrettable actions and to commission an independent examination of the ACSA Board’s decisions and decision-making processes. Finally, we call on it to recommit itself to the principles of academic freedom, editorial autonomy and due process.

 

We look forward to your response.

 

Sincerely,

 

Aslı Ü. Bâli 

MESA President

Professor, Yale Law School

 

Laurie A. Brand
Chair, Committee on Academic Freedom
Professor Emerita, University of Southern California