It was just a few weeks ago that The Scrapbook was goggling over new policies at Middlebury College regarding speakers appearing on the campus. Under the “Interim Procedures for Scheduling Events and Invited Speakers,” potentially controversial invitees have to be cleared by the school’s Threat Assessment and Management Team. If there is a “significant risk to the community” that the speaker will be met with violence, Middlebury will “consider canceling the event.”
The Heckler’s Veto is one thing, but this, as we noted at the time, is a Thug’s Veto. And it is no isolated phenomenon: The Thug’s Veto is now spreading through academia.
The most recent instance, in a nutshell: Last month a young associate professor of political science at Portland State University, Bruce Gilley, published an article, “The Case for Colonialism,” at an academic journal, Third World Quarterly. In it, he dared to suggest that maybe colonialism wasn’t all bad in all places. The sort of people who read Third World Quarterly were very much not amused.
There was outrage. There were denunciations. Some half the journal’s board resigned in protest. The article was subjected to withering criticism. Fair enough. But then came the death threats, not only against Gilley but against the editor of the magazine.
Third World Quarterly is one of many academic publications put out by publisher Taylor & Francis. The company issued a notice that Gilley’s article was being “withdrawn at the request of the academic journal editor, and in agreement with the author of the essay.” Was the withdrawal made for reasons of academic misconduct or malpractice? No, the notice made it clear that the paper had been accepted through the appropriate process of double-blind peer review and was otherwise “in line with the journal’s editorial policy.”
Taylor & Francis was blunt about the reason the article was withdrawn: The journal’s editor became the object of “serious and credible threats of personal violence.” The publisher caved and said so: “Taylor & Francis has a strong and supportive duty of care to all our academic editorial teams, and this is why we are withdrawing this essay.”
Thugs everywhere have to be inspired and encouraged by this development.
