March 4, 2025, 2:32pm
Image by Amal Al-Nakhala and Journal of Architectural Education
Earlier this week an influential academic publication on architecture, Journal of Architectural Education, or JAE, had its forthcoming fall issue on Palestine canceled by its publisher “without having read the content of the publication,” as reported in The Architect’s Newspaper. The decision to axe the issue was abrupt, arriving in the midst of editing — the papers to be published were in the midst of peer review. This incident is further indication that much of academia is opposed to free expression when it comes to Palestine, a trend that is putting them close to institutional capture by Trump’s storming authoritarianism and repression.
JAE‘s fall 2025 issue was envisioned as a response to Israel’s genocide, with “urgent reflections on this historical moment’s implications for design, research, and education in architecture” — the entire call for papers is no longer available on JAE’s website, but is archived here. But over a month after manuscripts were due, the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture, which oversees the Journal, voted to not publish the issue. They also fired JAE’s executive editor McLain Clutter, who refused to help edit a replacement issue and refused to endorse the Board’s decision.
ACSA executive director Michael Monti explained that their reasoning ultimately came down to fear of reprisals, harassment, and threats — ironically, exactly what academics who have stood up for Palestine have been experiencing for years, and long before the current genocide. Monti said that after “difficult discussions”:
[The] ACSA board decided the risks from publishing the issue have significantly increased as a result of new actions by the U.S. presidential administration as well as other actions at state levels. These substantial risks include personal threats to journal editors, authors, and reviewers, as well as to ACSA volunteers and staff. They also include legal and financial risks facing the organization overall.
A stirring defense of academia.
JAE has vowed to find a way to publish the Palestine issue’s work, in spite of the attempted censorship. One of the editors emailed contributors that the “board is committed to this issue and we are looking for alternative formats and venues to publish this work.”
For their part, the Palestine issue’s editors gave a statement to The Architect’s Newspaper, putting some context around the ACSA’s cowering behind the excuse of Trump:
We are dismayed by the decision, but not surprised given the increasing repression and censorship of all content on Palestine in the US and Europe. The ACSA’s statement is presented as a preemptive consideration and care for members of the JAE and members of its own board in the face of political repression by the Trump administration. But in reality, given the ACSA leadership’s attempts at censorship since before the call for papers was published in September 2024, it is clear that they are using the “new actions by the U.S. presidential administration” as a convenient cover to execute what they had been planning to do all along. The ACSA is cancelling the JAE Palestine issue without having read the content of the publication, which is currently under peer-review. Rather than capitulating to external political pressure, the ACSA should be protecting the JAE editorial board, and the academic freedom of the theme editors and of the journal’s contributors. The ACSA board has the responsibility to uphold the very values it claims to represent.
I had hoped that academic institutions might be more resistant to institutional capture, but it seems they’re more than willing to bow to threats, especially if it dovetails with their pre-existing biases against speech and action that is pro-Palestinian.
It doesn’t take a Nostradamus to see that decisions like these will end up firmly on the wrong side of history, especially when they are functionally indistinguishable from the desires of Trump and his hordes of subservient hog-men. Just this morning Trump popped off on Truth Social, issuing one of his king-like decrees demanding that colleges will no longer receive funding if they allow protests, that campus “agitators” will be imprisoned, and that protesting students will be expelled. These commands are nothing more than posts, with no legal or governmental authority. But a dictate’s lack of institutional power doesn’t blunt its success when it is able to bolster the permission structures that allow others to excuse their own crackdowns and repression.
The student activism in support of Palestine that we’ve seen over the last few years has been inspiring and brave. The backlash to it has been predictably vicious, and across college campuses, students are being retaliated against and expelled. Students are pushing back, like at Barnard last week, but the anti-Palestine repression has been a longstanding priority on campuses.
You might not care about architectural education, but the self-muzzling of expression reaching all corners of American life, from newspapers to kids cartoons, is something we all should worry about. I hope someday we get to read the essays from JAE’s fall issue, and I hope someday we see more widespread academic bravery in the face of state repression, apartheid, and genocide. And of course, I hope someday we see a free Palestine.
