Brendan Ciarán Browne is an assistant professor of conflict resolution and a fellow at Trinity College Dublin. He has held academic and research positions at Queen’s University Belfast and Al-Quds University in Jerusalem.
In November last year, I received an invitation from the Department of Legal and Constitutional History at the University of Vienna to speak at an upcoming international symposium about my recently published book, Transitional (In)Justice & Enforcing the Peace on Palestine. The conference, "Transitional Justice and Globalization: Decentralizing Perspectives," promised to bring together leading scholars of transitional justice to debate and critique some of the major challenges facing this scholarly discipline as it continues to evolve. I accepted, submitted an abstract and bio, and set about making plans to attend in May.
Some four months later, on March 12, I received an email abruptly canceling that invitation. "This is to inform you that in my capacity as the project supervisor, I am hereby revoking your invitation to speak at the international symposium," the email stated. "The organising institution, the University of Vienna, and we as legal and historical scholars in Austria have a special responsibility to ensure a safe and respectful environment at a time when anti-Semitic hate crimes are on the rise," the email continued. "Due to statements made by you on social media, which have very recently come to my attention, we cannot give you the floor at our symposium."
Despite being fully aware of the current climate in the academic world in which even mild critics of Israeli policies are quickly branded as antisemitic and "pro-Hamas," leading to extensive self-censorship by scholars who fear backlash from their own institutions, the revocation email left me initially shocked, and momentarily bruised. My new book that I had been invited to speak about, which was nominated for the 2023 Middle East Monitor Palestine book award, is a critical examination of the deflating effect of transitional justice, when applied in a settler colonial context like Palestine. By challenging the liberal peacebuilding paradigm, it shows how "peace" for Palestinians has always been based on widespread concessions and most critically, an absence of any meaningful form of "justice."
Censorship is creeping through academic institutions in Europe over expressions of support for Palestine and legitimate critiques of Israel and Zionism, following familiar trends in the United States.
- Brendan Ciarán Browne
For over 14 years, amounting to my entire professional life as an academic, I have been traveling back and forth to the region, conducting research, establishing collaborative projects with Palestinian partners, and fostering internship opportunities for my students. I have a broad and diverse body of published scholarly work that focuses on a range of issues in Palestine, have written numerous op-eds on Palestine and been invited to speak about my work at a number of leading global academic institutions—none of which have ever done what the University of Vienna did last month.
Of course, all this pales into insignificance when you consider the realities of the ongoing horror being meted out against Palestinians in Gaza, still under Israeli bombardment and now facing a famine as Israel continues to block the flow of humanitarian aid (and has now killed international aid workers distributing food in targeted airstrikes). For Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem, settler violence, home demolitions and Israeli military raids are their daily reality. In addition, when it comes to censorship and the suppression of dissent, the academic world is littered with examples of scholars who have experienced much worse than I have, including many brave colleagues who have been suspended from work or who have lost their jobs for expressing their solidarity with Palestinians.
In my case, rather than allow the insinuations by the conference organizers at the University of Vienna, which included linking my name and character with antisemitic hate crimes, I decided to contact the remaining invitees directly. By emailing me privately, without informing others of my revocation, it seemed to me that the organizers hoped that I would quietly move along. But if I did that, I would have been engaging in academic self-censorship—problematic at the best of times, and impossible in the current moment with Palestinians in Gaza facing a plausible genocide by Israel, as the International Court of Justice ruled in its provisional order in January. So I decided to reclaim some of the agency that had been momentarily stripped away from me. I forwarded the email to the rest of the conference attendees and chose to share details of the entire debacle publicly, taking to social media, the alleged source of the opprobrium after all.
Some of my fellow attendees chose to email the organizers asking for clarity around the alleged insinuations. Nothing was provided in writing by way of so-called "evidence," except a reply from the project supervisor referencing the decision reached as being "complex." An offer was made to discuss that decision with anyone who was concerned, privately and on a Zoom call. Or, in other words, the conference organizers at the University of Vienna decided to forgo the request to document, in writing, their rationale for revoking my invitation.
I was not included in any of the emails that the "project supervisor" sent to the rest of the attendees—yet further evidence, it seemed to me, of an attempt to drive a wedge between myself and the other participants. My personal character and professional reputation were again being tarnished. Behind my back, the same people who had disinvited me from the conference were telling other conference participants that I, a scholar of transitional justice, wasn't a suitable panel member at a symposium on transitional justice.
Although I know none of the other participants personally, I am grateful to the few who requested further information, and who subsequently refused to engage in the charade of a Zoom conversation with the "project supervisor" who was hoping to justify their censorship. I am also grateful to the one panel member who contacted me privately to say he would no longer be attending the symposium, demonstrating very clearly that solidarity is an action and not simply a set of concerned emails.
Attempts to intimidate both professors and students, or silence them outright, are becoming normalized in a blatant attack on the values that underpin academic freedom.
- Brendan Ciarán Browne
What happened next? On March 24, some 12 days after I received that revocation letter, the entire symposium was canceled. In its place, the organizers proposed an alternative event, a half-day online symposium on the topic of—irony be damned—"freedom of speech."
It is one thing to read and know about the "Palestine exception to free speech," and quite another when you are the one being censored and smeared with the false charge of antisemitism. This is not an exercise in faux pearl-clutching outrage; far from it. Censorship is creeping through academic institutions in Europe over expressions of support for Palestine and legitimate critiques of Israel and Zionism, following familiar trends in the United States. Attempts to intimidate both professors and students, or silence them outright, are becoming normalized in a blatant attack on the values that underpin academic freedom. This goes well beyond the question of Palestine and Israel to the fundamental ability of a university to foster free inquiry and debate. As Nadia Abu El-Haj, a professor at Barnard College and Columbia University, has warned, "Campaigns to crack down on speech on campuses—and beyond—will not end with this particular witch hunt."
As scholars, we must remain vigilant and poised to push back publicly against attempts to silence or censor us over our speech on Palestine. We must also avoid self-censorship for fear of rebuke or wider ostracization. If we are truly committed to freedom of speech, we must show solidarity with colleagues who are censored or face retaliation (whether from their own institution or outside of it) for having the audacity to speak on behalf of all those Palestinian voices that are literally being erased. If we don't, our work in the academy will become simply that: "academic" in the worst sense.
