Editors of the Harvard Law Review, the world’s most cited legal journal, have been embroiled in internal strife following public backlash over their decision to block an article by a Palestinian legal scholar.
Updated: December 11, 2023, at 3:45 p.m.
Editors of the Harvard Law Review, the world’s most cited legal journal, have been embroiled in internal strife following public backlash over their decision to block an article by a Palestinian legal scholar.
The article, by human rights attorney Rabea Eghbariah, argued that Israel’s military response in Gaza to militant group Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack should be analyzed using a legal framework distinct from “genocide” called the Nakba, Arabic for “catastrophe.” The Law Review’s online chairs solicited the piece from Eghbariah, an HLS doctoral candidate, for publication in the organization’s blog.
In a Nov. 18 full-body meeting, 63 percent of the Law Review’s editors voted to kill the piece. On Nov. 21, it was published in the Nation and a separate piece on the subject was published in the Intercept, containing statements from several editors.
The institution has received considerable public backlash since the piece’s publication in the Nation. Roughly 125 law professors signed an open letter raising concerns about “censorship” at the Law Review, and more than 25 editors condemned the decision not to publish in a Nov. 22 public statement, citing academic freedom concerns.
“We are unaware of any other solicited piece that has been revoked by the Law Review in this way. This unprecedented decision threatens academic freedom and perpetuates the suppression of Palestinian voices,” the statement reads. “We dissent.”
The Law Review did not comment on specific criticisms for this article but referred The Crimson to a Nov. 21 statement on its website.
“The Harvard Law Review has rigorous editorial processes governing how it solicits, evaluates, and determines when and whether to publish a piece,” the organization wrote. “An intrinsic feature of these internal processes is the confidentiality of our 104 editors’ perspectives and deliberations.”
Since Nov. 21, The Crimson has spoken to or received statements from 19 Law Review editors, who were granted anonymity to discuss confidential internal editorial processes.
Some editors alleged that the online chairs had knowingly sidestepped the Law Review’s processes by not sharing the article pre-publication, while others said these allegations mischaracterized the truth as an attempt to lay blame on the online chairs following public backlash.
The online chairs — Sabrina A. Ochoa and Tascha Shahriari-Parsa — denied violating Law Review policies.
“It is greatly unfortunate that multiple editors of the Law Review would make these statements when a large amount of time and effort has been devoted over the past month to internally clarifying HLR Online processes to the 104-member body — clarifications that directly contravene the factual assertions made in these criticisms,” Ochoa wrote in a statement.
‘A Vote Not to Publish’
On Nov. 28, Eghbariah participated in a live reading of the piece hosted by the unaffiliated student organization Law Students for a Free Palestine. At the event, Eghbariah alleged he had received discriminatory treatment from the Law Review when they chose to block his piece.
“The decision by the HLR board is appalling and alarming, and the decision to subject me to an exceptional and unprecedented process, eventually culminating in a vote not to publish my piece, is not only discriminatory but also reveals the Palestine exception to free speech,” he wrote in an emailed statement. “Ironically, by choosing to kill my piece, they amplified it; and by refusing to publish it, they demonstrated its point.”
A month earlier, Eghbariah agreed to write a blog article about the conflict slated for publication between Nov. 8 and Nov. 10 after the online chairs contacted him on Oct. 15.
The piece, per several editors familiar with the process, then went through an expedited version of the Law Review’s editing pipeline for blog pieces. It was “time-sensitive,” Shahriari-Parsa wrote in a statement, due to the online chairs’ “own judgment of the timeliness of a piece about the legality of an ongoing military action and the silence of legal academia.”
The online chairs then met on Nov. 7 with Law Review President Apsara A. Iyer to discuss the blog’s November issue, per a Nov. 10 email from Ochoa to the Law Review’s full body.
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https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2023/12/11/harvard-law-review-pulls-gaza-article/
