How An Academic Article Got Banned

An English professor from Linfield College shows us how, while making the case for this and other forms of curtailment of academic freedom and free expression on campus. “In September 2017, an article published in Third World Quarterly titled as ‘A Case for Colonialism’ by Bruce Gilley received overwhelming condemnation from the global academic community demanding the retraction of the article,” Reshmi Dutt-Ballerstadt writes on the Academe blog maintained by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP). “A petition signed by over 10,000 academics made it clear that ‘We do not call for the curtailing of the writer’s freedom of speech … Our goal is to raise academic publishing standards and integrity. We thereby call on the editorial team to retract the article and also to apologize for further brutalizing those who have suffered under colonialism.'”