We are all mammals

STATEMENT: The Committee for Academic Freedom (CAF) is deeply concerned by Ghent University’s (@ugent’s) suspension of Dr Nathan Cofnas. While we take no view on the merits of Dr Cofnas’s — or any other scholar’s — views beyond the question of whether they are lawful, the reasons now given for his suspension raise grave questions of academic freedom and set a potentially dangerous precedent for its restriction. Ghent’s suspension letter, which we have seen in full, relies extensively not on alleged misconduct by Dr Cofnas, but on the reactions of others to his appointment and public activity. It repeatedly converts the scale of that opposition into evidence supporting disciplinary intervention: a student campaign established specifically to oppose his appointment, a petition signed by more than 2,000 students, complaints from staff, more than 100 emails to the University, the withdrawal of a guest lecturer and the prospect of an academic boycott. That is perilously close to an institutionalised heckler’s veto: the greater the hostility generated by protected speech, the stronger the case for restricting the speaker. The perverse incentive this creates should be obvious. If opponents of an academic know that mobilising sufficient complaints, petitions, boycotts and disruption can itself become evidence that the academic’s continued employment is causing unacceptable “unrest”, an institution effectively provides a roadmap for getting controversial scholars suspended. Former ACLU director Ira Glasser once compared speech restrictions to poison gas: attractive when the weapon is in your hands and your opponent is in your sights, but rather less so when the political wind changes direction. The same warning applies when a heckler’s veto is allowed, almost by default, to become part of an institution’s disciplinary reasoning. Once the threshold for intervention is lowered in this way, the principle becomes available for use against academics of every political and intellectual persuasion, depending only on who happens to be holding the institutional levers. The protection of #academicfreedom cannot depend on how successfully an academic’s opponents are able to mobilise pressure against them. CAF therefore urges Ghent University to correct course. If it believes Dr Cofnas has committed misconduct, it should specify that misconduct and assess it on its merits. But opposition, outrage and reputational pressure generated by lawful academic expression cannot properly substitute for a disciplinary case.