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Northwestern’s Censorship Board

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John K. Wilson / July 12, 2015 Categories

Northwestern University has recently attracted attention for the attempts to silence a controversial medical journal it publishes Select Category
called Atrium. I’ve previously criticized Northwestern for its failure to protect academic freedom in cases of sexual
content. Sadly, the efforts to suppress Atrium seem to be part of a disturbing pattern.
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Last year, Northwestern professor Alice Dreger, author of Galileo’s Middle Finger: Heretics, Activists, and the Search For
Justice in Science, was the guest editor of an issue of Atrium called “Bad Girls.” Northwestern administrators demanded Academe Blog is the blog of Academe,
censorship of Atrium’s website because of an article by Syracuse University professor William Peace about oral sex between the magazine of the American
nurses and disabled patients in the 1970s. Dreger noted, “Through this censorship my dean’s office put me in the position of Association of University Professors
either staying silent and being a hypocrite or calling out my own dean on censorship.” After a long battle, Northwestern finally (AAUP). Opinions published here do
allowed the article to be posted after Dreger announced that she was going public about the suppression of the not necessarily represent the policies of
article. Dreger said, “After 14 months, the only thing that moved them is PR fear. If PR fear is what drives them as an the AAUP.
institution, that’s sad.”
Executive Editor
Dreger told the Huffington Post about the Northwestern administration, “They said, ‘We paid for it, so we get to say what’s in Aaron Barlow
it.’” That sentiment of “he who pays the piper calls the tune” is fundamentally antithetical to academic freedom. By that logic,
any research that any professor publishes could be subjected to prior review by the administration. Editors
Gwendolyn Bradley
But as bad as it was for Northwestern to ban online publication of an article for more than a year, the latest actions taken by Martin Kich
the administration are even worse. John K. Wilson

Katie Watson, the editor of Atrium, said medical school administrators told her she must allow a “vetting committee” to review
her editorial choices “and veto them if they were perceived to conflict with other institutional interests.” Watson said, Follow Academe Blog
“Approximately a week after this vetting committee told me what I would, and would not, be allowed to publish, I canceled
the issue.” Watson told the Huffington Post that she is “not moving forward with the publication under that condition.” Enter your e-mail address to receive
notifications of new posts by email.
Northwestern issued a statement that “The magazine now has an editorial board of faculty members and others, as is
customary for academic journals.” That is customary, and it is unusual that Watson was the sole editorial person until now. Join 10,925 other followers
But there’s nothing wrong with that, and it certainly is questionable that an editorial board was appointed solely in response to
a controversial article. And it is highly unusual for any editorial board of a medical journal to include a PR person from the Enter your email address
university.

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The purpose of an editorial board is to set broad policies for a publication, and to help support its goals. But an editorial
board of an academic magazine is not a “vetting committee” designed to silence controversial articles.

University of Chicago law professor Geoffrey Stone has noted, “An advisory board that considers the academic quality of My Tweets
proposed publications is commonplace and appropriate. An advisory board that considers other factors, such as whether a
proposed article might offend donors to the institution or expresses views that the institution does not want expressed, would
constitute censorship that is incompatible with academic freedom.” AAUP Updates

An editorial board shouldn’t scrutinize individual articles selected for publication, and it certainly isn’t created for the purpose Union Victory for Student Employees at
of stopping controversial work. Then it’s no longer an editorial board, it’s a censorship board. And that’s exactly what Private Institutions August 23, 2016
Northwestern administrators have done with Atrium.
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