Compounding Cowardice at Yale

Monday, August 17, 2009

[Candace de Russy]

First, the Yale University Press opted to pull the Danish cartoons of Muhammad and other illustrations of him included in Jytte Klausen's forthcoming book, The Cartoons that Shook the World.

Now, as Winfield Myers notes, Yale is refusing to identify the "authorities" behind whose skirts it hid to excuse the suppression of the cartoons:

[The] New York Times . . . said that . . . [Yale] "consulted two dozen authorities, including diplomats and experts on Islam and counterterrorism, and the recommendation was unanimous" that no illustrations should appear. . . .

Not only is Yale withholding the identity of the experts from the public; it refused to share them with Klausen herself. . . . Klausen was told she could read a summary of the experts' opinions "only if she signed a confidentiality agreement that forbade her from talking about them." She refused and called it a "gag order."

Inside Higher Ed subsequently published a statement by Yale in defense of its decisions. And a lame defense it is, as Myers rightly interprets it:

This statement smells of cowardice and compromise. We wanted to do the right thing, it claims, and publish the illustrations which, after all, are the subject of the book. But after we spoke to these experts (and you can't just ignore the advice of experts), we figured we'd skip out on our obligations to our author and readers and hide behind their advice, which we appreciate an awful lot.