The Columbia Law Review, one of the United States’ leading student-edited law journals, has taken its website offline following the publication of a controversial article by Palestinian human rights lawyer Rabea Eghbariah. The board of directors, composed of faculty and alumni, decided to suspend the site after concerns were raised about the article’s review process.
The article in question, titled “Toward Nakba as a Legal Concept,” criticizes Israeli policies and describes the situation of Palestinians as living under a “brutally sophisticated structure of oppression” amounting to a crime against humanity. The article also labels Zionism as a form of colonialism and racism, proposing that a new legal concept, “nakba,” be used to describe the extent of these harms. The term “nakba” refers to the forced displacement of Palestinians in 1948.
The website went offline on Monday, displaying only a message stating “Website is under maintenance.” This move came after the board discovered that not all editors of the Law Review had reviewed the article prior to its publication. The board had initially requested that the article be held until June 7 to allow time for broader review, but it was published prematurely.
The board’s decision to take down the website is part of a broader trend in American universities where expression critical of Israel is scrutinized for potential antisemitism, raising concerns about academic freedom and censorship. The board of the Columbia Law Review stated that the article had been handled with unusual secrecy, which they deemed unacceptable.
The involvement of the board in this matter is unusual, as they typically do not interfere with the student-led organization’s editorial decisions. The board includes high-profile members such as Gillian Lester, the law school dean; Gillian Metzger, a constitutional law scholar; and Ginger Anders, a former assistant to the U.S. solicitor general. Katherine Franke, a Columbia law professor who supported the article, noted that this intervention is unprecedented. She questioned whether the board would have acted similarly if the article had covered a different topic.
The board’s letter to the editorial staff expressed a desire to restore the website soon, provided a note is added to the article indicating it had not undergone the usual review and editing processes. This note would state that the article was solicited outside the regular article selection process and was reviewed and edited by a limited number of student editors, not made available for all student editors to read.
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The editorial staff defended their handling of the article, stating that it underwent at least six rounds of intensive editing and fact-checking over several months, involving about 100 people. They argued that their process was consistent with the standards for other published articles.
This incident follows a pattern of controversy around academic freedom related to critiques of Israel. Since the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, there have been numerous instances of university faculty being investigated or disciplined for statements deemed antisemitic or supportive of the attack. Student protests against Israeli policies have also faced condemnation, even when participants assert that their criticisms are not antisemitic but anti-Zionist.
In a related case, a shorter version of Eghbariah’s article was pulled from publication at the Harvard Law Review after an emergency vote by the editorial staff, though it was later published in The Nation.
As the Columbia Law Review navigates this controversy, the academic community continues to grapple with issues of free expression, censorship, and the boundaries of acceptable critique in the context of international politics.
