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Complying with CAA's request would be post-facto censorship of library
materials. It's not the first time that a publisher has succumbed to the
threat of a lawsuit in a venue that favors the plaintiff ("libel tourism")
and has attempted to make libraries censor materials that they have
already acquired. Most American libraries have resisted such demands.
Tipping in a correction or errata sheet would be appropriate. Razoring out
published material is censorship.
On "libel tourism" and other attempts to censor libraries, see also
http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/4248
(note: although I'm quoted in that article, I was not consulted
about the choice of venue -- AR)
For the particulars of the case of the review in Art Journal, see below.
Andras Riedlmayer
Fine Arts Library
Harvard University
====================================================================
http://www.flbog.org/pressroom/newsclips_detail.php?id=2213
Source: The Chronicle of Higher Education 06/18/08
Scholarly Association Settles 'Libel Tourism' Case
The College Art Association has averted a so-called libel tourism action
threatened against it in Britain. The threat came from an Israeli
professor of art history angry over a review of her book in Art Journal,
one of the association's scholarly publications. The parties agreed that
the association would ask institutional subscribers to the journal to
withdraw portions of the disputed article from circulation.
Gannit Ankori, chair of the art-history department at Hebrew University of
Jerusalem, was reportedly upset by a review of her book Palestinian Art
(Reaktion Books, 2006), by Joseph A. Massad, an associate professor of
Arab politics in the department of Middle East and Asian languages and
culture at Columbia University, in the Fall 2007 issue of Art Journal. Mr.
Massad has also been embroiled in a battle over his bid for tenure at
Columbia, which was initially vetoed by a dean at the university but will
undergo a second review this coming year (The Chronicle, June 6).
Mr. Massad's review, "Permission to Paint: Palestinian Art and the
Colonial Encounter," is a lengthy treatment of three books on the subject.
In it, Mr. Massad describes a controversy concerning Ms. Ankori's use of
the work and theories of Kamal Boullata, a Palestinian painter and art
historian. The disputed article does not directly accuse Ms. Ankori of
plagiarism, but in her communications with the association, she argued
that it was defamatory all the same.
"What I did accuse her of is appropriating ideas without crediting the
person properly," Mr. Massad said in an interview. "If every academic was
going to think that any critique of academic scholarship was going to have
to be defended in a court of law, the state of academic argumentation
would be very different."
Liberal Libel Laws
That Ms. Ankori threatened to sue over the article is a turn of events
that has grown more frequent in recent years. That she was considering the
prospect of legal redress in Britain is also no surprise. Libel laws in
that country notoriously favor plaintiffs, even those based elsewhere
(hence the term "libel tourism"). The art association, which is based in
the United States, has many international members.
In February 2008, according to the association, Ms. Ankori's lawyers sent
the group a letter alleging that the review "contained untrue statements
and was defamatory of her and her work." The group consulted with lawyers
here and in Britain, according to its executive director, Linda Downs, and
decided that the cost and risk of defending a libel case there looked
punishingly high.
"Ninety-eight percent of defendants on libel cases lose there," Ms. Downs
said.
Major publishing houses "set aside funds for libel suits," she observed,
but her group does not have such deep pockets. Even major publishers,
however, have backed down when confronted with similar actions brought in
British courts. Consider Cambridge University Press's decision to pulp a
2006 book, Alms for Jihad, in response to a lawsuit by Khalid bin Mahfouz,
a Saudi banker. That book alleged that Mr. Mahfouz had financial ties to
groups implicated in terrorism in Sudan and other locales in the 1990s
(The Chronicle, August 10, 2007).
The Right Response?
The art association reached an agreement with Ms. Ankori's lawyers about
three weeks ago, Ms. Downs said. She could not disclose the details but
sent The Chronicle a copy of a statement that her group sent to its
approximately 2,000 institutional members and institutional Art Journal
subscribers. The statement also went to online repositories such as JStor
and ProQuest that distribute the journal electronically.
"Having thoroughly investigated the matter, CAA acknowledges that the
review contained factual errors and certain unfounded assertions," the
statement says. "CAA has apologized to Professor Ankori and has agreed to
a settlement."
It asks institutional subscribers to pull the offending portions of the
review and to make sure they are "withdrawn from any form of circulation."
And it cautions that "any further publication of the errors to any third
party might give rise to a cause of action against whomever is responsible
for that publication."
Paul B. Jaskot, the association's president and an associate professor of
art history at DePaul University, said that the increasingly global
context of scholarship played a big role in the group's decision. "We
certainly need to acknowledge as learned societies that we are in a
different international publishing environment," he said. Within that
broad context, "we have to be aware of the variety of scholarly
institutions and cultures, and legal cultures, in other countries."
The case demonstrates that scholarly publishers may not be able to count
on hitherto standard practices. According to Ms. Downs, the disputed
review went through "the normal editorial process" and had been reviewed
in keeping with U.S. libel law. In those terms, she said, "there are no
legal issues, from what we are informed."
"We feel very sad about this because all of our journals provide a
platform for debate," she said, "and we were very unhappy that this was
taken into a legal realm instead of being debated on an intellectual
level."
Mr. Massad acknowledged that his review contained a couple of errata -- an
erroneous publication date, for instance -- but stood by his work and by
the right to air scholarly criticisms in an academic setting. "The claims
made in my review were made in even stronger terms in other reviews,
particularly in the Arabic press," he said.
Mr. Massad said he understood the financial pressures but called the
settlement "a cowardly act" on the association's part. "It's willing to
become morally bankrupt but not financially bankrupt."
"This is a bigger fight than this particular review," he told The
Chronicle. "This is a battle that should be fought, and it would have
behooved them to fight it."
###
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