Two weeks ago, The Chronicle reported Cambridge University Press’s settlement of a libel claim filed by Khalid bin Mahfouz, a Saudi billionaire, regarding the 2006 book Alms for Jihad: Charity and Terrorism in the Islamic World. The publisher promised, among other things, to contact libraries worldwide and ask them to remove the book from their shelves.
Barbara Fister, a librarian at Gustavus Adolphus College, doubts that librarians should heed that request. On the blog of the Association of College and Research Libraries, she writes: “None of us want inaccurate information on our shelves, but it’s there. We have information that is contradictory, biased, past its shelf life, and controversial.”
At The Bookseller, Kevin Taylor, intellectual-property director at Cambridge, defends the settlement, arguing that Mr. Mahfouz’s basic claims have been well established in previous libel cases:
Taylor’s statement does not satisfy the anonymous bloggers at The Literary Saloon, who argue that the press ought to publicly reveal how much money it paid to settle the case: “By shrouding all this in so much secrecy they make the whole arrangement look even more tawdry than it already does.”
