Last summer Yale University Press struck a blow for censorship-by-prediction-of-violence when it decided to withdraw illustrations from the academic Jytte Klausen’s book about the Danish cartoons of the prophet Mohammed. YUP removed not only the cartoons that are the subject of the book, but also all other purported images of Mohammed. This move was fraught with irony given that the cartoon affair itself revolved around predictions of violence, and self-censorship because of fears of violence, and predicted violence eventually, after much effort and encouragement, morphing into actual violence.
The reason the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten commissioned the cartoons in the first place was because several illustrators had refused to draw pictures of Mohammed for a children’s book, for fear of violent reactions. After Jyllands-Posten published the cartoons, eleven ambassadors from majority-Muslim countries complained to the Danish government; the Danish government in turn explained that it did not, could not, would not want to tell newspapers what to publish.
So the fault lines were set from the beginning: anticipatory fear of violence prompting self-censorship, attempts at direct censorship, defense of the value of free expression.
Given all this, it is odd to find Yale University Press and Yale University coming down on the side of self-censorship by reason of predicted violence. Yale University is, it goes without saying, a well-regarded academic institution; Yale University Press is a well-regarded academic press; it is shocking to many observers to find such a university and such a press surrendering to a kind of ghostly coercion exercised not by violence but by predictions of violence.
Yale consulted with diplomats and security experts before deciding to withdraw the cartoons and the other images of Mohammed (none of which were literally pictures of Mohammed, of course, but artists” imaginations of what Mohammed may have looked like), but Jytte Klausen points out that the experts consulted are in fields that predispose them to focus on risks or to prefer peace and silence to disagreement. Diplomats cherish harmony more than free speech, security experts value security over other goods.
But the people at Index on Censorship have other priorities, surely. They at least know the value of free expression, and would not let purely notional imaginary projected risks cause them to censor themselves.
Surely. But Index on Censorship did just that, thus seeing and raising Yale’s bet in the irony stakes. Index on Censorship published an interview by Jo Glanville with Jytte Klausen, about Yale’s censorship of the images in Klausen’s book; Glanville wanted to include the cartoons in the interview, and Index on Censorship decided not to do so.
Jonathan Dimbleby, chair of Index on Censorship, explained the board’s worry:
A year earlier, in September 2008, four men had been arrested for allegedly fire-bombing the North London home of the publisher of Gibson Books who had proposed publishing The Jewel of Medina. Only the most cavalier attitude towards the safety and security of those directly and indirectly involved in the publication of the Index interview would have failed to note that outrage.
Ironically, the men who set the fire at Gibson Square were reacting to, precisely, a prediction of violent reactions, this time to a novel about Mohammed’s child-wife Aisha. The situation now is that “concerned” people are creating self-fulfilling prophecies by inspiring the very violent outrage they are warning against.
Just a few days ago, a young man with an axe broke into the house of one of the Danish cartoonists, Kurt Westergaard, who just barely managed to lock himself into a fortified safe room in time. The man is reported to have bashed at the door with his axe, shouting his intention to kill the cartoonist. There is no way to prevent that kind of thing, but there are ways to refuse to surrender to it.
Index on Censorship is an advocacy group, and advocacy has a certain amount of risk built into it. Advocacy entails the possibility of disagreement, and perhaps animosity. That can’t be helped. Advocacy that is so tame and harmless that it can’t possibly offend anyone is not worth having.
