Date: Tue, 20 Feb 1996 07:44:27 -0500
Subject: REPLY: CUP case

I have attached below in full the letter I sent to the executive members of the American Historical Association in which I ask for their support.
Thomas Gallant

TO: American Historical Association Officers
Caroline Walker Bynum (President)
Joyce Appleby (President-elect)
Jacqueline Jones (Research Division)
Robert C. Ritchie (Research Division)

FROM: Thomas W. Gallant, Associate Professor

RE: Case of ANASTASIA KARAKASIDOU and CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

I write to bring your attention to a very important matter involving academic freedom that has arisen involving a young scholar and a major university press. Further, I submit that it is a matter that deserves the Association's attention and support. In addition to my comments, I have appended a lengthy compendium of sources regarding the case.

Anastasia Karakasidou is currently an assistant professor in anthropology at Queen's College. She received her doctorate from Columbia University. Her area of expertise is the historical anthropology of Greece and nationalism. She submitted her dissertation for consideration for publication in the prestigious Social and Cultural Anthropology Series at Cambridge University Press. Her manuscript, Fields of Wheat, Rivers of Blood, was reviewed by Dr. Mark Mazower, an historian at Sussex University, and Dr. Charles Stewart, an anthropologist at University College London. After she revised parts of her work, the reviewers enthusiastically recommended that the manuscript be accepted for publication. Their voices were joined by Professor Michael Herzfeld, a member of the series editorial board and Harvard professor. The manuscript is an historical and ethnographic analysis of the process of nation-state building and identity formation in the Greek region of Macedonia from 1870 to the present. Karakasidou conducted extensive archival and ethnographic fieldwork in the area. Having read the dissertation, I can support the reviewers in stating that this is a first-rate piece of scholarship on a topic of enormous importance. Karakasidiou deftly combines a sound reading of the documentary sources with a sensitive assessment of people's own views about identity. She has already published some of her findings in peer-reviewed journals. Part of her thesis, that there are Greek citizens residing in the region who have a self-consciously Slavic-Macedonian identity, clashes with the official government line that there are no ethnic minorities in Greece. Therein lay the controversy.

When the Press Syndicate met on December 1, 1995 they voted to not publish the manuscript. Their rationale was that by publishing the book they put would place in jeopardy the lives of Press personnel in Greece. They based their judgement on comments made by the their own employees in Athens, of which there are five, the opinions of British Embassy staff, and some unnamed Greek academics. The decision was made even though the press itself recognized that the book was based on sound scholarship and was commercially viable. The book was strongly backed by the series editors. Two members of the series editorial board, Herzfeld and Stephen Gudeman from the University of Minnesota, resigned in protest of the decision (their letters of resignation are attached), and Jane Schneider from CUNY, who was to have been appointed to the board, withdrew. The Press maintains that it came to an unpalatable but necessary decision. This is not acceptable. Their decision represents a serious threat to academic freedom and must be challenged. The case has now gathered a great deal of attention. I have attached stories from the Washington Post and The New York Times. A lengthy article appeared in The Times Higher Education Supplement for Saturday, February 9, 1996 as well. Another will soon be appearing in The Chronicle of Higher Education. The attached documents tell the story far better than I can, but I do want to touch on the major issues involved. [Readers of H-SAE already have access to all of these documents. Web site URL: http://h-net.msu.edu/~sae/threads/CUP ]

1. The Press's decision was based on a non-existent threat. At no point was the Press explicitly or inplicitly threatened by any group or organization in Greece. They did not consult with Greek academics whose names had been given to them by Herzfeld. Nor did they consult with knowlegable experts, like the eminent historian of Greece, Richard Clogg of St. Anthony's College, Oxford, who has published a number of books on modern Greece with CUP. He has verbally informed me that he finds the Press's decision totally unacceptable. While there have been threats made against Karakasidou in the past, they have been from marginal groups and nothing has ever come from them. Those of us who study modern Greece and have lived there for many years find the Press's risk assessment to be groundless. Two other major univesity presses, Princeton and Indiana, have recently published books as or even more controversial than Karakasidou's manuscript and nothing has happened: no threats have been received, no outbrusts by aggrieved Greek nationalists have occured. As many have pointed out, including the Greek Foreign Office, the Press's decision insults all Greeks. If CUP will not publish out of fear in Greece, how can they publish on, say Northern Ireland or Sri Lanka or Columbia or numerous other places one could name? If major presses appease non-existant threats, how will they respond to actual attempts at intimidation? The signal that CUP is sending is both ominous and chilling to all who cherish the freedom of ideas.
2. To put it bluntly, how can historians and other scholars working in places and on topics that may offend someone or other have any confidence that CUP will not allow extraneous factors to determine whether or not they will publish our work-- regardless of its intellectual merit and commercial viability? The Press (in their attached official statement -- see H-SAE web page) states that this is a unique situation, but is it? I am under contract to them to produce a social history of modern Greece (a substantial part of which is completed); in it, I am sure to displease some group or other in Greece. I in fact use Karakasidou's work in one chapter. What will their response be to the sections of my work that may offend? The Press needs to restore confidence in the intellectual integrity of its review process both as regards perspective authors and perspective reviewers. If our judgements on the scholarly merit of a piece can be so easily set aside for other considerations, then we have to ask whether or not we should continue to review for such a press.
3. This brings me to my last point: Herzfeld and Gudeman, and now numerous other organizations and professional associations, have called for a moratorium on the submission of manuscripts and the reviewing of manuscripts until CUP addresses the serious issues that have arisen regarding their policies and procedures. As they put it: "By hindering the production and reviewing of new manuscripts, we hope to demonstrate the academic world's collective dismay at the CUP administration, and to bring about a healthy reassessment that will benefit the entire academic profession." Personally, I have already determined not to fulfill my contractual obligation to the Press. I simply cannot ethically publish a work in the same field as Karakasidou's with CUP. I am having legal consul invesigate my options. I would ask and encourage the American Historical Association to lend its support to this case and join in the call for a moratorium on submissions and on the reviewing of manuscripts, and for a review of the assessment procedures at the Press. Cambridge University Press has long been recognized as one of, if not the leading, publisher of history books. It is too important an academic press to be lost to the scholarly community, but the issue of academic freedom raised by its recent behavior is too important to be ignored. I urge you to respond to this situation.

Yours sincerely,

Thomas W. Gallant
Associate Professor
E-mail TWG133@NERVM.NERDC.UFL.EDU
Thomas W. Gallant

Dear Pauline,

Thanks for swift and personal response to my letter of protest to the Syndics. I know I replied equally promptly; but, since I failed to get a copy back myself, I just wanted to re-iterate the gist of what I said, in case you too failed to receive the message.

First, of course I appreciate all the formal and legal arguments you set out in your letter, which were already familiar to me from press reports over the previous weeks (T.H.E.S.): Karakasidou's book, Fields of Wheat, Hills of Blood, was not under contract. However, given the length of time that had elapsed since her original submission of the MS, the favourable reviews it received from all readers, and the conscientious revisions Karakasidou had completed, there was surely an academic and moral commitment for C.U.P. to go ahead and publish it. The decision not to do so cannot now be rescinded, so perhaps we should move on to more general issues.

Second, what is the role of readers, or a committee of readers, for C.U.P.? If their opinion is unaninmous, how, and in what precise circumstances, can it be reversed by the Syndics? I am, of course, aware of the 'death threats' said to have been made against staff of C.U.P. in Greece. But Karakasidou herself received similar threats if she continued her research two years ago: she did so, and is still alive and well!

Third, you say that this is a unique case. What will the Syndics do if a comparably excellent, but controversial, study of - let's say - northern Ireland, or Bosnia, or Chechnya, or Rwanda, is presented to the Press in the near future? l need to be satisfied on these questions before submitting the MS on Theodore Prodromos: Four Begging Poems, co-authored by myself and Dr. Michael Hendy (honorary Litt.D. from University of Cambridge, and himself the author of Byzantine Monetary Economy V, C.U.P. 1985), to Professor Peter Dronke's prestigious series, Cambridge Medieval Texts. Twelfth-century Byzantium and 'Poor Prodromos' may seem a far cry from present-day Macedonia, but issues of academic freedom are ever with us, as Prodromos knew to his cost!

Meg Alexiou
George Seferis Professor of Modern Greek Studies,
Harvard University
Ph. D. Cantab.
(alexiou@fas.harvard.edu)
Dept. of the Classics Harvard University

By e-mail to Mr. R. Fisher,
Cambridge University Press.

Dear Mr. Fisher:

Late last year I gave Dr. Jessica Kuper a manuscript of my own, a sketch of the "ethnographic biography" of a Cretan novelist, for preliminary inspection, and she indicated that it might be of interest to Cambridge University Press. Since then, of course, you will already have learned from my public statements that I am not willing to publish anything under the CUP label until the recent disagreement resulting from the rejection of Dr. Karakasidou's manuscript is settled to my satisfaction and that of my colleagues around the world. I gather that Dr. Kuper may be out of the country right now, so I am writing to ask whether you or she would be able to recover the manuscript and have it returned to me. There is really no point in leaving it in the Press's hands, as I am sure you would agree.

Yours sincerely,
Michael Herzfeld
Professor of Anthropology, Harvard University

(A signed hard copy of this will also be sent by air mail.)

From: LUCY:: Phillip Kohl PKOHL 28-FEB-1996 16:34:36.27
To: IN%"jkuper@cup.cam.ac.uk"
CC: IN%"herzfeld@wjh.harvard.edu",IN%"gudem001@maroon.tc.umn.edu",PKOHL
Subj: possible sequel to Nationalism, Politics and the Practice of Archaeology

Dear Jessica,

Thanks for your response to my query concerning a sequel to the nationalism in archaeology volume which would focus on South Asia and the Middle East. I am interested in proceeding with this idea, but I must inform you that in light of CUP's decision not to publish Dr. A. Karakasidou's manuscript Fields of Wheat, Rivers of Blood, I will not consider CUP as a potential publisher for this volume. You know all the arguments about academic freedom, etc., so there is no reason for me to repeat them here. I feel particularly sensitive about this matter since the topic of the already published and contemplated volume are not all that dissimilar from Dr. Karakasidou's study. Unless CUP reverses its position, I cannot contemplate submitting any future work to Cambridge University Press.

Regretfully, Phil