Last month, Canadian scholars Nathan Kalman-Lamb and Derek Silva were preparing to travel as part of a routine and time-worn activity for academic authors: giving a book talk at an event in Washington, D.C.
In their case, the book is: "The End of College Football: On the Human Cost of an All-American Game."
But Kalman-Lamb never got the chance. . Silva went on to host the event alone, but less than two weeks later, he says that U.S. Customs and Border Protection .
Around the same time, a third scholar, UNC-Chapel Hill's Eric Muller, was informed by the Department of Justice that his book event . His talk, to be held at the U.S. Attorney's Office in D.C., focused on "the complicity of German lawyers in the creation of the Nazi state."
All three authors believe the events were cancelled 鈥� and that they were targeted 鈥� for political reasons.
UNC Press, one of the first academic presses in the country, published both books. The cancellations prompted the organization to post a piece on the organization's website calling for collective action against censorship titled ""
UNC Press Director John Sherer recently spoke with 瓜神app higher education reporter Brianna Atkinson about the statement and the dangers of silencing authors.
This conversation has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.
What motivated UNC press to publish the blog post?
"Yeah, so we do these things reluctantly. We're here to support authors engaging with reading publics and other scholars, and so it's uncommon for us to want to get involved in that. We want to support authors and help them make statements through their book publications. But because it happened to a couple of our authors and we consider ourselves to be advocates for 鈥� as the title of the piece said, 鈥� the staff in particular became concerned that they were seeing a pattern and thought that other people should be aware that this is what we're seeing.
"And so, we wrote our statement very carefully. We were very careful here. You know, we're a state-funded institution. We don't advocate policy positions. You could actually argue that these sets of authors are actually kind of on different sides of the political spectrum, certainly in the case of the situation happening in the Middle East. And so, it wasn't really about kind of leaning one side or the other. It was simply; we thought it was important for people to know that there is this kind of new layer of friction being put into authors being able to engage with publics. That feels like something that we're experts on, and it would be reasonable for us to comment on it, so that was what drove us to do it."
Has this ever happened before, like in your tenure at the UNC press, or overall in the industry?
"I'm on my 13th year here, and it's a great question 鈥� I can't recall. I mean, certainly there have been logistical problems here and there, but I don't remember things happening so abruptly and frankly, without good explanations behind them. I think one of the things that's been a little frustrating is just getting messages like, 'you can't go this is canceled' 鈥� but not 'it's because there wasn't enough attendance, or we ran out of money, or the building had another use.' In the past, things have been canceled, but it's always been made clear to us why they were canceled. And in this case, we're not really getting good explanations, and our authors aren't getting good explanations for why things have been either."
The post makes it pretty clear that you think this case is a trend, kind of powerful forces like the United States government is engaging in censorship or dampening public discourse. How bad, in the future, do you feel like this could get?
"I would say I'm probably not as comfortable saying, you know, I think the government did this. It's unclear who did it. And that's, as I said earlier, some of the opacity is one of the things that's a little bit frustrating. But I think that's why the press will be fine, and these authors will all be fine, if this is the extent of it. But I think what we were concerned with was this could be the beginning of a trend.
"We wanted to make sure that we had identified kind of a benchmark. Like okay, we're starting to see something here in late January of 2025, and to kind of document it and register it. And yes, we'll be watching it. I think if we see further examples of this, we're very likely to comment on that again. Going forward, we're hoping that maybe this was just some sort of initial chaos that smooths out. But we're not going to stop sending our authors out to speak about their books and if they run into roadblocks to be able to do that, we're likely to bring voice to that."
You were briefly getting into this already, but what role can UNC press, or any other book publisher or media entity play in fighting back against censorship?
"So, it's interesting because, as I alluded to earlier, publishers tend to be more comfortable being in the background. We want to help authors connect with readers, and so our role is kind of sub-rosa there, we're helping to build connectivity. And so, we're actually uncomfortable kind of getting out in front of our authors. But we do feel like when something is happening to a collective body of our authors, then that's where it's imperative for us to let the people in our community, the people who care about us, the people who care about reading, know that this is going on. You know, you were asking earlier, is this a larger trend? And one of the ways you can find out if it's a trend is if other publishers make statements like this. I haven't really seen a lot of things. But it could also be that things are happening, and people are figuring out how to document and talk about it as well. So, we feel good about having kind of surfaced this. We thought it was important for it not to be unknown."
Are you concerned that canceling travel visas or other partisan or seemingly partisan attacks may convince writers not to explore controversial topics?
"I doubt it. I think authors are passionate about the subjects they want to write about, and something like this is unlikely to be an obstacle to it. In fact, I know some authors who this might be a motivating factor to want to push even harder. But, you know, we're publishers and not authors. And so that's a good question for authors to know whether this is something that is startling to them."
Why is it important to kind of cultivate that space for free expression of scholars, and also, if you could get into the role of scholars in our society as a whole?
"You know, people talk about people aren't reading as much, but the book, I think, is a more vital form than ever. Because what books require you to do, especially non-fiction books and the scholarly books that we publish, is they require you to build an argument. That takes building the basis of it, then developing a thesis, and then talking about what it looks like in practice. And that's not something you can do in blogs. You know, our blog post was a few hundred words. And so, I think there's going to be a thirst for thoughtful, well-reasoned positions on historical topics, on current event topics, and things like that. So, to me, the carefully argued and thoughtfully researched book is more vital than ever."
You mentioned a bit earlier that with UNC press, your role isn't to advocate for any particular type of policy, and the reason why stepped into this was to speak out about the dangers of censorship. Are you worried that publishing a blog post like this in itself could lead to any type of retribution, either from the state, university leadership, or any other groups?
"Sure, I think anytime you come out and make statements, especially on subjects that in this day and age can be perceived as relatively controversial, that you run the risk of it. I will say we wrote the statement very carefully to make sure that we weren't advocating for particular positions. What we've said is we don't publish books that tell policymakers what to do. We publish books that help policymakers make their own decisions about what they should do. And so, when we're in a position where we are being hamstrung somehow from helping to spread the word about these books, that feels like something where we should be speaking up.
"We're not pointing fingers at any particular individual or institution or political party or anything. We're just saying this happened. We want to make sure that people understand that this is happening and that we're going to be fighting to, or comment on behalf of our authors."
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