Editors’ CollectiveFootnote1
On Saturday, November 18, 2023 at the National Communication Association conference’s awards and presidential address, Dr. Ahlam Muhtaseb, an award-winning filmmaker, researcher, scholar, educator, and public servant as well as our colleague from California State University, San Bernardino, was prevented by NCA staff leadership from making the speech that appears below. Dr. Muhtaseb planned to make a statement referencing genocide in Gaza. In essence, she was censored because of her speech’s topic, even though she is an expert in our field on this subject. Other invited performers partaking in the presidential address, as well as many conference attendees present, walked out in protest. We are highlighting the speech here to uphold the values of academic freedom, to recognize the loss of life across the region particularly in Gaza, and to call attention to the ongoing and long-standing genocideFootnote2 against Palestinians and the crisis facing those elsewhere around the world within the Palestinian diaspora.Footnote3 We also acknowledge and abhor the violence of those killed, injured, and taken hostage in Israel on October 7, 2023.
The events unfolded as described in the National Communication Association Executive Committee’s statement issued on Friday, December 1, 2023: “President Walid Afifi invited member voices to join in a collective performance as the 2023 Presidential Address. These voices, along with President Afifi, included: Sarah Amira de la Garza, Robert Gutierrez-Perez, Lore LeMaster/The Cacophiliacs (Ana Isabel Terminel Iberri, Tyler S. Rife, Megan Stephenson, Angela Labador, Liahnna Stanley), Ahlam Muhtaseb, Julie-Ann Scott-Pollock, Bryan J. McCann, and Lionnell “Badu” Smith. Their collective voices were prepared to portray a critical [re]imagining of the possibilities for NCA and the Communication discipline and was entitled, “Let Us Imagine Our Future Together.”Footnote4
As the editors of Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, Communication Teacher, Communication and Democracy, Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, Text and Performance Quarterly, Communication Monographs, Quarterly Journal of Speech, Communication and Race, Journal of Applied Communication Research, and Rhetoric, Politics, and Culture, we promote academic freedom and denounce the censorship that Dr. Muhtaseb faced. We wish to promote open discussion that recognizes the continued suffering of Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank, and the Palestinian diaspora. We also express solidarity with Palestinians who are unable to express themselves freely and find safe spaces to reside in the face of significant humanitarian challenges, genocide, displacement, famine, and oppression.
In reflecting on both the catastrophe in Gaza and this example of censorship related to public speech about Gaza and the acute crisis facing Palestinians more broadly (e.g., in the West Bank and the global diaspora), it is clear that we as communication scholars can do more. Speaking out matters. Communication matters. Media framing matters. Words matter. Stories matter. Visuals matter. Labels like hostages/prisoners, activists/terrorists, refugees/victims, war/genocide matter. We hope that, in emphasizing this speech, the discipline/field of communication can take up the charge for free expression and democratic principles and join the call for a permanent ceasefire and an end to the occupation in Palestinian territories. More on this matter in particular and contemporary forms of censorship in general will be forthcoming in the pages of the journals represented here.
Notes
1. Editors’ Collective (listed alphabetically): Robin Boylorn (she/her), Brandi Lawless (she/her), Bryan J. McCann (he/him), Billie Murray (she/her), Ersula J. Ore (she/her), Mahuya Pal (she/her), Kimberlee Pérez (editor-elect, she/her), Srividya Ramasubramanian (she/her), Stacey K. Sowards (she/her), Armond Towns (he/him), and Heather M. Zoller (she/her). Corresponding author: Billie Murray [email protected]
2. We chose the term genocide with caution, recognizing that some differ on how this term should be used and whether or not it applies in this context. For more on this term, please see: Raz Segal, “A Textbook Case of Genocide,” Jewish Currents, October 13, 2023, accessed December 11, 2023, https://jewishcurrents.org/a-textbook-case-of-genocide; Center for Constitutional Rights, “Israel’s Unfolding Crime of Genocide of the Palestinian People & U.S. Failure to Prevent and Complicity in Genocide,” October 18, 2023, accessed December 11, 2023, https://ccrjustice.org/sites/default/files/attach/2023/10/Israels-Unfolding-Crime_ww.pdf. This open letter by genocide and Holocaust experts calls for the prevention of genocide in Gaza and the West Bank: “Statement of Scholars in Holocaust and Genocide Studies,” December 9, 2023, accessed December 11, 2023, https://contendingmodernities.nd.edu/global-currents/statement-of-scholars-7-october/.
3. We focus here on Palestinians because of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza since October 7, 2023 and because of the censorship Dr. Muhtaseb faced at the NCA conference. While some have claimed that Palestinians have received more attention to their suffering than others in the region, the current crisis calls for such. See Hussein Aboubakr Mansour, “The Pitfalls of Palestinian Exceptionalism,” Endowment for Middle East Truth, July 8, 2021, accessed December 11, 2023, https://emetonline.org/the-pitfalls-of-palestinian-exceptionalism/.
4. Walid A. Afifi, Vinita Agarwal, Jim Cherney, Roseann Mandziuk, Jimmie Manning, Raquel Moreira, Marnel Niles Goins, Shaunak Sastry, Jeanetta Sims, Candice Thomas-Maddox, and Richard West (National Communication Association Executive Committee), “An Open Letter to the Membership of the National Communication Association from the NCA Executive Committee,” December 1, 2023.