Statement: Letter of Resignation from Members of the Editorial Board of Third World Quarterly

Statement: Letter of Resignation from Members of the Editorial Board of Third World Quarterly

Statement: Letter of Resignation from Members of the Editorial Board of Third World Quarterly

By : Jadaliyya Reports

[This statement was originally published via social media on 19 September 2017.]

Letter of Resignation from Members of the Editorial Board of Third World Quarterly

Dear Shahid Qadir, Taylor & Francis, Colleagues and Interested Public,

We are deeply disappointed by the unacceptable process around the publication of Bruce Gilley’s Viewpoint essay, “The case for colonialism,” which was published in Third World Quarterly without any consultation with the Editorial Board. As International Editorial Board Members, we were told in an email on 15 September from Shahid Qadir that this piece was put through the required double-blind peer review process. We asked for these reviews to be sent to the Editorial Board, and they were not.

We have now been informed by our colleagues who reviewed the piece for a Special Issue that they rejected it as unfit to send to additional peer review, and they stated in an email to us:

“We would question the editorial process that has led to the publication of the piece. It was initially offered to guest editors Dr John Narayan and Dr Leon Sealey-Huggins as an article to consider for inclusion in the aforementioned special issue. The guest editors relayed their unease with the article and rejected considering the piece for peer review. It has subsequently come to light that the article was later reviewed as a standard article and rejected by at least one reviewer and then repackaged as an opinion piece.”—email from Dr John Narayan (Birmingham City University)

Dr Leon Sealey-Huggins (Warwick University)
Dr Kehinde Andrews (Birmingham City University)
Dr Eugene Nulman (Birmingham City University)
Dr Goldie Osuri (University of Warwick)
Dr Lucia Pradella (King’s College London)
Professor Vijay Prashad (Trinity College)
Dr Sahar Rad (SOAS, University of London)
Professor Satnam Virdee (University of Glasgow)
Dr Helen Yaffe (London School of Economics)

We have also been informed through correspondence between Prof Ilan Kapoor and our colleague who was the peer-reviewer, after the piece was rejected by the Special Issue editors, that her review also rejected the Viewpoint. Thus, the fact is established that this did not pass the peer-review when we have documentation that it was rejected by three peer reviewers.

As the Viewpoint did not pass the double-blind peer review as claimed by the editor in the statement he issued in the name of the journal, it must be retracted and a new statement issued.

The Viewpoint fails criterion #1 of the Committee on Publication Ethics COPE guidelines that state: “Journal editors should consider retracting a publication if: they have clear evidence that the findings are unreliable, either as a result of misconduct (e.g. data fabrication) or honest error (e.g. miscalculation or experimental error).” 

These COPE guidelines are Taylor & Francis’s reference documents for ethics of retracting a publication the editorial board was told in an email on 18 September by Shahid Qadir.

Thus, Bruce Gilley’s Viewpoint essay, “The case for colonialism” must be retracted, as it fails to provide reliable findings, as demonstrated by its failure in the double-blind peer review process.

We all subscribe to the principle of freedom of speech and the value of provocation in order to generate critical debate. However, this cannot be done by means of a piece that fails to meet academic standards of rigour and balance by ignoring all manner of violence, exploitation and harm perpetrated in the name of colonialism (and imperialism) and that causes offence and hurt and thereby clearly violates that very principle of free speech.

The Editor of TWQ has issued a public statement without any consultation with the Editorial Board that is not truthful about the process of this peer-review, and thus, as we fully disagree with both the academic content of the Viewpoint and the response issued in the name of the journal, we are forced to resign immediately from the Editorial Board of Third World Quarterly.

As scholars, we remain ever-committed to the ideals that this journal has stood for over the past 40 years, and we would consider serving on an Editorial Board under different editorial arrangements.

Sincerely,

Ilan Kapoor (York University, Canada)
Stefano Ponte (Copenhagen Business School, Denmark + Duke University, US)
Lisa Ann Richey(Roskilde University, Denmark + Duke University, US)
Mahmood Mamdani (Makerere Institute of Social Research, Uganda + Columbia University, US) 
Asef Bayat (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, US)
Naila Kabeer (London School of Economics and Political Science, UK)
Katie Willis (Royal Holloway University of London, UK)
David Simon (Chalmers Univ. of Technology, Sweden + Royal Holloway Univ. of London, UK)
Walden Bello (State University of New York at Binghamton, US)
Giles Mohan (The Open University, UK)
Ayesha Jalal (Tufts University, US)
Uma Kothari (University of Manchester, UK)
Vijay Prashad (Trinity College, US)
Klaus John Dodds (Royal Holloway University of London, UK)
Richard Falk (Princeton University, US)

Past is Present: Settler Colonialism Matters!

On 5-6 March 2011, the Palestine Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London will hold its seventh annual conference, "Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine." This year`s conference aims to understand Zionism as a settler colonial project which has, for more than a century, subjected Palestine and Palestinians to a structural and violent form of destruction, dispossession, land appropriation and erasure in the pursuit of a new Jewish Israeli society. By organizing this conference, we hope to reclaim and revive the settler colonial paradigm and to outline its potential to inform and guide political strategy and mobilization.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often described as unique and exceptional with little resemblance to other historical or ongoing colonial conflicts. Yet, for Zionism, like other settler colonial projects such as the British colonization of Ireland or European settlement of North America, South Africa or Australia, the imperative is to control the land and its resources -- and to displace the original inhabitants. Indeed, as conference keynote speaker Patrick Wolfe, one of the foremost scholars on settler colonialism and professor at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia, argues, "the logic of this project, a sustained institutional tendency to eliminate the Indigenous population, informs a range of historical practices that might otherwise appear distinct--invasion is a structure not an event."[i]

Therefore, the classification of the Zionist movement as a settler colonial project, and the Israeli state as its manifestation, is not merely intended as a statement on the historical origins of Israel, nor as a rhetorical or polemical device. Rather, the aim is to highlight Zionism`s structural continuities and the ideology which informs Israeli policies and practices in Palestine and toward Palestinians everywhere. Thus, the Nakba -- whether viewed as a spontaneous, violent episode in war, or the implementation of a preconceived master plan -- should be understood as both the precondition for the creation of Israel and the logical outcome of Zionist settlement in Palestine.

Moreover, it is this same logic that sustains the continuation of the Nakba today. As remarked by Benny Morris, “had he [David Ben Gurion] carried out full expulsion--rather than partial--he would have stabilised the State of Israel for generations.”[ii] Yet, plagued by an “instability”--defined by the very existence of the Palestinian nation--Israel continues its daily state practices in its quest to fulfill Zionism’s logic to maximize the amount of land under its control with the minimum number of Palestinians on it. These practices take a painful array of manifestations: aerial and maritime bombardment, massacre and invasion, house demolitions, land theft, identity card confiscation, racist laws and loyalty tests, the wall, the siege on Gaza, cultural appropriation, and the dependence on willing (or unwilling) native collaboration and security arrangements, all with the continued support and backing of imperial power. 

Despite these enduring practices however, the settler colonial paradigm has largely fallen into disuse. As a paradigm, it once served as a primary ideological and political framework for all Palestinian political factions and trends, and informed the intellectual work of committed academics and revolutionary scholars, both Palestinians and Jews.

The conference thus asks where and why the settler colonial paradigm was lost, both in scholarship on Palestine and in politics; how do current analyses and theoretical trends that have arisen in its place address present and historical realities? While acknowledging the creativity of these new interpretations, we must nonetheless ask: when exactly did Palestinian natives find themselves in a "post-colonial" condition? When did the ongoing struggle over land become a "post-conflict" situation? When did Israel become a "post-Zionist" society? And when did the fortification of Palestinian ghettos and reservations become "state-building"?

In outlining settler colonialism as a central paradigm from which to understand Palestine, this conference re-invigorates it as a tool by which to analyze the present situation. In doing so, it contests solutions which accommodate Zionism, and more significantly, builds settler colonialism as a political analysis that can embolden and inform a strategy of active, mutual, and principled Palestinian alignment with the Arab struggle for self-determination, and indigenous struggles in the US, Latin America, Oceania, and elsewhere.

Such an alignment would expand the tools available to Palestinians and their solidarity movement, and reconnect the struggle to its own history of anti-colonial internationalism. At its core, this internationalism asserts that the Palestinian struggle against Zionist settler colonialism can only be won when it is embedded within, and empowered by, the broader Arab movement for emancipation and the indigenous, anti-racist and anti-colonial movement--from Arizona to Auckland.

SOAS Palestine Society invites everyone to join us at what promises to be a significant intervention in Palestine activism and scholarship.

For over 30 years, SOAS Palestine Society has heightened awareness and understanding of the Palestinian people, their rights, culture, and struggle for self-determination, amongst students, faculty, staff, and the broader public. SOAS Palestine society aims to continuously push the frontiers of discourse in an effort to make provocative arguments and to stimulate debate and organizing for justice in Palestine through relevant conferences, and events ranging from the intellectual and political impact of Edward Said`s life and work (2004), international law and the Palestine question (2005), the economy of Palestine and its occupation (2006), the one state (2007), 60 Years of Nakba, 60 Years of Resistance (2009), and most recently, the Left in Palestine (2010).

For more information on the SOAS Palestine Society 7th annual conference, Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine: www.soaspalsoc.org

SOAS Palestine Society Organizing Collective is a group of committed students that has undertaken to organize annual academic conferences on Palestine since 2003.

 


[i] Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event, Cassell, London, p. 163

[ii] Interview with Benny Morris, Survival of the Fittest, Haaretz, 9. January 2004, http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/art.php?aid=5412