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Self-Censorship of Narratives of Political Violence in Academia

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Self-Censorship in Contexts of Conflict

Part of the book series: Peace Psychology Book Series ((PPBS))

Abstract

This chapter discusses the practice of self-censorship in the scholarly community (academic and independent scholars) as it relates to the production and dissemination of historical knowledge about political violence. The scholarly community, especially in democratic societies, has an important role with regard to historical narratives because its members are perceived as epistemic authorities about the past. Methodologically, this chapter is based on secondary sources such as academic articles and books that analyzed self-censorship in the scholarly community. The findings address various aspects of self-censorship (e.g., its definition, the contextual factors that promote it, motivations for it, and its manifestations), in addition to the process of breaking the silence: situations in which self-censorship is stopped to allow more accurate narratives about the past to be communicated publicly.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    We also do not discuss Ph.D. students at length, even though they conduct research, because the relevant literature typically does not address Ph.D. students and because they are not as deeply embedded in the academic world as scholars. In addition, their work is not entirely independent, being highly influenced by their supervisors.

  2. 2.

    For example, in WWII in the US: “the complexities of the relationship between intellect and power were exposed when, among other instances, scholars resigned from positions in the Office of War Information (OWI) because they were not permitted to tell the truth about the war as they saw it.” (Dorn, 2005, p. 115).

  3. 3.

    Collective narratives are defined as “social constructions that coherently interrelate a sequence of historical and current events; they are accounts of a community’s collective experiences, embodied in its belief system and represent the collective’s symbolically constructed shared identity” (Bruner, 1990, p. 76).

  4. 4.

    Although this example does not relate to the context of historical narratives, it does provide a good analogy of the impact of political violence on the scholarly community. An example of scholarly self-censorship that does not relate directly to political violence can be found in Belarus with regard to major topics in the humanities and the social sciences (Shaton, 2009).

  5. 5.

    See below regarding concern about sanctions associated with public discussions as a motivation for self-censorship.

  6. 6.

    The Jewish name for the territory that the Palestinians call “Palestine.”

  7. 7.

    Popular memory is defined as representations of the past of a group, assembled in narratives, that are adopted as truthful by group members (Nets-Zehngut, 2012c), best manifested in public opinion surveys (see, for example, the result of a survey about the Israeli-Jewish popular memory of the Israeli-Arab/Palestinian conflict) (Nets-Zehngut & Bar-Tal, 2016, 2017).

  8. 8.

    Official memory is defined as representations of the past of a group, assembled in narratives, that are adopted as truthful by the formal institutions of a group/country (Nets-Zehngut, 2016c).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. International Summer Program in Conflict Resolution, Bar Ilan University, Tel Aviv, Israel

    Rafi Nets-Zehngut

  2. Education Development Center, Waltham, MA, USA

    Shai Fuxman

Authors
  1. Rafi Nets-Zehngut
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  2. Shai Fuxman
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Correspondence to Rafi Nets-Zehngut .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Education, Tel-Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel

    Daniel Bar-Tal

  2. International Summer Program in Conflict Resolution, Bar Ilan University, Tel Aviv, Israel

    Rafi Nets-Zehngut

  3. Psychology, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel

    Keren Sharvit

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Nets-Zehngut, R., Fuxman, S. (2017). Self-Censorship of Narratives of Political Violence in Academia. In: Bar-Tal, D., Nets-Zehngut, R., Sharvit, K. (eds) Self-Censorship in Contexts of Conflict. Peace Psychology Book Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63378-7_9

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