In the spring of 2024, half a year after Israel’s escalation of its genocide of the Palestinian people, I received an invitation from an old colleague to submit an article for a special issue of The Journal of Somaesthetics. The issue’s theme, according to the call for papers, was “Eros and Thanatos,” including “how the art form serves as a vehicle for expressing the themes of mortality, loss, and transformation.” This immediately reminded me of Palestine, specifically a viral TikTok of Palestinian and Native American dancers in solidarity against settler colonization. So I composed a summary for an article inspired by this video and emailed it to the journal, which accepted it in writing on March 1, 2024.
The resulting essay, entitled “Death-Defying Indigenous Dance: “Palest-Indian” Solidary Love,” exploring that TikTok’s historical context, first considers dance scholar Jacqueline Shea Murphy’s The People Have Never Stopped Dancing, emphasizing how U.S. and Canadian laws both criminalized Native dance while also appropriating these dances and dancers for non-Indigenous audiences. Second, my essay pivots to Australian choreographer Nicholas Rowe’s Raising Dust: A Cultural History of Dance in Palestine, emphasizing the appropriation of a traditional shepherd dance (Dabke) into the Zionist project of fabricating an orientalist tradition to justify their colonization of Palestine. Third, my essay’s conclusion spotlights Palestine’s Birzeit University and the El-Funoun folkdance troupe as an ideal model of dancing defiance of genocide.
The journal formally accepted the full essay on October 18, writing that “Your paper has been accepted with minor revisions.” The latter, more precisely, involved two suggestions. The first anonymous peer reviewer wanted me to question the term “genocide” when applied to Palestinians (but not to the Native North Americans), by writing something like “It is debatable, and some consider it a genocide.” And the second anonymous peer reviewer suggested I remove some of the historical context for Palestine, and replace it with my own dance criticism of contemporary, apolitical performances of Dabke. I politely declined both suggestions. I refused on ethical principle to intentionally muddle or water down my factual reference to genocide, and I lacked access to any such apolitical performances.
Encouragingly, the journal’s guest editor for the issue supported me on both points. In an email from April 10, 2025, she suggested that I merely add a footnote to “quote The UNHR report that was released in mid-May that concludes: ‘Israel has committed genocidal acts, namely killing, seriously harming, and inflicting conditions of life calculated, and intended to, bring about the physical destruction of Palestinians in Gaza’.” To this, I consented. As for the second point, she determined that “The Dabke suggestion can be ignored since this would change the trajectory of your paper.” In conclusion, the editor wrote, “I am very keen to include your paper in the collection because I think it is an excellent paper.” From this, I logically inferred that my essay’s publication had been secured.
Everything fell apart in just two days. On April 13, 2025, one of the two regular editors of the journal wrote to inform me that my article was, in fact, not being published. They wrote that “the editors have the authority to override decisions made by reviewers. Your article does not contain research within the field of somaesthetics and could be perceived as a political statement. Additionally, it may place the journal, its editors, and board members in a difficult position in these tensed and difficult times.”
It is unclear why—after a year of nonstop affirmation and written acceptance from both editors—the decision was suddenly reversed. Finally, it is also unclear why making a political statement (or being perceived as making one), or putting a journal, its editors, and/or its board members “in a difficult position” are legitimate grounds for reversing a formal acceptance for publication in an academic journal. My subsequent attempts to clarify and resolve the situation have all gone nowhere.
From these exchanges, I logically inferred, as did several colleagues in Philosophy and Dance Studies (via email correspondence), that the real reason for the journal’s sudden reversal was my essay’s naming and condemnation of the genocide in Palestine, and the journal leadership’s attempt to protect itself from feared retaliation. In support of this interpretation, my essay also introduced a likely conflict of interest for Richard Shusterman, the founder of somaesthetics, cofounder of its journal, and currently first-listed member of its Editorial Board. Since Shusterman received a bachelor’s and master’s degree from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and was a lecturer in Israel at Ben-Gurion University, Bezalel Academy of Art, and the Hebrew University, for his journal to publish an essay critical of Israel’s genocide of Palestine, in today’s climate, would presumably have involved personal, professional, and political risks for him.
In closing, I want to make clear that my experience is not isolated, but part of a widespread and entrenched pattern of anti-Palestinian and anti-Arab racism in academic publishing. This racism does not always manifest explicitly in editorial decisions, but is often embedded in the selective and inconsistent application of sanctions—such as no-platforming—against states accused of war crimes. A UK-based colleague, who has asked to remain anonymous, recently shared with me an unfolding case involving a British academic publisher whose enforcement of sanctions against Russia has exposed the stark double standards and exceptionalism afforded to Israel. What becomes evident is that many academic publishers who publicly profess commitments to anti-racism and solidarity with movements like Black Lives Matter frequently fail to uphold those values in practice. Their actions reveal a troubling gap between rhetoric and responsibility.
Speaking, therefore, to my fellow academics: please, try to find the courage to speak out, by name, against this censorship and discrimination. For—as so many brave Indigenous North Americans and Palestinians continue to teach us—in a dancing chorus of truthful voices, none of us need cower in silence.
Editor’s Note: The Journal of Somaesthetics did not respond to a request for comment on this story.
Clearly, ‘degenerate’ art and academic writing about it have no place in today’s academic world. The USA and much of the West are taking their cues from Germany 1933-45. Next perhaps a display of such degenerate artworks in a prominent American museum, to show the people what they should hate.
“It is unclear why—after a year of nonstop affirmation and written acceptance from both editors—the decision was suddenly reversed.”
Au contraire. It is perfectly clear!