On April 5, 2025, the administrations of Notre Dame University’s Keough School of Global Affairs and the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies canceled the keynote address of the Kroc Institute’s annual Student Peace Conference, which was scheduled to take place on April 11-12, 2025. The decision to cancel the address was related to the keynote speaker’s plans to discuss pro-Palestinian activism on college campuses.

The theme for the 2025 Student Peace Conference was “Unified Paths for Peace: Empowering Collaborative Peacebuilding.” In January 2025, the conference organizers invited Eman Abdelhadi, a professor in the Department of Comparative Human Development at the University of Chicago, to give the keynote address. Abdelhadi planned to speak about the intersections of gender, religion, and political identity and how to foster relationships between scholars and grassroots movements. According to the Middle East Studies Association (MESA), the student organizers of the conference coordinated with Kroc Institute administrators to ensure that they followed all regulations for planning university events.

On April 5, Asher Kaufman, the director of the Kroc Institute, emailed the conference organizers and Abdelhadi to notify them that the Kroc Institute had learned that Abdelhadi planned to discuss pro-Palestinian activism as part of her remarks and, therefore, had decided to cancel the speaking invitation. The email pointed to a Notre Dame policy requiring security at all events discussing Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory and explained that the short timeframe leading up the conference, compounded by the university’s need to provide security at two other large events that same day, meant that the university could not provide the required security. According to the information gathered by MESA, the university made no effort to reschedule Abdelhadi’s remarks for another day when security could be provided or to find an alternative forum (such as online) for the event.

Scholars at Risk is concerned about the cancellation of an academic lecture by a qualified scholar, allegedly due to an unsubstantiated assumption that persons disagreeing with the scholar’s views might respond with violence, risking harm to persons or property.

The core function of the university is the free and peaceful exchange of evidence-based knowledge and ideas. To meet this core function, higher education institutions have a responsibility to provide physical and intellectual spaces for structured discourse. This is especially true on matters which are novel, contested, or likely to trigger heightened interest or strong reactions. This includes a responsibility to provide reasonable security arrangements when the university has a reasonable, particularized basis for concern.

Blanket policies which impose cost, scheduling, or other burdens on the peaceful exchange of information without any particularized assessment of risk fail to meet this responsibility. Such blanket policies threaten academic freedom and undermine free expression on campus and in the wider society by giving strength to the “heckler’s veto,” which allows behavior by a dissenter to shape the scope of inquiry and debate.

Where a particularized assessment of risk has been made, the institution’s responsibility to ensure security must be harmonized with its responsibility to protect the free exchange of ideas. This includes exploring with organizers alternative locations, scheduling, admissions controls, or, in a last resort, remote participation. In such cases of particularized risk, faculty, staff, students or other organizers of talks and events have a corresponding responsibility to consider such alternatives and to work with the institution to facilitate the exchange of ideas without incident. Cancelation of an academic exchange without exhausting such alternatives violates principles of shared governance and academic freedom.

Sources:
https://mesana.org/advocacy/committee-on-academic-freedom/2025/04/29/letter-to-the-university-of-notre-dame-expressing-concern-over-the-cancellation-of-a-keynote-lecture-by-professor-eman-abdelhadi
https://inthesetimes.com/article/notre-dame-cancels-eman-abdelhadi-talk-palestine
https://www.ndsmcobserver.com/article/2025/04/a-statement-from-the-2025-notre-dame-student-peace-conference-co-chairs-on-the-disinvite-of-dr-eman-abdelhadi-as-a-keynote-speaker
https://www.ndsmcobserver.com/article/2025/04/hb9vzt3jonjr