SPACE May 2025 (No. 690)
JAE homepage
In Mar., it became known that the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) had canceled their planned special issue about Palestine as they dismissed the interim executive editor, the highest position within the Journal of Architectural Education (JAE). ACSA is a non-profit organisation composed of about 100 architecture schools in the U.S. and Canada, and it has published its official academic journal, JAE, since 1947. The special issue in question (Vol. 79, No. 2) was scheduled to be published this fall, on the theme of spatial politics, colonialism and occupation, and resistance in the Palestinian region. However, on Feb. 21, the ACSA Board of Directors abruptly decided to cancel the issue, expressing concern that some state governments might interpret the issue as anti-Israel. The decision appears to have been driven by a sense of crisis whereby if public universities affiliated with ACSA reconsidered their relationship due to political pressures, it may well impact the financial stability of the entire organisation. The interim executive editor McLain Clutter, who opposed the decision, was dismissed from his role. On Mar. 10, 20 editorial board members jointly announced their resignation in an open letter and criticised the decision of ACSA as ‘academic censorship in response to political pressure’. Since then, the JAE editorial board has remained vacant. ACSA announced plans to form a special committee to review JAE’s editorial structure, the independence of editorial authority, and its standards for addressing political issues. However, the new committee has not yet been officially established.