A Lawsuit Over a Negative Review? Academic Discourse Goes “Boink”

In a development that every last commentator on higher education is characterizing as bizarre, troubling, and other words that get a lot of points in Scrabble, an NYU professor is being sued for libel in a French court by a Franco-Israeli academic. The offense: Refusing to remove a negative book review from the Web site of an academic journal.

Now, peer review is a sacred tradition and one of the hallmarks that distinguishes academic writing from Fark.com. Having fellow experts review our work ensures quality and prevents the intellectual equivalent of lead-tainted Chinese toys from entering the marketplace of ideas. It is also crucial for establishing a scholarly reputation. None of this seems to have bothered Karin Calvo-Goller when she made the decision to sue Joseph Weiler, editor-in-chief of the European Journal of International Law, in a French court for refusing the remove the review of her 564-page The Trial Proceedings of the International Criminal Court. (You can read their correspondence, in which Weiler basically begs Calvo-Goller not to embarrass herself and encourages her to instead post a rebuttal to the negative review, here.)

Though Calvo-Goller claims that the review could “cause harm to [her] professional reputation and academic promotion,” the irony is that her lawsuit’s repercussions are worse than any negative book review: She has made her lawsuit a cause célèbre, and we can safely say that her stock in the academic community is now nil. Threatening, and then carrying out, a lawsuit over a negative review is the legal equivalent of bringing a pistol to a faculty meeting. It’s just not done.

Furthermore, Calvo-Goller’s choice of a French court can only be described as blatant forum-shopping. Though she was educated and presumably born in France, her work and the review were written in English, she is resident in Israel,the journal in question is based in New York, and the reviewer, Thomas Weigend, is German. (You can read an informed article on jurisdictional issues here.) No matter how the French judge rules on the matter (in French law, cases like this are usually ruled on by a single judge), Weiler has been put to considerable expense and trouble.

On the positive side, the lawsuit is not likely to have a “chilling effect” on academic freedom and peer review, as Weiler and other commentators have maintained. This is clearly an outlying case and will inevitably end in even more embarrassment for Calvo-Goller. No, the real reason this case has attracted so much attention is schadenfreude. No matter whether it’s reality TV or academic blogs, we love watching people implode.