On 7 October 2026, Duke Academics and Staff for Justice in Palestine (Duke ASJP) submitted to the Duke University student paper, The Chronicle, the following letter challenging a story that doxxed a faculty member while covering an event the previous evening with a known Zionist harasser. The editor-in-chief, Dylan Halper, published The Chronicle story in the early hours of 29 September, around the same time he reached out by e-mail to a faculty member seeking their “comment” on the story.
ASJP submitted a response letter to The Chronicle that met the guidelines published on the website. It was individually signed by 11 members of ASJP, most of whom are also members of the Duke Chapter of the American Association of University Professors.
The Chronicle declined to publish it. After multiple e-mails and a phone call between a number of the authors of the ASJP letter and Halper, he refused to outline editorial standards in writing beyond “content concerns.” We determined that The Chronicle was following its well-worn method of ideological gatekeeping to protect power under the guise of caring about “facts” and being “independent.” After the phone call, we slightly revised the letter to address Halper’s stated concern with the word “doxxing” and requested that the letter be published by 16 October 2026, a reasonable timeline given the speed with which the paper published the original story and the damage it produced. Despite the word change, doxxing has cultural and social meanings related to identifying people to create harm and harassment, as well as legal meanings. The editor-in-chief himself noted in the phone call on 9 October that the speaker was concerned to name a specific person during his public event because he did not want to get into “trouble.”
On Monday, 19 October, the editorial page editor demanded essentially the same changes to dull criticism of The Chronicle and reinforce the Zionist narrative framing pushed by the speaker and the newspaper. As obedient stenographers of Zionism, The Chronicle‘s journalists continued to reproduce the very Palestine Exception noted in the letter. We informed Halper that we did not plan to “make the desired edits” in order to be “persuasive to” the readers of the paper.
The Chronicle prides itself on being an independent news source because it does not receive funds from the university. However, the paper is funded through donations, largely from wealthy alumni. Soft money support from the wealthy does not necessarily produce quality, independence, or accountability to the Duke community of readers.
Instead of publishing the ASJP protest and demands letter in The Chronicle, we publish it below with this preface.
We write to express our dismay at the manner of the Duke Chronicle‘s coverage of the 28 September 2026 Shai Davidai talk on campus and to voice related concerns about campus climate. The Chronicle chose to cover an event where Davidai repeatedly and disparagingly evoked “the head of gender studies” and relied on “hasbara” while doing so. The Chronicle then chose to name a professor who has been experiencing ongoing harassment based on inference and racial profiling. These editorial choices foreground ongoing questions about whether the Chronicle practices due diligence in stories it reports, how it chooses what to report, and ethical and research standards in reporting.
The uncritical coverage of the event and the number of Duke units and groups that sponsored it indicate a campus climate whereby education and events related to Palestine are subject to “The Palestine Exception.” In comparison to the Davidai event, which was apparently approved by Student Affairs despite the speaker’s track record of doxxing, threats, and harassment of Columbia students, faculty and staff, Duke university administrators and officers have repeatedly cancelled, refused permission, policed, or restricted educational or protest events sponsored by campus members and organizations in support of Palestine since August 2024. According to Duke’s pickets, protests, and demonstrations policy (PPD), among the most draconian of such policies at U.S. universities, holding or attending a protest without approval could result in serious consequences up to termination and expulsion.
We call on the Chronicle to remove the professor’s name from the story and apologize for naming them in a way that is likely to cause further harassment and threats. We call on the university administration to end the PPD policy, as a faculty committee reporting to Academic Council urged in 2025. We demand a university-wide recommitment to free expression and association, and academic freedom for all students and workers at Duke, including all staff, researchers, and teachers.
