- The Association of University Schools of Architecture cites “significant risks” at a personal and editorial level as the reason for its decision.
- Executive editor MacLaine Clutter says he was fired for speaking out against the planned release's cancellation
LONDON: The Association of University Schools of Architecture has abandoned plans to launch its Journal of Architectural Education, which was to have been dedicated to Palestine, in autumn 2025 and sacked the publication's interim executive editor.
The decision followed a vote by the association's board of directors on February 21 that identified “significant risks” at both a personal and editorial level, The Architect's Newspaper reported over the weekend.
“This decision was made following a long series of difficult discussions within the organization regarding the potential risks associated with publishing this matter,” the board said.
“The ACSA Council determined that the risks associated with publishing this issue have been significantly increased as a result of new actions by the US federal administration, as well as other actions at the state level.
“These significant risks include personal threats to journal editors, authors and reviewers, as well as ACSA volunteers and staff. They also include legal and financial risks facing the organisation as a whole.”
That same day, the association fired the magazine's interim executive editor, MacLane Clutter, who is also an associate professor at the University of Michigan's Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning.
Clutter, whose post at the magazine was due to last until 2026, told The Architect's Newspaper he was sacked because he refused to support the decision to cancel the issue and accused the association of being “on the wrong side of history”.
He added: “I am deeply disappointed by the actions of the ACSA Council. This decision represents a flagrant violation of the principles of academic freedom, intellectual integrity and ethical science that the organisation claims to uphold.”
Founded in 1912, ACSA is an international organization representing academic architecture programs and departments, primarily in the United States and Canada. It publishes the Journal of Architectural Education and Technology: Architecture + Design.
Plans for the journal's fall 2025 launch included a focus on “Israel's ongoing genocidal campaign against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip” and “relevant reflections on the implications of this historical moment for design, research, and education in architecture,” according to a call for papers published last fall.
The issue's editors, including Palestinian scholar Nora Akavi, an associate professor at Cooper Union in New York, criticized the issue's cancellation and Clutter's dismissal as part of a broader trend of censorship in the United States and Europe of Palestine-related topics.
They said they were “dismayed by the decision” but “not surprised” given that ACSA had tried to block plans for the matter before the call for submissions was issued in September 2024. They accused the organisation of using “new actions by the US presidential administration” as a pretext for its latest moves.
ACSA said the autumn 2025 edition would have a different theme and that it was “assessing its options for the journal within a broader framework”.
The Spring 2025 issue, titled “Architecture Beyond Extraction,” which explores the relationship between architecture, resource extraction, and resource use, will be published in the coming weeks as planned.
