BY HANK REICHMAN
Matthew Hedges and Daniela Tejada
In April I was privileged to appear on a program on academic freedom at New York University with Matthew Hedges and his wife, Daniela Tejada, sponsored by NYU’s AAUP chapter. Hedges is a British scholar who was held in solitary confinement in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) for almost six months after being accused of espionage while on a research trip to that country. Hedges went to the UAE for two weeks to research his thesis but was arrested at Dubai airport May 5, 2018, when he attempted to return home and spent months being regularly threatened with torture and interrogated for up to 15 hours a day. He was accused by the UAE of spying on behalf of MI6, the British Secret Intelligence Service tasked with covert overseas collection and analysis of human intelligence, and forced to record and sign a confession.
In November 2018 Hedges was sentenced to life in prison in a hearing that lasted less than five minutes, with no lawyer present. But after an international campaign led by his wife, Hedges was pardoned and released. NYU faculty members were especially active in this effort. However, the UAE government still contends he was “100 percent” a spy.
The couple has spoken throughout Europe and the U.S. in support of Hedges’ innocence and against his gross mistreatment. (See this interview with the NYU campus newspaper.) Now Hedges has lodged a complaint with the UN over his treatment. The Guardian reports:
In a letter to the UN high commissioner for human rights, Michelle Bachelet, his lawyer, Rodney Dixon QC, said Hedges’ treatment in the UAE breached his human rights and he was coerced into making a confession in “fundamentally unfair proceedings”.
Dixon added: “The UN working group on arbitrary detention has the power to investigate Matthew’s arbitrary detention and make findings about the very serious violations of his most basic rights. It should not be allowed to stand and stain his reputation for life.
“The FCO [Foreign and Commonwealth Office] should be striving to clear Matthew’s name, but are refusing to get involved. We trust that the UN will come to Matthew’s aid and safeguard his human rights.”
Hedges’ complaint comes just a week after a British soccer fan, Ali Issa Ahmad, filed a similar complaint to the UN. He says he was detained and alleges he was tortured while visiting the country to watch Asian Cup matches because he wore a Qatar shirt.
American journalism scholar Matt Duffy, currently on the faculty at Kenesaw State University in Georgia, was forced to leave the UAE in 2012 after his contract as an assistant professor at Zayed University was abruptly terminated and his residency cancelled. Writing on his personal blog, Duffy explained:
During my two-year tenure, my colleagues and others constantly warned me that such a fate could await me. Still, I felt I had a duty as an academic and professor at Zayed University to speak and teach with minimal reservation about my area of expertise—journalism, international media law and communication ethics.
I wrote columns in Dubai’s Gulf News about press freedom and other issues. I taught international media law in my classes, including accurate appraisal of the UAE’s media regulation and how it differed from other approaches. I also helped organize events that allowed for public discussion and debate of Emirati issues. I blogged and tweeted about sensitive subjects—particularly how local press coverage differed from international counterparts. I launched a student chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, a prestigious U.S. journalism organization. And these students organized a celebration of the U.N.’s World Press Freedom Day in May. . . .
I didn’t move to the UAE hoping to garner attention and get booted out as a security threat. I observed the landscape, tried to decipher the “red lines” that I shouldn’t cross, and listened to the words of the country’s leaders who constantly stress the importance of education to the development of the nation. H.H. Sheikh Nahyan bin Mubarak, the Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research, told faculty at a recent convocation that he wanted the university to “engage with the community.” I followed the example of other local university professors who offered constructive observations from an academic perspective.
Tales of ex-pats who are mysteriously whisked away for various offenses are fairly plentiful in the United Arab Emirates. Some of them take on an apocryphal tone. I thought it might be helpful to document exactly how my departure was orchestrated.
The Abu Dhabi Education Council (ADEC) informed my wife, Dr. Ann Duffy, of the news of her immediate termination in mid-June. She was told that H.E. Dr. Mugheer Al Khaili was instructed to terminate Ann’s contract and revoke her visa. My wife had served as Division Manager for P-12 Policy, Planning and Performance Management with ADEC for more than a year and had received positive feedback on her performance. She holds a PhD in education policy and has 25 years of experience. She was also serving as chair of the school board for the American Community School, the school affiliated with the U.S. Embassy in Abu Dhabi.
I learned about my fate six weeks later via a phone call from Zayed University’s provost, Larry Wilson. He also said that the order came from outside the university system and that Shiekh Nahyan had tried to appeal the directive. This appeal explains the delay in notification between my wife’s termination and my own. After hearing of my wife’s termination, we assumed my notice would be arriving soon and were surprised after a few days that we hadn’t heard anything from Zayed University.
No other information accompanied our termination orders, other than that they originated from outside of the respective organizations. It appears certain that these directives to fire my wife and I originated from the security forces, although we have no more information than presented here.
I should note that at around the same time the university was also told to terminate the contract of one of my faculty colleagues. He had served with distinction in the College of Communication and Media Sciences for 14 years. No explanation accompanied his dismissal either.
The experiences of Hedges and Duffy should increase pressure on the NYU administration, which maintains a controversial overseas campus in Abu Dhabi. In November, 2017, faculty of the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute signed a letter to NYU President Andrew Hamilton declaring that the department would end its relationship with the Abu Dhabi campus until the university resolves issues of access and academic freedom. In addition, faculty in the Gallatin School of Individualized Study voted by an overwhelming majority to encourage colleagues not to teach or participate in academic events at the campus. The actions came after journalism professor Mohamad Bazzi, a Lebanese-born Shia, and Arang Keshavarzian, an Iranian-born politics professor, were denied visas because of their “Shia origins.” Also in response, members of the NYU AAUP chapter wrote an open letter condemning the moves as “a gross violation of the AAUP’s basic principles of academic freedom.”
Previously, Professor Andrew Ross and NYU alumna Kristina Bogos were denied entry to the UAE because their academic pursuits were deemed critical of the government. In December, 2016, officers of the NYU AAUP chapter wrote President Hamilton that “both the banning and the investigation of Bogos (and Ross) have serious implications for the state of academic freedom at NYU.”
In December 2018, NYU Abu Dhabi history professor Lauren Minsky told a campus forum in New York about her experience of being tailed by a car she believed was government police while driving down a highway in Abu Dhabi.
“This was not surveillance but harassment and they’re sending a clear message to stop,” Minsky said. “I was left wondering for the rest of my time in Abu Dhabi, ‘stop what?’ I was almost paralyzed with disbelief by this whole incident and it made me withdraw a lot from campus life.”
Minsky reported the incident to the administration at NYUAD, but said, “I cannot emphasize this strongly enough but it was almost like nothing ever happened. Instead, there were various actions taken by the administration in wake of my reporting that basically made it impossible for my family to continue to work in the UAE.”
The situation in the UAE and the seeming complicity in denials of academic freedom in that state by the NYU administration are one example of growing threats to academic freedom across the globe. This Fall Academe magazine will devote a special issue, which I am guest editing, to coverage of some of these threats in countries as diverse as Canada, Britain, Hungary, Russia, China, and Brazil and to efforts by organizations like Scholars at Risk to address them.
