Shame on Syracuse University Press

In March 2010 Syracuse University Press (SUP) published Lahore with Love: Growing Up with Girlfriends, Pakistani-Style by TDR Contributing Editor Fawzia Afzal-Khan. The book is a melange of memoir, drama, and fiction—all of it concerning Afzal-Khan's growing up, working in, leaving, and then returning to Pakistan. Lahore with Love is scathing, moving, humorous, and political: a feminist-activist-performer's take on her native land. Upon publication, the book received excellent reviews and positive readers' responses (see boxes for a few examples). Lahore with Love seemed poised to become both a critical and popular success.

But then the shit hit the fan.

One of the targets of Afzal-Khan's satire was a figure she dubbed "Madina." The real-life Madeeha Gauhar—the artistic director of Lahore's very important activist Ajoka Theatre—claimed that Madina was a thinly veiled representation of her. Gauhar threatened to sue Afzal-Khan and SUP. With no apparent investigation and no consultation with Afzal-Khan, the Press with unseemly haste exercised its "termination of contract" clause and withdrew the book from sale.

Apparently frightened by the cost of legal action, SUP tucked its tail between its legs and ran away. I ask: Was the Press right in exercising its legal option? Read selections from the core documents TDR has gathered and make up your own mind. What of Gauhar's claim? What of SUP's almost instant collapse? Ought SUP have stood with its author? And once Afzal-Khan's lawyer in Pakistan obtained from the courts a stay preventing Gauhar from suing, why didn't SUP resume selling Lahore with Love? In a time when tenure is melting away as fast as the polar ice cap, a time when universities are corporatizing and slashing budgets, isn't this cave-in of a university press one more sign of the erosion of humanist academia?

From SUP's Contract with Afzal-Khan

12 November 2008

2. [...] The Author makes the following representations and warranties: [...] the Work contains no matter that is libelous, obscene, or slanderous, is in the violation of any right of privacy or publicity, or is otherwise contrary to law.

[...]

16. Termination of contract.

[...] The Publisher shall have the right to terminate this agreement immediately upon written notice to the Author if: in the Publisher's reasonable opinion there appears to be substantial risk, if the work is published, of (a) liability to third persons, (b) governmental action against the Work, or (c) financial loss to the Publisher. [...]

From Shazil Ibrahim, Madeeha Gauhar's Lawyer

23 April 2010

[...] Mrs. Gauhar is a well known and highly respected public figure. She has been active in promoting social change in Pakistan, particularly through the medium of theater. [...] My client is therefore shocked to read an entirely false, fabricated, defamatory, scandalous, malicious, and utterly disrespectfully depiction of her and her family in the book titled "Lahore with Love" authored by Fawzia Afzal-Khan ("Author") and published by Syracuse University Press ("Publisher") [...]. Although the book does not name our client (referring to her as 'Madina', 'Maddy', 'Mad/medea'), however it is obvious to anyone reading the book, including all those who even remotely know of her, that the entire chapter titled 'Mad/medea' is a depiction (however false and fabricated) of Mrs. Gauhar and her family. [...] The references in the book to my client and her family have lowered her in the eyes of the right thinking people of the society, and have also caused, with deliberate intent, needless embarrassment, distress and anxiety to my client and those near and dear to her. In fact, it would not be incorrect to say that the Author has left no stone unturned to disgrace and humiliate Mrs. Gauhar; repeatedly using such disgraceful expression as "bloody bitch", "you are a whore not a woman", "madwoman", "Mad's performance as the husband-murdering adulteress" etc. throughout the chapter. [...] Mrs. Gauhar is appalled that a reputable publisher would, in sheer violation of her legal rights, go ahead and publish such non-sense without even bothering to verify facts. It is worth noting that even...