New Delhi: Michael Eisen, editor-in-chief of open-access life-sciences journal eLife, has been sacked by its governing board, allegedly for endorsing a satirical article expressing sympathy for Palestinians caught in the war between Israel and Hamas.
On Tuesday, Eisen posted on X that he had been informed of being “replaced” as the editor-in-chief of the journal for endorsing an article in The Onion that called out “indifference to the lives of Palestinian civilians”.
A Jewish person with Israeli family, Eisen on 14 October had reposted twice the satirical article headlined: “Dying Gazans criticized for not using last words to condemn Hamas.”
In his endorsement captions, Eisen first said “Bingo”, and then followed it up with: “The Onion speaks with more courage, insight and moral clarity than the leaders of every academic institution put together. I wish there were a @TheOnion university.”
Eisen’s tweet ignited a backlash within the scientific community for his perceived indifference to the 1,400 Israelis killed in Hamas’s 7 October rampage through its southern communities. Hamas, which controls Gaza, also took over 200 hostages.
Israel has since launched a blistering aerial attack on the Gaza Strip, and also bombed the West Bank, with the aim to “fully dismantle” the militant network. Over 6,500 Palestinians have died, according to the Hamas health ministry, amid rising concerns that Israel’s blockade of fuel, food, electricity and water to the besieged enclave would precipitate a humongous humanitarian crisis.
Meanwhile, several prominent scientists have resigned from eLife to protest Eisen’s sacking, while the nonprofit’s governing board said in a statement: “Mike has been given clear feedback from the board that his approach to leadership, communication and social media has at key times been detrimental to the cohesion of the community we are trying to build and hence to eLife’s mission. It is against this background that a further incidence of this behaviour has contributed to the board’s decision.”
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‘Not afraid to piss people off’
The scientist did not retreat in the face of the criticism from peers, posting on X on 14 October: “Every sane person on Earth is horrified and traumatized by what Hamas did and wants it to never happen again. All the more so as a Jew with Israeli family. But I am also horrified by the collective punishment already being meted out on Gazans, and the worse that is about to come… The Onion is not making light of the situation. And nor am I. These articles are using satire to make a deadly serious point about this horrific tragedy.”
Eisen, a geneticist at the University of California (UC), Berkeley, was in 2019 named editor-in-chief of the journal which is funded in part by two of the largest research foundations, American nonprofit Howard Hughes Medical Institute Inc., and the London-based Wellcome Trust.
Eisen told American academic journal Science that he met with eLife’s board on 19 October to discuss his tweets and was asked to resign “without much explanation other than that the tweet had caused problems for eLife… The board doesn’t want eLife to be embroiled in controversies and they look at me, I guess, as someone who makes things controversial.”
Eisen said the board told him he would be fired if he did not resign, but he refused.
To the British scientific journal Nature, Eisen said he had been involved in controversies before, asserting he was not afraid of “pissing people off”. The board “clearly view this as me having done one too many somethings. Somehow, I am a powder keg for them that they don’t like”, the scientist said.
Shortly after Eisen announced he had been fired, Lara Urban, a reviewing editor for eLife, posted on X that she too was resigning from her position in the journal. A genomics researcher at Helmholtz Munich, Urban said: “Mike’s dismissal for expressing his personal views sets a dangerous precedent for freedom of speech in our academic community, and it validates cyber-bullying as a successful and legitimate tool to get scientists with controversial opinions fired.”
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