Top Architecture Journal Collapses Over Antisemitic Gaza Issue

The Journal of Architectural Education (JAE), the leading scholarly publication in the field of architecture, has come under intense scrutiny and internal collapse after it planned a fall 2025 issue accusing Israel of genocide and apartheid, while glorifying Hamas’s October 7 terror attack as “resistance.”

The journal’s call for papers described Hamas’s mass murder of Israelis as the “rupture of settler containment” and encouraged submissions theorizing “genocide, ecocide, spaciocide, terracide, and urbicide” allegedly perpetrated by Israel. It praised “siege and prison breaks” as tools of “anti-colonial life- and land-protection,” while failing to acknowledge Israel’s right to exist or Hamas’s role as a terrorist organization.

The planned theme prompted outrage from a coalition of nearly 700 architects under Architects United Against Antisemitism, who condemned the issue’s “antisemitic rhetoric and blood libels.” The Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) JAE’s publisher—canceled the issue in February after legal review concluded the content likely violated state-level IHRA antisemitism laws and could jeopardize university funding.

The fallout was swift. JAE’s entire editorial board resigned in protest, releasing a letter titled “F*ck the ACSA” and demanding the reinstatement of a fired interim editor and publication of the canceled issue. The board, which included faculty from Columbia, MIT, Barnard, Princeton, and others, had endorsed the issue unanimously despite warnings from ACSA legal counsel.

Internal documents revealed that the Trump administration’s executive orders on campus antisemitism and pressure from state governors prompted universities to reconsider ties with ACSA, which receives over half of its funding from member institutions.

The editorial board’s refusal to acknowledge Hamas’s terror or Israel’s right to self-defense highlights how antisemitic activism has permeated even apolitical academic fields. Their framing of October 7 as architectural resistance rather than terrorism ignores the brutal murder, rape, and hostage-taking of civilians.

As Israel and Jewish communities worldwide confront rising antisemitism in academia, the collapse of this journal's editorial leadership offers a powerful example of accountability and the need for vigilance when hate masquerades as scholarship.

Help expose academic antisemitism and defend historical truth share this article or subscribe to our newsletter for more reports that matter.