Professor Quits Over Alleged Censorship of Seminars

Mark Trahant, an endowed professor of journalism at the University of North Dakota, said he’s quitting because the institution won’t let him hold seminars on the Dakota Access oil pipeline protest, the Associated Press reported. Trahant said he proposed two pipeline protest topics as part of a journalism lecture series he was planning, and both were rejected. Last year, he said, he wanted to hear from reporters who covered the protests, and this year he wanted to talk about social media’s role in the same events. Trahant did not specify who turned down his requests but said he was told that the university’s "senior administration" feared the state Legislature would retaliate against the campus if lectures on the pipeline protests proceeded. He said he was “disgusted” that the university did not seem interested in being a policy leader in the state. The university in a statement denied any suggestion that it was trying to censor Trahant based on political concerns.