A prominent open-access science journal, eLife, has fired its editor-in-chief, Michael Eisen, in the wake of a dispute over his social-media posts.

On 23 October, Eisen, a geneticist at the University of California (UC), Berkeley, wrote on the social-media platform X (formerly Twitter): “I have been informed that I am being replaced as the Editor in Chief of @eLife for retweeting a @TheOnion piece that calls out indifference to the lives of Palestinian civilians.” The satirical Onion article, posted on 13 October, was entitled: “Dying Gazans Criticized For Not Using Last Words To Condemn Hamas.” Eisen, who is Jewish, posted a link on X accompanied by the word “Bingo”.

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A day after Eisen was fired, eLife’s board of directors issued a statement indicating that Eisen had been dismissed more broadly because “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”. eLife did not respond to Nature’s request for further comment.

An open letter protesting Eisen’s dismissal raises concerns about academic freedom, and about researchers’ perception of whether it is safe to express pro-Palestinian sentiments regarding the Israel-Hamas war. It has so far been signed by more than 2,000 people. Of those, more than 400 are anonymous, which “in itself speaks volumes”, the letter says. The decision has spurred an exodus of many eLife editors, and Federico Pelisch, a biologist at the University of Dundee, UK, has stepped down from the journal’s board, in protest of the firing.

“People can’t be cancelled for expressing political views that are unpopular,” says Joshua Dubnau, a geneticist at the State University of New York at Stony Brook who helped to initiate the protest letter. “If eLife wants to decide that ‘this guy has a personality that isn’t representing us well’, they have that right. But they did it in the context of this moment. I think that’s the issue.”

History of conflict

Randy Schekman, a Nobel Prize-winning cell biologist at UC Berkeley who was eLife’s editor-in-chief before Eisen, suspects the decision stems from ongoing issues between Eisen and the board, with the recent post to X being the last straw. “He’s extraordinarily controversial,” Schekman says. “He has a history of inflammatory and often profane statements on his Twitter account.”

“I have been involved in controversies,” Eisen told Nature in an interview — including one strange one nicknamed ‘Wormgate’, in which a crude tweet Eisen posted about worms devolved into a debate about oppression. The board “told me to stop tweeting about eLife from my personal account, which I stopped doing a long time ago,” Eisen says. “They didn’t like that I swore.”

Open-access journal eLife announces ‘preprint first’ publishing model

Eisen’s changes to the journal’s publication strategy have also proven divisive. Eisen, who became editor-in-chief of eLife in 2019, pioneered a new policy, in which the journal works only with articles that have already been posted to a preprint server. If the journal decides to send an article out for peer review, it then guarantees it will publish the article, and posts reviewer comments and a short editorial assessment of the work’s significance alongside the paper. eLife charges authors US$2,000 per review.

Several eLife editors resigned in protest over the policy, citing issues with Eisen’s willingness to listen to feedback and concerns over the journal’s reputation. Some in the community called for Eisen’s firing. “I have certainly not always responded in an ideal manner” to criticisms, Eisen admits.

“I’m not afraid of pissing people off,” he adds. The board “clearly view this as me having done one too many somethings. Somehow, I’m a powder keg for them that they don’t like.”

The journal’s statement says that the “board remains committed to eLife’s ‘Publish – Review – Curate’ model”.

Eduardo Franco, a senior editor at eLife and cancer epidemiologist at McGill University in Montreal, told Nature that Eisen’s “passion for making eLife a force in the preprint-review model was admirable. Occasionally, his behaviour would deviate from the usual gravitas expected from an editor-in-chief”. The informality of social media combined with the tension of current geopolitical events creates “the conditions for a perfect storm”, Franco says.

Extramural activities

It is not unprecedented for academics to be fired over ‘extramural speech’ — comments made outside of work. These cases usually hinge on extremely inflammatory statements, says Sophia McClennen, founding director of Pennsylvania State University’s Center for Global Studies in University Park.

In one prominent case in 2014, Steven Salaita, a scholar of Native American issues who is of Jordanian and Palestinian descent, had a job offer at the University of Illinois revoked because of a series of tweets violently critical of Israel’s bombardment of Gaza in 2014. Salaita sued the university for breach of contract and violation of his free speech; in 2015 the university paid a $875,000 settlement while admitting no wrongdoing.

The protest letter in support of Eisen expresses the view that there are some good reasons for removing a leader from their role because of problematic public statements, including those that express views “antithetical to the value or mission of the organization”, that suggest ignorance on matters key to the job, are explicitly disrespectful to colleagues or are hate speech. The protest letter says that Eisen’s posts on X do not fall into such categories.

Following up on X on 14 October, after he promoted the Onion article, Eisen said that “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.” On 7 October, Hamas, an Islamist organization that governs the Gaza Strip and has been designated a terrorist group by some countries, launched attacks killing more than 1,400 people and kidnapping more than 200, according to Israeli officials. Israel declared war soon after and has been bombarding Gaza, where Hamas is hiding. More than 5,500 Palestinians have been killed, according to the health ministry in Gaza.

Some responders on X expressed surprise that anyone would find Eisen’s statements controversial, while others were deeply offended on behalf of Israelis who have suffered in the recent violence. Ehud Cohen, a molecular biologist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, posted on X: “I will not review and will not publish in eLife as long as you are the EIC.”

McClennen says it can sometimes be hard to evaluate whether there are legitimate reputational costs for an organization due to an employee’s extramural speech. “That can be a grey area,” she says. But, if Eisen’s firing was based on the posts on X earlier this week, then she thinks it was “inappropriate”.