PIETER W. VAN DER HORST is complaining that the University of Utrecht censored his farewell lecture. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency summarizes the story:

Dutch issue focuses on Muslim anti-Semitism
A Dutch professor accused the president of his university of suppressing free speech by cutting out parts of a talk on Muslim anti-Semitism.

Pieter W. van der Horst, a professor of New Testament and Judaism, made the accusations after Willem Gispen, president of Utrecht University, cut passages from a van der Horst speech. Gispen said the passages are “offensive to a Muslim audience” and “unscholarly.”

Van der Horst was allowed to deliver the first half of the speech, which focused on Christian anti-Semitism.

The Dutch press has covered the dispute between the two men, which also may have been influenced by van der Horst having to resign his position after budget cuts.

I'm quoting the whole story, since I'm doubtful that the link is a permanent one. (It's currently under "Breaking News" at the JTA website.)

In addition the Dhimmi Watch blog translates a longer and more informative article from the Dutch newspaper Trouw. (I don't know Dutch and cannot vouch for the accuracy of the translation.) Excerpt:

The text of the lecture landed quite some time ago on the desk of Prof. Dr. W.H. Gispen, rector magnificus of Utrecht University. Van der Horst was called to justify himself before a commision of four. In the Nieuw Israelitisch Weekblad he says: “The Muslim students might make trouble, the rector could ‘not even guarantee my safety’, the lecture was ‘below scholarly standards’.”

In his farewell lecture ‘The Myth of Jewish Cannibalism’ Van der Horst wanted to call attention among other things to “a great global problem, namely that part of the Islamic world has taken over the torch of hatred for the Jews from the nazis and is carrying it forward enthusiastically. The Islamisation of European Antisemitism is one of the most horrendous developments of the last decades.”

In the incriminated passage the professor foresaw he would be accused of ‘islamophobia’. “But one should never close one’s eyes to matters one does not like to see or which don’t fit a picture of the world that is often determined by ideological blinkers.”

The University is replying that they urged rather than ordered him to delete the passages. Professor van der Horst's work focuses on ancient Judaism (some of it is listed here) and I am well acquainted with a good bit of it. I should be very surprised if he produced something below scholarly standards in a public lecture. I don't think that the possibility of students protesting should be a factor in such situations. And if it's true that the University could not even guarantee his safety, then they have a serious problem that extends far beyond this single incident.

Some excerpts from the speech and more coverage in the Dutch media are posted in a comment to another post on the same blog. There seems to have been an earlier version of the lecture in circulation which contained things that van der Horst says he would not have presented in the actual lecture, which makes it more complicated. In the version intended for presentation it seems he included some severe criticisms of the policies of the University of Utrecht and suggested that University appointments in Islamic studies should go to people who are willing to address the negative ("sinister") side of the subject as well as the positive. I hope someone translates the whole address into English. I want to see for myself what it says in full context and also which specific parts the University wanted him to cut.

(Heads-up, Ellen Birnbaum.)

UPDATE (1 July): More here.