Against Misinformation & Defamation - For Academic Integrity

Against Misinformation and Defamation

Protect Academic Integrity, Academic Freedom, and Safety

I am the author of the multi-award-winning Architecture of Counterrevolution: The French Army in Northern Algeria (Zurich: gta Verlag , 2017, 2022), which was translated into French as Architecture de la contre-révolution: L’armée française dans le nord de l’Algérie (Paris: éditions B42 , 2019). The book was based on my ETH-Medal-winning dissertation Architecture of Counterrevolution: The French Army in Algeria, which was defended at the Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture, ETH Zurich in 2016, and supervised by Professors Tom Avermaete, the late Jean-Louis Cohen, and Philip Ursprung. The book received numerous prestigious awards, including the 2020 Spiro Kostof Book Award by the Society of Architectural Historians, the 2018 Silver Book Award by the Festival International du Livre d'Art et du Film (FILAF ), and the 2018 Best Book Award in Theory of Art by the FILAF. The French translation was part of the 2019 Architecture Books Selection by L'Architecture d'Aujourd'hui and has received extensive media coverage, including Mediapart and Le Monde.

On March 19, 2024, the book was defamed by a German professor in a Swiss German-language daily newspaper published in Zurich, where I was living at that time. A few days later, I solicited a lawyer to file a formal request for the Right of Reply to the newspaper to correct the false information about my open-access dissertation and my published book. In April 2024, the newspaper rejected the request despite the false information. My colleagues at the institute where I was a visiting professor at the time sent a letter to the Rector of the institution where the German professor is employed denouncing the misinformation and defamation. In May 2024, I found a death threat on the door of my faculty office, which was reported to my institution’s Threat Management and Zurich Police. Subsequently, students launched a petition to ask for accountability and legal action. In June 2024, I reached out to the Ombudsperson at the German professor’s university, requesting an investigation for academic misconduct of their employee. My host institution supported the letter. In July 2024, the Ombudsperson rejected our request. Therefore, it is necessary to file a criminal lawsuit as well as a civil lawsuit to defend academic integrity and academic freedom, denounce misinformation and defamation, and protect civil rights and personal safety.

As a visiting professor in 2023–2024, I could not benefit from the legal support of my host institution in Zurich, where I also defended my dissertation and published my book. Yet, the subsequent legal costs associated with the two lawsuits are very high. Therefore, I warmly welcome the support of the academic community and anyone who believes in the protection of academic integrity and academic freedom, as well as the denunciation of misinformation, discrimination, intimidation, and hate speech. Donations can be made anonymously. A timeline of the two legal cases will be published here . If we win the cases, donations under CHF 1,000 will be offered to Scholars at Risk, an international network whose mission is to protect scholars and promote academic freedom. Those who transferred more than CHF 1,000 can reclaim their amount via email: <lawsuits(AT)samiahenni.com> if we win the cases .

Thank you very much for your critical support!

Samia Henni

For more information:

• ETH Zurich students, faculty and alumni sign letter of support for Dr Samia Henni after she received a death threat by Daniel Jonas Roche, The Architect's Newspaper, June 2024

• D-ARCH stands behind the scholarly work of Samia Henni, June 2024

• Misinformation and defamation newspaper article, March 2024