There’s been a theft at the British Museum. Unlike the jewel heist at the Louvre last year, the story has not appeared on the covers of most Western newspapers. Its operation won’t be recreated in sensational detail on the daily news. And no one will be arrested. In fact, no one will ever be caught—though the silent alarm has been sounding for years. And that’s because the object of the theft wasn’t a painting or the Crown Jewels, but the history of an entire people. And the co-conspirators include an ever-increasing share of “elite” Western institutions.
Last week, the British Museum postponed a lecture that Paul Collins, keeper of the museum’s Department of the Middle East, was scheduled to deliver on the histories of ancient Israel and Judea. The ostensible reason for the postponement was the discovery that some 25 of those who had signed up for the lecture, which was planned for Jewish Culture Month, intended to disrupt the event. That seems like an odd reason to postpone a presentation about historical artifacts at a museum dedicated to preserving and illuminating the past.
Prominent research institutions—museums no less than universities—shouldn’t be in the habit of postponing or canceling events simply because a few miscreants might break the rules. We don’t close our banks just because some people might rob them. The solution to rule violators is to punish and deter them, not encourage them with victory.
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More fundamentally, the postponement gives those who threaten violence a curatorial role in the very institution whose history, methods, and purposes they reject. The British Museum declares its commitment to “all fields of human knowledge.” It describes its role as encouraging “critical scrutiny of all assumptions” and “open debate.” That commitment is consistent with the traditional role museums have played in open societies. The first museum, the famous Mouseion of Alexandria (built around 280 BCE), was a center of philosophical debate and research—not merely (or even primarily) a repository of historical objects. Stifling speech—whether about controversial or long-settled topics—would seem like an odd way of fulfilling the museum’s core commitments.
