A Harvard professor has resigned from the Cambridge University Press (CUP) editorial board after the organization withheld a book from publication because it feared violent retaliation by Greek nationalists.

Professor of Anthropology Michael Herzfeld has accused CUP of infringing on academic freedom in the wake of its decision not to publish Anastasia Karakasidou's study on Greek-Macedonian identity.

CUP executives have defended their decision, saying that the organization's employees in Greece would be endangered by the book's publication.

The controversy over Karakasidou's work, Fields of Wheat, Rivers of Blood, stems from her assertion that residents of the Greek province Macedonia may consider themselves Slavo-Macedonian rather than Greek. The conclusion, if true, would threaten Greek authority in that region.

In the past, this issue has ignited militant activism by Greek nationalists. At the height of the controversy in the summer of 1994, Karakasidou herself received death threats from nationalists.

CUP representatives defended the organization in a February 9 article in The Times Higher by saying that the British embassy and the Foreign Office both "drew attention to recent cases of terrorist violence against other foreign cultural institutions in Greece that were associated with what were perceived to be 'anti-Greek' organizations."

CUP also noted in the article that no formal contract to publish the book had been signed.

But Karakasidou said in a telephone interview yesterday that after a year-long review and revision process, the book should have been published.

"That's the common practice in the academia," she said.

Endangered Academic Freedom?

Herzfeld has charged that CUP limited academic freedom by not printing the book.

"Academic freedom is a fragile plant," Herzfeld said. "It is the moral duty of the university presses to defend it as far as they are able to and [CUP] did not do that."

A Cambridge alumnus who had served on the CUP Editorial Board since 1989, Herzfeld was one of the editors of a series of ethnographic books about different countries. Karakasidou's books would have been the next in that series.

Herzfeld submitted his resignation to the board in late December because he said he felt that continuing on CUP's editorial board has become "incompatible with the principles governing my academic life."

In addition, Herzfeld and his colleague at the University of Minnesota, Stephen Gudeman, have circulated the so-called "Internet Manifesto," an e-mail message that asks professors to refrain from submitting manuscripts to CUP.