On October 24, Michael Eisen was fired as the Editor-in-Chief of the scientific journal eLife for quote tweeting The Onion’s satirical article that criticised every dying Palestinian for not condemning the October 7 attacks on Israel by Hamas. Following the backlash, Prof. Eisen clarified himself the same day in another tweet where he said: “Every sane person on Earth is horrified and traumatised by what Hamas did and wants it to never happen again. All the more so as a Jew with [an] 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.”
Soon after his clarification tweet, eLife journal joined the issue with a tweet, which has since been deleted, saying: “eLife condemns the atrocities committed by Hamas last week. We wish to highlight that, while the opinions of eLife staff and editorial board are their own, they are covered by our code of conduct. We take breaches of this seriously and investigate accordingly.”
On the day he was fired, the journal issued a statement that clearly cited the reason for firing Prof. Eisen. The statement said: “Mike has been given clear feedback from the board that 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. It is against this background that a further incidence of this behaviour [the October 14 quote tweet] has contributed to the board’s decision.”
