The College Fix

ANALYSIS: University of Maryland’s medical school cited vague ‘safety concerns’ to justify the quick cancellation of a talk by an Israeli surgeon. Emails obtained by The College Fix, however, show little  evidence of true safety concerns

When the University of Maryland School of Medicine cancelled a talk by Israeli Defense Forces doctor Elon Glassberg it cited “safety concerns” – but a College Fix review of more than 250 pages of emails found little to support that claim.

The newly obtained emails shed further light on how university leadership quickly cancelled the event after it announced the talk by Dr. Glassberg, an Israel Defense Forces surgeon and officer. The Council on Islamic Relations previously took credit for getting the event cancelled, as reported by The Fix.

The group said its members sent 6,000 emails in opposition to the dean and surgery department chair in hours. The Fix public records request only covered Jan. 13 to Jan. 16, so these emails likely occurred prior. However, none of the emails obtained by The Fix discuss CAIR specifically. Repeated attempts to get answers from the university yielded either no answer or similarly vague responses about “safety” issues.

One statement obtained by The Fix, a draft from Associate Dean for Public Affairs and Communications Christopher Hardwick, cites, in brackets, “threatening email messages.” That portion was left out of subsequent communications.

The trauma program director had cited a “reaction” as one reason for canceling the event.

“I am writing to apologize for cancelling our planned visit with you and your Grand Rounds presentation,” Dr. Thomas Scalea, director of the trauma program, wrote to Glassberg on the evening of Tuesday, Jan. 14. “Perhaps, I should have anticipated a reaction when I/we invited you to visit but I did not.”

“We received some emails which made me concerned about your personal safety and I also feared that your talk would possibly be interrupted,” Dr. Scalea wrote. “For both of those reasons, along with the Chair of Surgery, I made the decision to cancel the visit.”

Scalea initially backed the idea, first proposed by Dr. Samuel Galvagno, calling it a “superior idea” in an Oct. 2024 email. Galvagno did not respond to a request for comment on the situation.

The surgery chair, Dr. Christine Lau, wrote something slightly different in an email early in the morning of Wednesday, Jan. 15. She cited the possibility of “some debate” along with safety concerns in her email to Glassberg.

“I spoke to Dr. Scalea when I received indication we may have some debate and possibly safety issues that we had not foreseen and would not be prepared to handle,” Dr. Lau wrote. “Please know this was out of an abundance of caution, and I am truly sorry.”

After the email, Lau continued to work through the issues, as only some professors received the initial announcement on the Friday prior, while others received it on Monday due to an error.

“Key here…I didn’t see it until Monday,” Lau wrote to Stephanie Jordan, an administrator.

There are no emails received by Lau or Scalea, according to a College Fix review, that show or discuss any concrete threats.

Lau separately wrote to Bert O’Malley, the president and CEO of the University of Maryland Medical Center, for not thinking about the “potential ramifications” of the event. While Lau wrote in a separate email that she had not been informed of the event until Monday, January 13, her own correspondence contradicts that claim. In fact, she had been copied on the initial planning email for the event on October 23, 2024.

She did not respond to two emailed requests for comment from The Fix about how the “ramifications” would change if the school rescheduled the event. The Fix also asked her twice in the past week via email about why the possibility of “debate” would lead to the event being cancelled and for further information on the safety concerns.

The Fix found just three emails in opposition to the event sent to Dean Mark Gladwin or Dr. Lau – all of which came after the university already decided to cancel the event. Two appeared to be from community members. An unidentified professor also texted Associate Professor Anuj Gupta to complain about the speaker. Gupta then passed the text on to Lau, but that occurred after the decision to cancel had been made.

By contrast, the university received criticism from the Israeli ambassador to the United States, along with a Maryland delegate, the Baltimore Jewish Council, and the Maryland Jewish Alliance, which generated dozens of emails from its members.

The cancellation occurred without the knowledge of Dean Gladwin, according to an internal talking point note.

“Dean’s Office was not aware of this speaker being invited to grand rounds until Tuesday, January 13—and the decision to cancel the grand rounds that same day, was made without the Dean’s Office knowledge,” a note reads. Someone added the note to information for a Zoom meeting on the morning of Jan. 16 that was to include Drs. Lau, Gladwin, and Scalea as well as Delegate Jared Solomon, a Maryland Democrat who opposed the cancellation.

Delegate Solomon did not respond to two emailed requests for the comment in the past week about any specific safety issues discussed on the call. The Fix spoke to a staffer on Tuesday morning who said the delegate would respond.

Dean Gladwin, Scalea, and Lau all did not respond to similar questions. Instead, spokeswoman Deborah Kotz responded on behalf of all employees The Fix contacted. The Fix also reached out to campus police Chief Thomas Leone to ask for more information about the threats.

Kotz’s initial answer did little to address the questions about the safety concerns asked multiple times to university leaders.

The Fix also separately asked Kotz, as it did with other university leaders, to comment on if the cancellation is a form of the “heckler’s veto,” where the possibility of safety problems leads to an event being canceled. The Fix also asked which law enforcement officials had been consulted about the cancellation.

“Although Dr. Glassberg has not yet agreed to a rescheduled date, several members of the University of Maryland, Baltimore community, including University leadership, have reached out to Dr. Glassberg over the past few weeks to discuss this issue with him, and to re-extend our invitation for conducting his seminar in the near future,” Kotz told The Fix on Tuesday. “The invitation remains open.”

The Fix tried to reach Dr. Glassberg through the THOR Network, where he serves on the executive committee. The network did not respond to a request to send a message to Glassberg. The university redacted his email address from the public records provided to The Fix.

“As stated previously, this lecture was intended to focus exclusively on medical advances in trauma care,” Kotz said. “The lecture was announced three days before it was scheduled to take place.”

“Shortly after the lecture was announced, it became clear to the leadership of the Shock Trauma Center and the Department of Surgery that they were not, themselves, able to sufficiently address potential safety and logistical needs in such a short time frame,” Kotz said, not addressing the specific questions about what the safety concerns were.

The Fix followed up and asked for detailed information about the threats or at least if the school discussed the concerns with campus police or Baltimore County law enforcement. The Fix also shared obtained emails showing discussions had begun in October for the event and had been announced five days in advance.

Though Kotz asked for more time to response, the follow-up answer still did not provide any specific answers about safety issues, though she did share Dr. Glassberg had previously spoken at the medical school.

“When Dr. Glassberg was identified as a possible speaker in October, it was for a Grand Rounds academic session for the purpose of educating on innovations in trauma care,” Kotz said.

“Given that Dr. Glassberg has been a repeated guest at our institution, leadership of the Shock Trauma Center and Department of Surgery had not considered that the invitation might generate the need for more operational or safety planning than what ordinarily accompanies a Grand Rounds lecture,” Kotz said. “Any ground level decisions made in the moment by departmental leaders represented their best judgment given the timing and circumstances.”

The Fix had asked for specific information on the threats, offering possibilities such as a bomb threat.

A free speech expert said universities should not cancel events over safety concerns except in “serious” situations, but “must make good faith efforts to protect the expressive rights of the speaker.”

“This would include, for example, ensuring an adequate police presence and arresting anyone involved in violence,” Haley Gluhanich, a senior program officer at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, told The Fix via email.

“If there are threats truly so serious that an institution feels it has no other choice but to cancel or postpone an event, then the institution must report those threats to law enforcement,” Gluhanich, who works on FIRE’s campus rights advocacy team, told The Fix. “An institution also owes its campus full transparency as to what threats occurred and what actions were taken to address them before cancelling or postponing the event.”

“Otherwise, canceling or postponing an event because others are opposed to the speaker only incentivizes threats to future events and discourages speakers from visiting campus.”

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IMAGE: Thor Network

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