U.S. District Court Judge Donovan Frank dismissed a lawsuit filed by the Turkish Coalition of America against the University of Minnesota. The lawsuit arose from materials posted on the university’s Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies (CHGS) website, including a list of websites CHGS considered “unreliable” for purposes of conducting scholarly research, reads the statement posted on center’s website.  

The Turkish Coalition claimed the university violated its constitutional rights, and committed defamation, by including the Turkish Coalition website on the “unreliable” websites list.

However, the federal court held that materials on the CHGS website reflected the opinions of the university and its faculty regarding the reliability of the various websites, including the Turkish Coalition website. The court dismissed the lawsuit, as the University website material was protected by the principle of academic freedom, which gives the university and its faculty a broad right to express their views and engage in scholarly commentary and critique.