In recent days, two Finnish universities canceled my scheduled appearances on their campuses, turning me briefly into a minor celebrity in the country. Åbo Akademi University, in Turku, barred me from delivering my keynote address at an international conference on antisemitism set to take place on its campus. The University of Helsinki killed what was supposed to be a public talk. The title of both lectures: “From the Cold War to University Campuses Today: The USSR, the Third World, and Contemporary Antizionist Discourse.” The two schools caved to a smear campaign orchestrated by a “pro-Palestinian” Instagram account that weaponized my pro-Israel social media posts for the purpose.

In the U.S., the censorship of “wrong-thinking” speakers, including Jews who hold Zionist beliefs, has become so commonplace that it’s practically a nonevent. But this was Finland’s first major controversy of this kind, and my photo got splashed across the local press. It was also a first for me, forcing me to confront head-on the same cowardice, hypocrisy, and stupidity that the American academy has displayed for years—especially in the wake of Oct. 7.

That the incident took place in Finland was particularly ironic for me, given the topic of my lecture and my background as an ex-Soviet Jew. For former Soviet citizens, Finland is indelibly linked to the history of the Bolshevik revolution. Not only did Lenin spend extended periods of time there, but also he and Stalin first met at a 1905 Bolshevik conference in the Finnish city of Tampere.

During the Cold War, Finland—forced to maneuver to retain its independence in the shadow of the neighboring USSR (see: Finlandization)—adopted a servile stance toward the communist superpower. Criticism of the USSR was taboo and self-censorship was rife—all of which Finnish media helped to enforce. Soviet influence extended to the country’s intellectual, political, and cultural elites. In the 1970s, a scandal broke out when one of Finland’s municipalities successfully inserted materials from the Finnish-Soviet Friendship Society—a branch of the USSR’s global “friendship societies” influence network—as well as from Soviet textbooks into the school curriculum for grades 1-9, teaching Finnish children that there was no pollution in the USSR and that socialist central planning was superior to capitalism.