Swedish academic Ann Heberlein was booted from American crowdfunding platform Kickstarter Thursday after trying to raise money for a book studying the link between rape and immigration, Dagens Nyheter reports.
In Heberlein’s planned book, entitled “Rape and Culture – A survey of group violence in Sweden 2012-2017,” the academic seeks to “perform a statistical analysis of all convictions in group violence targets in 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017, taking into account the perpetrator’s age and birth.”
The Swedish government no longer keeps statistics on the ethnic backgrounds of rape offenders, Heberlein claims, and so this information is desperately needed.
FLASH: @kickstarter has, for some reason, suspended @AnnHHeberlein crowdfunding. Heberlein is a well known Swedish scholar in ethics.https://t.co/X5GGFVPqY4
We will get back with further information asap.
Kickstarter har suspenderat Heberleins bokprojekt “Våldtäkt och kultur”
— Ledarsidorna.se (@ledarsidorna_se) January 26, 2018
Though the book was planned as a simple statistical analysis, Kickstarter banned the project for “hateful or offensive content,” according to Dagens Nyheter.
“As previous research shows that men from North Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia are overrepresented in sexual offenses, this is extremely relevant to investigate – not least as the increase in rape coincides with a very large immigration of men from these regions,” Heberlein wrote on the project’s Kickstarter page.
The project raised 160,000 SEK, or approximately $19,000 before Kickstarter suspended it.
