On Wednesday, Mr. Khalil canceled a higher-education conference that was to launch the new online publication because of concerns about academic freedom in the United Arab Emirates, where the event was to be held this weekend.
That step came less than a week after a similar move by the London School of Economics and Political Science, which canceled a conference it had planned in Dubai after Emirati authorities requested that a presentation on Bahrain, which is facing political upheaval, be dropped from the program. A scholar on Arab politics from the London institution who was to speak at the event was briefly detained at the Dubai airport and barred from entering the country