Just a recap from last week:
1. Philosophical Studies (hereafter "PS") published a paper by philosopher Robin Dembroff (Yale) critiquing an earlier paper in PS by philosopher Alex Byrne (MIT).
2. The Dembroff paper contained, as the former EIC Stewart Cohen put it, "unprofessional personal attacks" on Byrne (e.g., claiming that Byrne's paper was really "an unscholarly attempt to vindicate a political slogan that is currently being used to undermine civic rights and respect for trans persons” and wondering "about the motives of someone who would so confidently insert themself into this high-stakes discourse while so ill-informed.” (Clarificatory note: Professor Dembroff insists on referring to everyone by the third-person plural pronoun even if the indivdiuals in question would prefer "he" or "she," hence the use of "themself" to refer to Byrne)
3. Springer policy forbids "descriptions of [an individual's] behavior or actions that could potentially be seen as personal attacks or allegations about that person." Cohen, as EIC, was also committed to that policy.
4. Given that the Dembroff paper was pretty clearly in violation of that policy, Cohen, as EIC, proposed two remedies: (a) PS would "make a public announcement owning up to the mistake" and reminding "prospective authors" that "personal attacks" are not permissible and that referees have a responsibility to alert the editor to such attacks; and (b) giving the target of the personal attack, Byrne, a right of reply.
5. One other senior editor and Springer rejected these remedies, and Professor Cohen resigned as EIC and asked me to share his statement in public.
Laurie Paul calls to my attention that her colleague Professor Dembroff has now made a public response on Facebook. It begins, oddly, with three statements of "principle" (as it were) that are not at issue in this case:
Regarding recent decisions at Philosophical Studies:
(1) All papers submitted to a philosophical journal should be subject to a transparent and professional editorial process. No paper should receive special treatment (be it harsh or favorable) because of an editor’s relationship to an author, or the editor’s personal views about the philosophical thesis defended.
(2) Academic freedom is a foundational value of philosophical scholarship. It should be restricted only with great caution. Calls to censor an academic paper that has been accepted after a transparent and professional editorial process, especially one that has gone through the double-blind peer review process, violate this foundational value.
(3) Typically, neither statements about matters of public interest nor true statements are defamatory.
Regarding (2): there is no violation of academic freedom because a journal has editorial standards that bar personal attacks, as PS does; Cohen's proposed remedies (see my #4, above) did not include a "call[] to censor" the paper. Perhaps Dembroff meant a call to"censure" the paper, which would be involved in a public statement acknowledging the failure to enforce journal policies. But since the "censure" pertained to the violation of editorial standards, it would not implicate academic freedom, for the reasons already noted. (It's a separate question whether post-publication censure is appropriate: the issue arose during the Synthese debacle a number of years ago, and I'm inclined to think it's a bad idea, but it does not violate academic freedom. In the Synthese case, the editors, bizarrely, censured all the papers in the special issue, without naming the offending one.)
Regarding (1): this would only be relevant if one is to believe that Cohen is giving "special treatment" to Byrne "because of" his "relationship" to Byrne, or because he is opposed to Dembroff's "philosophical thesis." These are, again, unsubstantiated personal attacks, and ignore entirely the fact that Dembroff's paper included personal attacks in violation of Springer policy. A "right of reply" is one possible remedy, and not an uncommon one, in situations like this.
Regarding (3), I agree that nothing in the Dembroff paper was defamatory; Cohen, who is not a lawyer, was using that word loosely. Defamation is not what is at issue, but rather the policy forbidding "personal attacks."
The rest of Professor Dembroff's reply relies on this misleading and tendentious stage-setting, and readers are invited to review Dembroff's remarks for themselves. For example, Dembroff says, "Cohen's complaint is, in effect, that Byrne [through the sur-reply to Dembroff] was not given special, favorable treatment that subverted the review process." The "in effect" does not make this false statement true: Cohen's complaint was that the journal violated its stated editorial policy by permitting Dembroff's personal attacks on Byrne in the article, and his proposed remedy included a right of reply for the victim of the attack.
Philosopher Justin Weinberg (South Carolina), in a blog post sympathetic to Dembroff and critical of Cohen, offered the following thought experiment:
Had an established philosopher explicitly said in an article that some specific junior, gender-queer philosopher’s work was ill-informed or the result of motivated reasoning, and the latter philosopher complained about this, “the crowd” would tell them to toughen up, stop being so sensitive, and get used to the rough and tumble environment of professional philosophy.
This, of course, ignores what the actual issue was, namely, the publication of an article in violation of the journal's editorial policies: that policy would bar a lot of what both I and Weinberg say on our blogs, which are not subject to such editorial constraints. Being "tough" or not was not at issue in this debate. But the counterfactual is also an odd one; as one philosopher wrote to me (since Professor Weinberg did not permit comments on this particular post):
If someone like Byrne had said that Dembroff’s work was ill-formed, etc., "the crowd" would have fucking torched Byrne. That's just obvious. So I wonder what Weinberg is talking about.
Finally, philosopher Nathan Salmon (UC Santa Barbara) invited me to share his own experience with PS and his views on this issue:
I was involved in a similar situation vis a vis Stewart Cohen and Philosophical Studies. I had published a negative critique of a book by philosopher X. In violation of official Springer policy, Phil Studies published an unprofessional rejoinder by X which includes snide remarks and a false personal allegation against me. The rejoinder was also very much mistaken on the relevant matters of philosophical substance. I submitted a non-personal response, explicitly and repeatedly requesting that it not be refereed by X. Despite my requests, an editor at Phil Studies had X referee my submission. X wrote a vehemently negative report and my response was rejected. In the rejection letter Phil Studies did not inform me that I would have access to the referee’s report. Astoundingly, poking around the submission website I stumbled onto the report, located in a place where it did not belong. Although written anonymously, its authorship was unmistakable. The report also compounded and exacerbated the substantive error in X’s published rejoinder. I wrote a letter of complaint to Stew Cohen. To his credit Stew responsibly stepped in and agreed to have my response independently refereed. On the advice of that referee my response was published in Phil Studies, over X's opposition.
Personal attacks have no place in an academic journal. This is not a matter of freedom of expression. If Phil Studies had rejected X's unprofessional piece in conformity with Springer’s official policy, X would have remained free to level personal allegations on social media or on their personal home page. Rather, the editor who decided to publish a rejoinder that includes a false personal allegation should be criticized for failing to uphold explicitly stated professional standards appropriate to a distinguished scholarly journal.
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