Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

News and views about philosophy, the academic profession, academic freedom, intellectual culture, and other topics. The world’s most popular philosophy blog, since 2003.

  1. LC's avatar

    I concur to a certain extent. I also scored very low on the writing section. Back then, GRE was required…

  2. Anonymous's avatar

    I’m a graduate student in philosophy at a well-known terminal MA program who is applying to PhDs this fall and…

  3. Patrick M., (Doctoral Researcher)'s avatar
  4. Hilary Kornblith's avatar
  5. Mark's avatar
  6. Patrick M., (Doctoral Researcher)'s avatar

    I suspect evolutionary and behavioural perspectives are left seriously underappreciated in this approach to epistemology. Reichenbach’s claim that epistemology must…

  7. S. Wallerstein's avatar

Alex Byrne on Peter Momtchiloff’s response to David Wallace (and related matters)

Brian Leiter

Philosopher Alex Byrne kindly shared these thoughts (in response to yesterday's post, including my suggestion that he share the referee reports):

On to the possibility of sharing the comments on the first draft of my book, I do not think that readers’ reports solicited (and paid for) by a publisher are mine to share. Moreover, one reviewer simply supplied a pdf of the manuscript marked up with some (minor) helpful and constructive comments. Peter did likewise. (Most of those were incorporated in the version that will appear in print.) Another report consisted of Peter’s notes from a discussion with a reviewer. 

There was very little to respond to anyway. No mistakes or argumentative flaws were identified. One reviewer was very complimentary; another was laboring under various confusions which could easily have been cleared up. I have to admit that the book will irritate some people in mainstream feminist philosophy. (N.B. the book is not a scholarly monograph; it is aimed at a general audience interested in the topic of sex and gender. There’s not all that much “philosophy” in it anyway.)

I have nothing to hide (apart from the manuscript, since I want you all to buy my book, if only to commit it to the flames). OUP has my permission to release whatever comments it likes.

I should point out that I received the contract after the usual procedure: book proposal, external reviews, etc. As I said in the Quillette piece, the draft “conformed closely to the initial proposal, both in style and substance. Many sentences from the proposal had ended up in the book.” 

On the invited pronouns chapter, everyone will soon be able to judge for themselves whether it should have been rejected without revision. The Journal of Controversial Ideas version is basically the same as the first draft, with some improvements, and cut down by about 2K words.

Finally, it’s worth remarking that all the focus has been on me rather than Holly Lawford-Smith, whose story was a big part of my Quillette article. Her book Sex Matters is only coming out with OUP because of an intervention by the UK’s Free Speech Union.

Comments are open, but will be moderated for substance and relevance.  Only comments that include a valid email address (which will not appear) will be approved.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

28 responses to “Alex Byrne on Peter Momtchiloff’s response to David Wallace (and related matters)”

  1. Jason Brennan

    Many people defending OUP on social media decry “academic freedom” and insist that *this* particular topic is one in which there is little room for rational debate. On their view, you must accept a certain view of gender and transgender metaphysics. Not only are you forbidden from challenging it, but others are forbidden from publishing your challenges to it.

    Why? Why is *this* issue the taboo one for which right-thinking is mandatory?

    Consider a parallel case: Open borders (the left-wing position championed by libertarians) vs closed borders (the right-wing position championed by Rawls).
    In my view, all of the following are true:

    1. The harm of closed borders is much greater in aggregate than the harm of intolerance or nonacceptance of trans people
    2. On an individual one-on-one basis, the harm to would-be immigrants is usually greater too.
    3. We have extremely good empirical work done over decades evaluating the effects of open borders. The work is done by a wide range of theorists from different backgrounds and ideologies, and it nevertheless tends to support the open border position or at least much more open borders.
    4. Borders restrictions are dehumanizing in practice, as enforced, and in principle, even if enforced in an idealized way.
    5. Border restrictions often involve forcing people to accept an identity they dispute or don’t want to accept.
    6. Borders are social constructions and can be evaluated as good or bad.
    7. The harms of closed borders fall disproportionately on the world’s worst off people, people who are far worse off that the typical trans person in the West.
    8. Border restrictions violate people’s most fundamental rights, rights far more fundamental than the right to vote or own property.
    9. Most people who support closed borders have not thought carefully about it; most arguments against it are not very good.
    10. Borders involve privileging the perspectives of the well-off.
    11. Arguments defending closed borders often involve mistaken empirical claims or exaggerations of relatively minor harms or costs.
    12. Many, if not all, defenders of closed borders are straightforward bigots.
    13. Various selfishly-motivated interest groups lobby against opening borders as a way of securing economic rents.

    I’m not joking around here. It’s much more obvious that something close to the open borders position is correct than it’s obvious that a woman is not, by definition, an adult human female. If I could choose between fixing border restrictions or fixing trans issues, I’d choose the former in a heartbeat and consider it callous and absurd to choose the latter. It’s many of orders of magnitude less important, even though it’s important. (Don’t worry: I have the most enlightened view possible on transgender issues, so no need to cancel me here.)

    If, as so many here think, we are not merely entitled but required to censor, scold, cancel, and ostracize people who have the wrong view of transgender issues, should I not, a fortiori, treat you immigration restrictionists as even greater moral monsters, with even more obscene views, even more backward and uninformed? How dare OUP publish Borjas if it won’t publish Byrne?

    Reply
  2. Publishing Veteran

    Momtchiloff's letter is inadequate as a plausible explanation of what went on, though an alpha minus exercise in plausible deniability. Academic presses just don't cancel a book at that late stage. With senior acquisitions editors, so well-regarded in the field, virtually everything they put forward will get published. If not, then that is a sign that their judgment is seriously impaired — or some kind of fraud has been perpetrated — and without judgment, an acquisitions editor is nothing.

    There are internal assessments before the manuscript is sent to reviewers, and it's likely to have already been baked into sales and marketing plans.

    Having reviewers vociferously urge against publication would be a sign that both Momtchiloff and the Press didn't know what they were doing when they took the book on, and that clearly is not credible.

    The peer review for books, especially in the humanities, is more impressionistic than it is for journal papers in the sciences. It's almost never a recommendation not to publish. That's not the purpose. The purpose is to suggest relatively small improvements, not render an existential verdict on whether the book should see the light of day. Ironically, these improvements are often aimed at providing a fuller treatment of the range of scholarly opinion on the topic at hand. "A summary of recent French scholarship would not be amiss in Chapter 3," kind of thing.

    The number of reviewers can be important, it can be two or three. If there is a lack of unanimity, then the Press has to make a decision. With any kind of issue where there are different schools of thought, the editor would normally insist on having at least one reader from the two main camps. Imagine a book on consciousness only having readers who agree with Daniel Dennett. It would be a dereliction of duty not to take an approach that reflects the Diversity of informed opinion on a topic. Surely, to do so would be viewed as Equitable and Inclusive, as well. It's an ethical trifecta that could be perfectly acronymized for t-shirts.

    What would have been normal practice would have been to have Holly Lawford-Smith, or someone representing a similar viewpoint, act as one of the readers. Does anyone think in this case that any of the reviewers were of the non-woke party?

    What seems clearly to have happened is that a policy decision at the Press was made in the light of the responses to Lawford-Smith. The editorial policy effectively became "we will not publish material that will inflame the woke party." Perhaps it was an attempt at damage control. If so, the results are to have maximized the damage to every conceivable party in the great chain of academic being. The Academy, the Humanities, Philosophy, Oxford University, OUP, woke philosophers, Momtchiloff, and Alex Byrne — all come out of this damaged in one way or another. If the woke think they have scored a victory, I suspect that in a few years "pyrrhic" won't begin to describe its hollowness.

    Reply
  3. David Wallace

    I have made the following request to Oxford University under the UK Freedom of Information Act (OUP is legally a department of Oxford University, which is a public body within the meaning of the Act).

    1) All correspondence held by Oxford University Press and pertaining to the commissioning, reviewing, and editorial decisions for Alex Byrne’s book Troubles with Gender, excluding the names and other identifying information of any external reviewer used by OUP and of any employee of OUP without editorial authority, and also excluding any correspondence of a purely logistical nature, e.g. concerning payments or publication schedules.

    2) All correspondence held by Oxford University Press and pertaining to the commissioning, reviewing, and editorial decisions for Alex Byrne’s contributed chapter on pronouns to the Oxford Handbook of Applied Philosophy of Language, excluding the names and other identifying information of any external reviewer used by OUP and of any employee of OUP without editorial authority, and also excluding any correspondence of a purely logistical nature, e.g. concerning payments or publication schedules.

    3) All correspondence held by Oxford University Press and pertaining to the commissioning for publication, reviewing, and editorial decisions for Holly Lawford-Smith’s book Gender-Critical Feminism, excluding the names and other identifying information of any external reviewer used by OUP and of any employee of OUP without editorial authority, and also excluding any correspondence of a purely logistical nature, e.g. concerning payments or publication schedules, but specifically including any correspondence pertaining to the book’s reclassification as ‘academic’ rather than ‘trade’ and to making it available, or not, on Oxford Scholarship Online.

    4) All correspondence held by Oxford University Press and pertaining to the commissioning, reviewing, and editorial decisions for Holly Lawford-Smith’s edited collection Sex Matters, excluding the names and other identifying information of any external reviewer used by OUP and of any employee of OUP without editorial authority, and also excluding any correspondence of a purely logistical nature, e.g. concerning payments or publication schedules, but specifically including any correspondence pertaining to OUP’s reversal of its original decision not to publish that volume.

    5) All correspondence held by Oxford University Press and pertaining to the commissioning, reviewing, and editorial decisions for a proposed volume on women philosophers to be edited by Richard Marshall and commissioned in 2019 or thereabouts, excluding the names and other identifying information of any external reviewer used by OUP and of any employee of OUP without editorial authority, and also excluding any correspondence of a purely logistical nature, e.g. concerning payments or publication schedules.

    Reply
  4. John Schwenkler

    I want to second what "Publishing Veteran" says. Editors at a university press, and likewise the editors of handbook volumes, have a huge amount of discretion in what they publish, including by deciding whom to solicit for reviews and how to take the reviewers' advice into consideration. And it's highly unusual for someone of Alex's stature, with the press already having expressed interest in the project, to have things be derailed in this way.

    Surely some will reply that this is just what editorial discretion is for (viz., that they should be concerned about the impact of what they publish on the interests of marginalized groups, and so forth). I myself don't think that's a plausible defense in the present case, but don't mean to have that argument here. I just think it should be acknowledged that the *content* of Alex's position, and likely also the way he's become such a gadfly on these issues, has to have been a major factor in getting his project spiked — so that the decision wasn't just a matter of some neutral assessment of its scholarly rigor. And I find that to be a very worrying sign about the state of things at OUP.

    Reply
  5. Kenny Easwaran

    "Academic presses just don't cancel a book at that late stage."

    It seems like it might be helpful for much of this discussion to have actual statistics on this. It's definitely uncommon, but I doubt this is the only time it's happened at that stage. But it seems to be relevant to evaluation of the situation whether 10% of cancellations happen at that stage, or 1% or .1%, or 30%. (I'm asking about percentage of cancellations, because I have the impression that cancellations themselves are somewhat rare, so this fraction conditional on cancellation is likely the more easily interpreted number that tells us about how uncommon it is to happen at this point.)

    Reply
  6. Alex Byrne

    Publishing Veteran makes the same point as David Wallace, that reviews of contracted manuscripts are treated as an opportunity to improve the book, not to reject it. But I should emphasize that I am not saying OUP should have published my book (or even the pronouns chapter). Rather, the issue is that the usual norm—let the author respond to reviews, and try to fix things up—was suspended in my case. If the reviews had uniformly trashed the book as unoriginal, poorly argued, "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” written out a thousand times, etc., then it might have been reasonable not to prolong the agony, and to call a halt right there. But the reviews certainly did not do that (which is why their exact content is not relevant).

    Reply
  7. Ned Hall

    Kenny: The relevant question would seem to be this: How often do manuscripts get rejected, at this late stage, **and without** the author being given any opportunity to respond to referees' criticisms?

    Reply
  8. John Collins

    It would appear that a decision was made not to go forward with a book that was not sufficiently respectful regardless of its scholarly or intellectual merits (its publication would have precipitated genocide, or something). OUP are free to publish what they like, and perhaps, as noted above, many such decisions are made, especially with respect to ‘trade books’. Given, however, the pressure that was put on OUP for its publishing Holly’s book, I think it would have been advisable for OUP to go ahead with Alex’s book unless it was trashed under review, which wasn't the case. Indeed, an appropriate response would be for OUP to commission a whole series of volumes, perhaps edited by Alex, from people not caught up within the current cultish mind-set. One doesn’t have much to be proud of for being British at the moment, but the number of very smart and independent-minded women writers is one shard. There is clearly a market for intelligent books on gender issues not written by people as if from a script with one eye on their career. Those below I count as my friends have all been subject to the most disgusting harassment and abuse, which, apparently, is not an issue of freedom of speech but merely a consequence of their being hateful or Nazis or something or anything.

    Hannah Barnes – Time to Think
    Victoria Smith – Hags
    Mary Harrington – Feminism against Progress
    Louise Perry – The Case against the Sexual Revolution
    Helen Joyce – Trans
    Nina Power – What Men Want
    Kathleen Stock – Material Girls

    There must be something in the water here.

    Reply
  9. Grad student

    I can't see why Alex Byrne wouldn't release the referee reports, sans authors' names. Who would object to that? I am not aware of any rule or norm against releasing anonymized comments that scholars have made on your own work. Is this an OUP policy?

    Reply
  10. Bryan Frances

    Am I the only one who is still confused? Momtchiloff says there were five reports. Here’s what Byrne said about them:

    Report 1: “one reviewer simply supplied a pdf of the manuscript marked up with some (minor) helpful and constructive comments.” Sounds like a report that isn’t terribly negative.

    Report 2: “Peter did likewise.” The “likewise” bit refers to the pdf marked up. Maybe it was also positive. I can’t tell.

    Report 3: “Another report consisted of Peter’s notes from a discussion with a reviewer.” Might be negative but might be positive.

    Report 4: (no comment from Byrne).

    Report 5: (no comment from Byrne).

    Regarding 1-5: “There was very little to respond to anyway. No mistakes or argumentative flaws were identified.” Obviously, a book has to do more than not contain bad mistakes or argumentative flaws in order to be acceptable for OUP publication.

    Regarding one of 1-5: “One reviewer was very complimentary”. My guess: this was one of 1-3.

    Regarding another of 1-5: “another was laboring under various confusions which could easily have been cleared up.” This might mean the report was positive. Then again, it might have been extremely negative. Usually, when an author says a report is confused, the report is negative.

    Regarding everything: “I have to admit that the book will irritate some people in mainstream feminist philosophy. (N.B. the book is not a scholarly monograph; it is aimed at a general audience interested in the topic of sex and gender. There’s not all that much “philosophy” in it anyway.)” Just about any book on these topics will irritate a lot of people. Not sure what to make of this comment.

    Perhaps I’m a lousy detective, but I can’t figure out what to think. Maybe report 4 or 5 was “The ms is horrifically bad”. Or maybe “It’s too lightweight, even for a general audience”. Or maybe “There’s not much philosophy here. Aren’t we publishing philosophy? There's not much here.” Or maybe “Byrne is the devil. Destroy him”. Like I said, I must not be a good detective.

    Reply
  11. Brian Leiter

    I confess I did not find this as mysterious as Professor Frances. Clearly one or two of the reports were negative. Byrne clearly didn't think they were meritoriously negative. He was not given an opportunity to respond. That's highly unusual when a proposal has been refereed and contracted, and when the author is senior and accomplished and has published with OUP previously. Inference to the best explanation: pressure was brought to bear on the press to kill this because of its "incorrect" point of view.

    Given everything we've seen in recent years, starting with the mobbing of Rebecca Tuvel for incorrect thinking, I'm puzzled anyone can muster serious doubts about this. Many of the censorious zealots are quite open about their view that "incorrect" thinking should be suppressed and about the pressure they have brought to publishers and conference organizers previously.

    Reply
  12. Timothy Sommers

    For better or worse, Rawls very rarely took positions on political controversies. I don't believe he took any position on open-borders. If that's wrong I would really, genuinely appreciate a citation. I am guessing that what Jason Brennen is referring to is Rawls "closedness assumption," but like the assumption of full-compliance this is a theoretical tool that he directly denies applies to real-world cases. He uses it to formulate, or so he believes, the best theory of justice that later will be applied in stages to the real world and only then will guidance on immigration and border policies emerge – and closedness will not even be a factor (since it's just a simplifying assumption), much less a decisive factor. I suspect almost no one cares about this, but there is is.

    Reply
  13. Alex Byrne

    I don't know whether it's a policy, but OUP commissioned the reports and compensated the reviewers, and if they're anyone's property they are OUP's. It may also be that the reports contain hints that would allow some to identify, or at least guess at, the authors. As a reviewer, I would not want my report on a manuscript made public. As I said, OUP is welcome to release whatever they like. The two reports written by reviewers were short (as was the one that Peter compiled from a conversation). The reader would have no way of knowing whether any claim, complimentary or not, was accurate, without reading the relevant bits of the MS, so they would be of very limited help. And (to repeat my comment above) the point isn't that my book is great, or should have been published by OUP.

    Reply
  14. Bryan Frances

    Yes, Byrne thought that the negative reports didn’t identify serious mistakes or other argumentative flaws. But … many of us think the same when we get negative reports.

    I agree that there’s a red flag here: why on earth wasn’t he given the opportunity to revise the ms? And of course one explanation is that there was the political pressure. That’s my guess too. But to be honest, if the reports were “Whoa. We thought it would have *a lot* more philosophy, or be less of a trade book”, then revisions don’t seem in order since Byrne didn’t write the type of book they were looking for. I realize, though, that they approved the book proposal, which should have made it clear that there wouldn’t be much philosophy in it.

    Again, the political pressure explanation is a good bet. But unless we see the reports and original book proposal, we don’t have a good enough evidence base. Just my personal preference when it comes to evidence and belief.

    Reply
  15. Kenneth Pike

    Timothy, this is getting pretty far from the central discussion, but you can find Rawls' position on open borders in his essay "The Law of Peoples" at footnote 17, which reads:

    "This remark implies that a people has at least a qualified right to limit immigration. I leave aside here what these qualifications might be."

    Reply
  16. Publishing Veteran

    I've never seen any numbers about what doesn't get published at this stage in the process. Unlikely that they would ever be made publicly available in any case. Zero cases in 5 years would strike many people in the field as normal. It was certainly my experience. If it ever happened, it would be brought up in hushed tones to all new employees. Future OUPers have something to look forward to. A mere disagreement with a little extra heat over comparatively fine points are served up as cautionary tales.

    In 2017, data came out about the number of books published by American university presses per year over the period 2009-2013. The average number per year was 11,700. Assuming a 1% rate of cancellation per year, that would be 117 titles. There is just no way that that happens. Without any kind of formal study having been done, or likely to be done, to settle the question, I think it reasonable to say that we are talking about fractions of fractions. There would be at least some anecdotal evidence that people would have been able to share on this thread from their experiences.

    So, some interesting practical questions now assert themselves: How committed will OUP be to Philosophy from this point on? Will a critical mass of authors simply depart to more tolerant publishers? Will authors be able to command larger advances from OUP? (Why not have some optimism.) Will there be a cross-over of discontent from books to journals?

    Compared to life science titles, of course, Philosophy probably doesn't have the same revenue heft. But OUP isn't Elsevier, and the total philosophy dollars might be relatively significant for them. I think they publish around 200 books a year in philosophy, which must place them at the top quantitatively? I doubt they want to give up a lot of that revenue, to say nothing of the reputational damage. No publishers can afford to these days. (I wonder what ChatGPT would have done in this scenario?)

    It takes a long time and a lot of work to build up OUP's place in philosophy publishing. Much less time is needed to bring it down.

    Reply
  17. Alex Byrne

    Just to clear up any confusion about the reports (and then I will fall completely silent on this issue).

    1. An annotated version of the MS. Helpful comments, all minor. Nothing in the comments to suggest that the book should not be published. I was very grateful to this reviewer, who put in the most work by far.
    2. Notes taken by Peter of a conversation with a reviewer. Short, negative. This contained some clear mistakes, so I wasn't sure what to make of it.
    3. Very positive.
    4. Very negative. Clearly a review from a philosopher who works on sex and gender; they tend not to be in my fan club. At least this reviewer attempted to address explicitly some of the arguments in the book, although seemed to misunderstand the audience. Easy enough to show that the reviewer's complaints were all wrong (according to me!). I was not given the opportunity to try to show this, unfortunately.
    5. The MS with Peter's annotations—just about word choices and some places where Peter thought the "tone" was off. I had been very responsive to this sort of concern earlier.

    Again, what was delivered was very close to what was promised (and, it seemed, eagerly anticipated). No one said, “Whoa. We thought it would have *a lot* more philosophy, or be less of a trade book."

    Reply
  18. Bryan Frances

    Thanks to Byrne for that helpful clarification. FYI: I was the one with the "Whoa" speculation.

    So: only one seriously negative report. (Another report was negative but Byrne makes it clear it wasn't harsh.) And the book was under contract. And there was no opportunity for revision.

    That's excellent evidence that the rejection decision was almost entirely political. If his book had been on the ontology of color, say (he has written on that topic before), I'm sure OUP would have given him the opportunity for revision.

    We can debate the merit of rejecting his ms due to political factors. But I think those people who have argued that this whole affair is just Byrne being weak about ordinary publication rejection have been wrong about that issue.

    Reply
  19. Kris Rhodes

    "On their view, you must accept a certain view of gender and transgender metaphysics."

    On their view, you must accept _what_ view of gender and transgender metaphysics?

    Reply
  20. Brian Leiter

    Anyone committed to the ordinary norms of scholarship and free discourse cannot debate "the merit of rejecting his MS due to political factors": that has no merit. I think the only people who have thought this was "just Byrne being weak about ordinary publication rejection" are the "usual suspects," who are reliably dishonest about any case of suppression of "incorrect" thinking.

    Reply
  21. Bryan Frances

    Brian, I agree with your second remark.

    As to the first remark, I suppose there might be exceptions to what you say, although I imagine they are rare. So, I am inclined to withhold judgment on it. But in this particular case with Byrne, I agree that there are no good political factors that excuse the rejection-without-opportunity-to-respond move that OUP made.

    Those philosophers who insisted that Byrne was just being wimpy about publication rejection owe him an apology. I doubt that any will come forward. When it comes to issues like this, virtually no one admits significant mistakes.

    Thank you for moderating this discussion. It's not a wholly personal matter effecting only a few people. OUP looms large in our profession, so these issues have wide significance beyond the principle actors involved.

    Reply
  22. alec.sweet@yale.edu

    I am a non-philosopher who tries to follow your field. I wish to recount an anecdote about OUP and make a short point.

    I have contracted and published 11 books with OUP, divided among the Politics and the Law series (I am a political scientist that has taught law at both Oxford and Yale). I have had only one unpleasant experience, and it involved philosophy. One of my books has the word, “Kant” in the title, and it in fact concerns Kantian cosmopolitanism. The editor went into the meeting of the board of delegates – the delegates approve decisions to contract and may veto contracting – and the delegate from Philosophy complained that the three (very positive) reviews of my project were not written by his friends: Kantian philosophers. He then wrote a negative review, and insisted that “real” Kantians be asked to review the manuscript. My editor (Law, now retired) was a legendary master of this process. He buried the negative review with new positive ones, and got the project approved. I never saw the negative review; he told me what was happening in real time, and calmed me down.

    It is possible that parts of the Byrne controversy concerns the delegates, in some fashion. The paper meant for the edited volume was killed, presumably, by a gleeful co-editor of the same volume, announced in a grotesque tweet. Prof. Byrne’s book project is quite a different matter. Given that you all have enormous respect for Peter M, and given the enormous sunk costs (in time and money) that had already been expended, it makes no sense that Peter would choose to abandon the project. He would, instead, defend it tooth and nail. The most straightforward explanation is that Byrne’s book was wrested from the editor’s hands by his superiors.

    A final comment from a non-philosopher. It is wonderful that you – and even the loonies over at the Daily Nous – see OUP as a collective good, and are engaged in collective deliberation about how to save it.

    Reply
  23. David Wallace

    To be fair, based on the conversation at DN I think there are a fair number of people, especially junior people, genuinely unaware of the publication norms for books and thinking that rejection without reasons is just a thing that happens (and a fair number of other people who are muddying the waters and confusing the former group).

    BL COMMENT: As you know, I think life is too short to read unmoderated blog comments, so I will take your word for this. I was referring to the "fair number of other people who are muddying the waters." That includes some folks who run blogs!

    Reply
  24. Anonymous referee

    I have rather an unusual perspective on this debate insofar as I once acted as a referee for a book manuscript by a significant senior figure in my field for a major university press (not OUP), and recommended the book was so bad it should not be published. Much to my surprise, as I later discovered, the book wasn’t published, mainly on the basis of my report. So, I know it’s possible that, even at a major press, a very negative report can scupper an entire, likely high-profile volume.

    On the other hand, I should also note that, precisely because I knew what I was suggesting was so unusual, I spent an absolute age on that report – I made certain to stress that my disagreement was with the author’s arguments, not their putative political implications (which I tend to support); I double checked every reference; I read up on every case study; I showed there was no plausible reconstruction of the arguments; and so on. And, even having done all that, I was a bit surprised when the author wasn’t asked to make revisions. After all, I could be wrong!

    So, I don’t find it implausible that a review can point out such serious intellectual problems that a book is judged unpublishable; but I would be fascinated to see the review which (allegedly) made the difference, because, in my experience, that would have to be a pretty damning review. Of course, it’s possible that such a damning review exists and Byrne is simply blind to how damning it is. Still, that seems rather unlikely.

    Reply
  25. Andrew

    1. The Malcolm affair doesn't seem completely irrelevant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Malcolm_(author)

    2. Oxford University is _very_ dependent on money from OUP, which I think is explicitly tasked with producing a certain number of million £££ for the University each year. So there is at least a tension between its mission as a scholarly publisher and its need to make money. (That may explain why its books are so damn expensive, which is another very good reason why authors with the luxury of choosing might look elsewhere.)

    Reply
  26. Holly Lawford-Smith

    i'd like to add support to what two other commenters have said, here and in one of the other threads on this issue.

    alec.sweet (above) said:
    "Given that you all have enormous respect for Peter M, and given the enormous sunk costs (in time and money) that had already been expended, it makes no sense that Peter would choose to abandon the project. He would, instead, defend it tooth and nail. The most straightforward explanation is that Byrne’s book was wrested from the editor’s hands by his superiors."

    john collins, in one of the other threads on this topic, said:
    "Peter is a very good guy, personally known and liked by many of us, and no-one yet knows all the facts. We do know, though, that OUP is not Peter's personal fiefdom, and any decisions made involve a number of people, including people who employ Peter and other editors. So, before we start acting as judge and jurors of Peter and bombarding him with emails, we might pitch things in terms of helping Peter against the forces of darkness rather than having him down as the enemy, which he is certainly not."

    — from my own experiences, i think this has to be right (that the issue is with peter's superiors / the forces of darkness, not peter himself). for my (2022) book, in addition to the normal reviewer reports and revisions process, peter sent me several rounds of detailed comments on the manuscript – more than is normal for an academic book, but i assume he was just being exceptionally meticulous anticipating the coming backlash. for both my (2022) book and my (forthcoming) book, both of which are gender-critical, he sent the book to reviewers who were fair and constructive. if he had personally wanted to axe one or both of the projects – both of which had contracts – it would have been very easy to simply send the manuscript out to hostile reviewers, and then claim that the book didn't meet the clause in the contract that said it has to be 'fit for publication'. but he didn't. my (2022) book was in production and at the copyediting stage when i was told that publication was not going ahead as planned. my (forthcoming) book had been a year under review and just received three positive referee reports. i just don't see it as being remotely plausible that peter would have put so much time and effort into these two projects while all the while intending to see them nixed. so i too hope we can find a way to express our hopes that OUP won't give in to ideological bullies without targeting peter in particular.

    finally, i'd also like to note that it's not just OUP. here are two other examples from my own experience. first, tomas bogardus and i were in late-stage discussions with routledge about an edited volume of gender-critical philosophy essays, when at the last moment they pivoted and claimed that they couldn't publish the volume unless it had a paper by a gender-critical trans person in it. at that time there was exactly one gender-critical trans philosopher in the whole world (or at least, that we knew of), and she didn't answer our invitation. so the whole volume was scuppered. second, kate phelan & i had a paper commissioned for philosophy compass, which we wrote, was sent out for review, was revised, and then was sent through the editorial system with the associate editor's comment that there may be one further review at that stage. then we got an outright rejection from the editor, claiming that the paper was too broad, or something else that didn't make much sense, and didn't fit the normal pattern where you would simply be asked to revise it. i looked on twitter and found the editor calling me a TERF and a transphobe (at an earlier time).

    Reply
  27. Theonlyrealismisscientificrealism

    That being a 'woman' is a matter of subjective first-personal judgement, rather than a matter of some other objective fact.

    —

    A significant first order political feature of the DN metaphysics of 'woman' is that the subjective first-personal judgement regarding whether one is a 'woman' or not, is uniquely authoritative, indeed sacrosanct. It cannot be questioned or debated without doing the worst moral and political insult ('literal violence' in DN parlance) to the person making the subjective first-personal judgement. If a person declares themselves a 'woman', this is to be accepted (indeed celebrated!) without question.

    A second order political feature of the DN metaphysics of 'woman' is that, as a metaphysical position it is likewise not allowed to be questioned. Questioning whether it is a good or bad metaphysical view is ipso facto literal violence to all the people who define themselves as 'woman'.

    Through these two moves, the DN metaphysics of 'woman' insulates itself from any criticism whatsoever.

    Jason's point is to ask: does *any* subjective, first-personal assessment merit being taken to be so uniquely authoritative? He thinks 'citizen' is the strongest candidate (or at least that 'citizen' is a stronger candidate for the DN-treatment than 'woman').

    For my part, I can't think of any first-personal subjective assessment that truly deserves the DN treatment. It's just a crazy metaphysics of personal identity.

    Reply
  28. Publishing Veteran

    This is true and applies to almost every successful university press. The great exception is Princeton, which is genuinely independent of the University. (It actually started as a for-profit enterprise, before coming nonprofit early in the 20thcentury.) All the well-known presses are charged with covering their own costs and, often, contributing revenue to the university. As a result, they have all become more commercial in their ethos and operations than is commonly realized. The kinds of trade books they take on and the pricing of books for the library market are reflections of this. The small presses can't survive through their own efforts in the same manner, and so need to be funded by their parent institutions. They therefore can be viewed as unwelcome cost centers, and when an administrator wants to save some cash, shutting down the press is always a likely option. Some may remember that this was going to happen to the U. of Missouri Press in 2012, but it was saved after major pushback from the community.

    —–
    KEYWORDS:
    Primary Blog

    Reply

Designed with WordPress