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Bioethics ISSN 0269-9702 (print); 1467-8519 (online) Volume 28 Number 4 2014 pp 163–165
doi:10.1111/bioe.12092
SOLUTIONS TO THE NEW THREATS TO ACADEMIC FREEDOM? MICHAEL TOOLEY
Keywords academic, freedom, threats, pseudonyms, anonymous, Internet
ABSTRACT In my commentary on Francesca Minerva’s article ‘New Threats to Academic Freedom’, I agree with her contention that the existence of the Internet has given rise to new and very serious threats to academic freedom. I think that it is crucial that we confront those threats, and find ways to eliminate them, which I believe can be done. The threats in question involve both authors and editors. In the case of authors, I argue that the best solution is not anonymous publication, but publication using pseudonyms, and I describe how that would work. In the case of editors, my proposal is a website that a number of journals would have access to, where papers that editors judge to be clearly worthy of publication, but whose publication seems likely to set off a firestorm of public and media protest, could be published without any indication of the journal that had accepted the paper for publication.
1. THE SERIOUSNESS OF THE THREATS The issue raised by Francesca Minerva in her article ‘New Threats to Academic Freedom’ is very important, for the public reaction to the article that she co-authored with Alberto Giubilini shows very clearly that the ready availability on the Internet of scholarly articles can result in very hostile reactions indeed when authors are defending views that may seem deeply immoral or offensive to certain people, and it seems very likely that such reactions will discourage many scholars from writing articles defending controversial views. In addition, as Minerva notes, hostile reactions to the publication of articles containing ideas that some members of society think should never be published are not directed just at the authors of such articles: in the case of ‘After birth abortion, why should the baby live?’ the editors of the Journal of Medical Ethics themselves received hate mail and death threats. Moreover, it is not difficult to think of topics where such threats would need to be taken very seriously indeed, and where one might well think that a journal was completely justified in not publishing an article, even though its intellectual content was excellent, simply because doing so would pose a serious danger to the editors of the journal.
The view that Minerva and Giubilini defended is one about which there is significant disagreement among professional philosophers, with intelligent, thoughtful, and well-informed philosophers on both sides of the issue. But the danger is not confined to such articles, since some groups and individuals find deeply offensive some ideas, especially in the areas of ethics and religion, that almost all philosophers would accept. There are, consequently, two problems that need to be addressed. First, how can one make it possible for authors to publish articles advancing views that some people will find deeply offensive, and to which they will react in very hostile ways, without the publication of those articles impairing their career prospects, or generating serious threats to their personal safety? Secondly, how can one protect editors of journals from threats to their safety, so that they can, without fear, publish such articles?
2. TIMES HAVE CHANGED – DRAMATICALLY Things have, as Minerva notes, changed very dramatically since the time when Peter Singer and I were writing, and for the reasons that she describes. My own essay, for example, was published in 1972, and I received no
Address for correspondence: Dr Michael Tooley, Department of Philosophy, University of Colorado at Boulder, Hellems 169, UCB 232, Boulder, CO 80309. USA. Email: [email protected] Conflict of interest statement: No conflicts declared © 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd
Solutions to the New Threats to Academic Freedom? correspondence at all from the general public concerning that article until 25 years later, when Steven Pinker published a piece in the New York Times Magazine entitled ‘Why they kill their newborns.’ I then quickly found myself the subject of attention of a threatening sort. For although Pinker’s essay was a very dispassionate discussion, the newspaper pieces that followed – written by various syndicated columnists, including John Leo and Michael Kelly – were highly emotional pieces that displayed a complete unwillingness to grapple with philosophical and scientific questions that are both subtle and difficult. The Kelly piece was especially irresponsible, as I had talked at length with Kelly’s research assistant, emphasizing the difficulty of the issues, and strongly urging that Kelly take the time to review the relevant philosophical literature. The result was that Kelly did nothing of the sort, and produced a scurrilous piece. Those newspaper articles were followed by ‘petitions of outrage’ sent to the president of my university, asking that my books be removed from the library, and that I be removed from the university, and also by letters to me – generally anonymous, and which my family found very threatening – expressing extreme anger over my views. All of this, coupled with the occurrence a bit later of extreme protests concerning Peter Singer’s appointment as a professor at Princeton University – protests that had the result that Singer lectured for a while in a guarded classroom – convinced me that, in the United States, it is not only virtually impossible, outside of academic settings, to engage in a dispassionate discussion of certain issues, but also even potentially dangerous to advance certain views. Many academics will, I think, be intimidated by the possibility of such reactions on the part of the general public and the media – and indeed, not merely the possibility, but the extreme likelihood, given the impact of the Internet, which Minerva describes in detail. As a result, I think that, as things now stand, many people may very well choose not to advance unpopular views in a number of areas. Finally, as Minerva stresses, this threat to academic freedom is not merely something that harms the academic: any restriction of academic freedom harms society as a whole by retarding the movement of society towards more rational views on issues that have a significant bearing on human well-being. The upshot is that I believe that the threat to academic freedom is, as Francesca Minerva thinks, very great indeed.
would be reluctant to go that route. Moreover, I think that there are some shortcomings associated with that idea. But Minerva also mentions the possibility of pseudonymous publication, and I think that that is an excellent, and significantly superior alternative. Publication using a pseudonym is not uncommon in the case of literary works, where it has been done for a variety of reasons.1 By contrast, neither anonymous publication nor publication using pseudonyms has been at all common in the case of philosophy – though, as Minerva notes, Enlightenment philosophers did make use of anonymous and pseudonymous publication, with Voltaire’s Candide, in which he criticized both the doctrines and practices of the Roman Catholic Church, being one of the more famous examples. Recent anonymous and pseudonymous philosophical publications are thus virtually unknown, although there is, for example, Why I Am Not a Muslim, along with other writings, by Ibn Warraq – a writer who wished to avoid the experience of Salman Rushdie. The failure of philosophers to make use of anonymous and pseudonymous publication has had some unfortunate effects. Consider, for example, the case of David Hume and his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. According to Norman Kemp Smith, Hume completed the first version of the Dialogues during the period 1751– 55. Revisions were then made in or prior to 1761, followed, 15 years later, by final revisions in 1776, shortly before Hume’s death.2 It is hard not to conclude that this long delay in finishing the Dialogues resulted from the reaction to some of Hume’s other writings, especially his essays ‘Of Suicide’ and ‘Of the Immortality of the Soul,’ where a few copies were initially printed and distributed, but then not circulated further because of what Richard H. Popkin describes as ‘violent protests’ that were ‘launched by leading clergymen’.3 Had Hume chosen anonymous or pseudonymous publication, his ideas would have been discussed during Hume’s own lifetime, and Hume himself could have then replied to criticisms. As it was, the Dialogues were not published until 1779, and even then, at first, with neither Hume’s name nor the publisher’s name attached. In any case, let me now describe how I think pseudonymous publication should work, and then indicate why I think it is preferable to anonymous publication. First of all, control would be needed over the use of pseudonyms, to ensure that more than one person would not wind up using the same pseudonym – such as ‘Socrates’! So there 1
3. WHAT IS THE BEST SOLUTION FOR ACADEMICS? Minerva’s own preferred solution is to allow anonymous publication of articles. Some journal editors, I suspect,
© 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd
164
http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2013/07/ economist-explains-18 [cited 2013 November 6]. 2 N.K. Smith. Preface to David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, Indianapolis and New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1947. p. v. 3 H. Richard. Popkin, Editor’s Introduction to David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion and the Posthumous Essays, Indianapolis and Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, 1980. p. viii.
165
Michael Tooley
would need to be a central, and very secure website where one registered one’s pseudonym. Secondly, the idea would then be that an academic who wanted his or her pseudonymous publications to be considered in job applications, or in tenure or promotion decisions, could supply the relevant person with a one-time password that allowed that person to go to the website, and type in the person’s name along with the pseudonym, at which point that window would close, and a new window would open containing only a ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ answer as to whether the pseudonym did belong to the person in question. What about journal submissions? Here the manuscript would be accompanied by a password that the journal editor, by going on line, could then use to determine whether the paper was being submitted by the registered owner of the pseudonym in question. The same password could then be used to correspond with the author, so that the author’s identity would thus remain completely confidential throughout the process. Why is this method preferable to anonymous publication? First of all, in the case of anonymous publication, academics who wanted credit for publications would, under Minerva’s proposal, have to make use of certificates from journals, so editors of journals would have to know the names of the authors of anonymous publications – something that is avoided given the above method of pseudonymous publication. Secondly, members of the media who wanted to interview the author of an article could do so using the website in question without thereby acquiring any knowledge of the identity of the author. Their requests would simply generate an email to the author, who could then reply to any questions via the website, so that his or her identity would never be revealed. Thirdly, an author using a pseudonym could refer to his or her other pseudonymous publications, and readers would know that those were indeed the author’s publications. Fourthly, if one wrote a number of articles in a given area, or closely related areas, other scholars
would immediately know that the same person wrote the articles in question, which might be very helpful to them. Anonymous publication would deny other scholars such information. Finally, and in a similar vein, if there were an article criticizing ‘Socrates.1’, and then a response to that criticism by ‘Socrates.1’, one would know that the response was indeed by the original author – information that once again would be unavailable given anonymous publication.
4. WHAT ABOUT JOURNAL EDITORS? The most pressing problem concerns authors of articles, but, as noted above, there is also a serious problem posed by intensely negative reactions directed at editors who publish articles that some people may find deeply offensive. What is the solution to this problem? The only solution, it would seem, is for there to be a website that a number of journals would have access to, where papers that editors judge to be clearly worthy of publication, but whose publication seems likely to set off a firestorm, could be published without any indication of the journal that had accepted the paper for publication.
SUMMING UP As I have said above, I agree with Francesca Minerva that the existence of the Internet has given rise to very serious, new threats to academic freedom. I think that it is crucial that we confront those threats, and find ways to eliminate them, and I believe that this can be done. Michael Tooley is a College Professor of Distinction in the Department of Philosophy of the University of Colorado at Boulder, and was President (1984–85) of the Australasian Association of Philosophy, and President (2010–11) of the American Philosophical Association, Pacific Division.
© 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd
Bioethics ISSN 0269-9702 (print); 1467-8519 (online) Volume 28 Number 4 2014 pp 163–165
doi:10.1111/bioe.12092
SOLUTIONS TO THE NEW THREATS TO ACADEMIC FREEDOM? MICHAEL TOOLEY
Keywords academic, freedom, threats, pseudonyms, anonymous, Internet
ABSTRACT In my commentary on Francesca Minerva’s article ‘New Threats to Academic Freedom’, I agree with her contention that the existence of the Internet has given rise to new and very serious threats to academic freedom. I think that it is crucial that we confront those threats, and find ways to eliminate them, which I believe can be done. The threats in question involve both authors and editors. In the case of authors, I argue that the best solution is not anonymous publication, but publication using pseudonyms, and I describe how that would work. In the case of editors, my proposal is a website that a number of journals would have access to, where papers that editors judge to be clearly worthy of publication, but whose publication seems likely to set off a firestorm of public and media protest, could be published without any indication of the journal that had accepted the paper for publication.
1. THE SERIOUSNESS OF THE THREATS The issue raised by Francesca Minerva in her article ‘New Threats to Academic Freedom’ is very important, for the public reaction to the article that she co-authored with Alberto Giubilini shows very clearly that the ready availability on the Internet of scholarly articles can result in very hostile reactions indeed when authors are defending views that may seem deeply immoral or offensive to certain people, and it seems very likely that such reactions will discourage many scholars from writing articles defending controversial views. In addition, as Minerva notes, hostile reactions to the publication of articles containing ideas that some members of society think should never be published are not directed just at the authors of such articles: in the case of ‘After birth abortion, why should the baby live?’ the editors of the Journal of Medical Ethics themselves received hate mail and death threats. Moreover, it is not difficult to think of topics where such threats would need to be taken very seriously indeed, and where one might well think that a journal was completely justified in not publishing an article, even though its intellectual content was excellent, simply because doing so would pose a serious danger to the editors of the journal.
The view that Minerva and Giubilini defended is one about which there is significant disagreement among professional philosophers, with intelligent, thoughtful, and well-informed philosophers on both sides of the issue. But the danger is not confined to such articles, since some groups and individuals find deeply offensive some ideas, especially in the areas of ethics and religion, that almost all philosophers would accept. There are, consequently, two problems that need to be addressed. First, how can one make it possible for authors to publish articles advancing views that some people will find deeply offensive, and to which they will react in very hostile ways, without the publication of those articles impairing their career prospects, or generating serious threats to their personal safety? Secondly, how can one protect editors of journals from threats to their safety, so that they can, without fear, publish such articles?
2. TIMES HAVE CHANGED – DRAMATICALLY Things have, as Minerva notes, changed very dramatically since the time when Peter Singer and I were writing, and for the reasons that she describes. My own essay, for example, was published in 1972, and I received no
Address for correspondence: Dr Michael Tooley, Department of Philosophy, University of Colorado at Boulder, Hellems 169, UCB 232, Boulder, CO 80309. USA. Email: [email protected] Conflict of interest statement: No conflicts declared © 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd
Solutions to the New Threats to Academic Freedom? correspondence at all from the general public concerning that article until 25 years later, when Steven Pinker published a piece in the New York Times Magazine entitled ‘Why they kill their newborns.’ I then quickly found myself the subject of attention of a threatening sort. For although Pinker’s essay was a very dispassionate discussion, the newspaper pieces that followed – written by various syndicated columnists, including John Leo and Michael Kelly – were highly emotional pieces that displayed a complete unwillingness to grapple with philosophical and scientific questions that are both subtle and difficult. The Kelly piece was especially irresponsible, as I had talked at length with Kelly’s research assistant, emphasizing the difficulty of the issues, and strongly urging that Kelly take the time to review the relevant philosophical literature. The result was that Kelly did nothing of the sort, and produced a scurrilous piece. Those newspaper articles were followed by ‘petitions of outrage’ sent to the president of my university, asking that my books be removed from the library, and that I be removed from the university, and also by letters to me – generally anonymous, and which my family found very threatening – expressing extreme anger over my views. All of this, coupled with the occurrence a bit later of extreme protests concerning Peter Singer’s appointment as a professor at Princeton University – protests that had the result that Singer lectured for a while in a guarded classroom – convinced me that, in the United States, it is not only virtually impossible, outside of academic settings, to engage in a dispassionate discussion of certain issues, but also even potentially dangerous to advance certain views. Many academics will, I think, be intimidated by the possibility of such reactions on the part of the general public and the media – and indeed, not merely the possibility, but the extreme likelihood, given the impact of the Internet, which Minerva describes in detail. As a result, I think that, as things now stand, many people may very well choose not to advance unpopular views in a number of areas. Finally, as Minerva stresses, this threat to academic freedom is not merely something that harms the academic: any restriction of academic freedom harms society as a whole by retarding the movement of society towards more rational views on issues that have a significant bearing on human well-being. The upshot is that I believe that the threat to academic freedom is, as Francesca Minerva thinks, very great indeed.
would be reluctant to go that route. Moreover, I think that there are some shortcomings associated with that idea. But Minerva also mentions the possibility of pseudonymous publication, and I think that that is an excellent, and significantly superior alternative. Publication using a pseudonym is not uncommon in the case of literary works, where it has been done for a variety of reasons.1 By contrast, neither anonymous publication nor publication using pseudonyms has been at all common in the case of philosophy – though, as Minerva notes, Enlightenment philosophers did make use of anonymous and pseudonymous publication, with Voltaire’s Candide, in which he criticized both the doctrines and practices of the Roman Catholic Church, being one of the more famous examples. Recent anonymous and pseudonymous philosophical publications are thus virtually unknown, although there is, for example, Why I Am Not a Muslim, along with other writings, by Ibn Warraq – a writer who wished to avoid the experience of Salman Rushdie. The failure of philosophers to make use of anonymous and pseudonymous publication has had some unfortunate effects. Consider, for example, the case of David Hume and his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. According to Norman Kemp Smith, Hume completed the first version of the Dialogues during the period 1751– 55. Revisions were then made in or prior to 1761, followed, 15 years later, by final revisions in 1776, shortly before Hume’s death.2 It is hard not to conclude that this long delay in finishing the Dialogues resulted from the reaction to some of Hume’s other writings, especially his essays ‘Of Suicide’ and ‘Of the Immortality of the Soul,’ where a few copies were initially printed and distributed, but then not circulated further because of what Richard H. Popkin describes as ‘violent protests’ that were ‘launched by leading clergymen’.3 Had Hume chosen anonymous or pseudonymous publication, his ideas would have been discussed during Hume’s own lifetime, and Hume himself could have then replied to criticisms. As it was, the Dialogues were not published until 1779, and even then, at first, with neither Hume’s name nor the publisher’s name attached. In any case, let me now describe how I think pseudonymous publication should work, and then indicate why I think it is preferable to anonymous publication. First of all, control would be needed over the use of pseudonyms, to ensure that more than one person would not wind up using the same pseudonym – such as ‘Socrates’! So there 1
3. WHAT IS THE BEST SOLUTION FOR ACADEMICS? Minerva’s own preferred solution is to allow anonymous publication of articles. Some journal editors, I suspect,
© 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd
164
http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2013/07/ economist-explains-18 [cited 2013 November 6]. 2 N.K. Smith. Preface to David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, Indianapolis and New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1947. p. v. 3 H. Richard. Popkin, Editor’s Introduction to David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion and the Posthumous Essays, Indianapolis and Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, 1980. p. viii.
165
Michael Tooley
would need to be a central, and very secure website where one registered one’s pseudonym. Secondly, the idea would then be that an academic who wanted his or her pseudonymous publications to be considered in job applications, or in tenure or promotion decisions, could supply the relevant person with a one-time password that allowed that person to go to the website, and type in the person’s name along with the pseudonym, at which point that window would close, and a new window would open containing only a ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ answer as to whether the pseudonym did belong to the person in question. What about journal submissions? Here the manuscript would be accompanied by a password that the journal editor, by going on line, could then use to determine whether the paper was being submitted by the registered owner of the pseudonym in question. The same password could then be used to correspond with the author, so that the author’s identity would thus remain completely confidential throughout the process. Why is this method preferable to anonymous publication? First of all, in the case of anonymous publication, academics who wanted credit for publications would, under Minerva’s proposal, have to make use of certificates from journals, so editors of journals would have to know the names of the authors of anonymous publications – something that is avoided given the above method of pseudonymous publication. Secondly, members of the media who wanted to interview the author of an article could do so using the website in question without thereby acquiring any knowledge of the identity of the author. Their requests would simply generate an email to the author, who could then reply to any questions via the website, so that his or her identity would never be revealed. Thirdly, an author using a pseudonym could refer to his or her other pseudonymous publications, and readers would know that those were indeed the author’s publications. Fourthly, if one wrote a number of articles in a given area, or closely related areas, other scholars
would immediately know that the same person wrote the articles in question, which might be very helpful to them. Anonymous publication would deny other scholars such information. Finally, and in a similar vein, if there were an article criticizing ‘Socrates.1’, and then a response to that criticism by ‘Socrates.1’, one would know that the response was indeed by the original author – information that once again would be unavailable given anonymous publication.
4. WHAT ABOUT JOURNAL EDITORS? The most pressing problem concerns authors of articles, but, as noted above, there is also a serious problem posed by intensely negative reactions directed at editors who publish articles that some people may find deeply offensive. What is the solution to this problem? The only solution, it would seem, is for there to be a website that a number of journals would have access to, where papers that editors judge to be clearly worthy of publication, but whose publication seems likely to set off a firestorm, could be published without any indication of the journal that had accepted the paper for publication.
SUMMING UP As I have said above, I agree with Francesca Minerva that the existence of the Internet has given rise to very serious, new threats to academic freedom. I think that it is crucial that we confront those threats, and find ways to eliminate them, and I believe that this can be done. Michael Tooley is a College Professor of Distinction in the Department of Philosophy of the University of Colorado at Boulder, and was President (1984–85) of the Australasian Association of Philosophy, and President (2010–11) of the American Philosophical Association, Pacific Division.
© 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd
