I recently completed a book defending free speech. Emerald Press scheduled it for publication but then decided not to proceed. Here’s what it said about the book in Emerald’s September 2019 catalogue:
In Defense of Free Speech: The University as Censor
Author James R. Flynn, University of Otago, New ZealandSynopsis: The good university is one that teaches students the intellectual skills they need to be intelligently critical—of their own beliefs and of the narratives presented by politicians and the media. Freedom to debate is essential to the development of critical thought, but on university campuses today free speech is restricted for fear of causing offence. In Defense of Free Speech surveys the underlying factors that circumscribe the ideas tolerated in our institutions of learning. James Flynn critically examines the way universities censor their teaching, how student activism tends to censor the opposing side and how academics censor themselves, and suggests that few, if any, universities can truly be seen as ‘good.’ In an age marred by fake news and social and political polarization, In Defense of Free Speech makes an impassioned argument for a return to critical thought.
I was notified of Emerald’s decision not to proceed by Tony Roche, Emerald’s publishing director, in an email on 10th June:
I am contacting you in regard to your manuscript In Defense of Free Speech: The University as Censor. Emerald believes that its publication, in particular in the United Kingdom, would raise serious concerns. By the nature of its subject matter, the work addresses sensitive topics of race, religion, and gender. The challenging manner in which you handle these topics as author, particularly at the beginning of the work, whilst no doubt editorially powerful, increase the sensitivity and the risk of reaction and legal challenge. As a result, we have taken external legal advice on the contents of the manuscript and summarize our concerns below.
There are two main causes of concern for Emerald. Firstly, the work could be seen to incite racial hatred and stir up religious hatred under United Kingdom law. Clearly you have no intention of promoting racism but intent can be irrelevant. For example, one test is merely whether it is “likely” that racial hatred could be stirred up as a result of the work. This is a particular difficulty given modern means of digital media expression. The potential for circulation of the more controversial passages of the manuscript online, without the wider intellectual context of the work as a whole and to a very broad audience—in a manner beyond our control—represents a material legal risk for Emerald.
Secondly, there are many instances in the manuscript where the actions, conversations and behavior of identifiable individuals at specific named colleges are discussed in detail and at length in relation to controversial events. Given the sensitivity of the issues involved, there is both the potential for serious harm to Emerald’s reputation and the significant possibility of legal action. Substantial changes to the content and nature of the manuscript would need to be made, or Emerald would need to accept a high level of risk both reputational and legal. The practical costs and difficulty of managing any reputational or legal problems that did arise are of further concern to Emerald.
For the reasons outlined above, it is with regret that Emerald has taken the decision not to publish your manuscript. We have not taken this decision lightly, but following senior level discussions within the organization, and with the additional benefit of specialist legal advice. I realize that this decision will come as a disappointment to you and hope that you will be able to find an alternative publisher with whom to take the work to publication.
If the book is sober and responsible, and if Emerald’s letter is correct, that poses a question: Does Britain have free speech? The above letter inspired me to change the title from “In Defense of Free Speech: The University as Censor” to “A Banned Book: Free speech and universities.” I hope that some publishers will contact me (jim.flynn@otago.ac.nz), so they can decide whether the book is worthy of publication and whether it runs afoul of any of the U.K.’s laws. If a journalist gets in touch, I can also send them the text for their eyes only. Let me give an outline of its contents.
The benefits of free speech
First, I give a general defense of free speech and criticize Jason Stanley and Jeremy Waldron insofar as their views differ from my own. I then use the case of Charles Murray being denied a platform at Middlebury College to show what students and staff miss out on when they refuse to hear or read those who offend them:
[My] dividends from reading Arthur Jensen, Richard Lynn, and Charles Murray: a plausible case that genetic differences between the major races are unlikely to confer an advantage or a handicap for desirable personal traits; a far better understanding of black America; a method that sheds light on personal development and leaves room for personal autonomy; an understanding of how differently males and females respond to formal education; a case that genetic differences between the genders seem cognitively trivial; a somewhat better understanding of the Chinese both at home and in America; a case for affirmative action that does not depend on racial bias; and most of all, a better understanding of the dynamics of a truly humane and egalitarian society.
This is the sad fate that the mob at Middlebury wanted to save me from. If I had not read these “discredited” scholars, I would still have a half-educated mind full of passion about race and gender and class and not much else.
A history of oppression
I then chart the history of the sins of universities against free speech with an emphasis on the McCarthy era (when conservatives barred or fired those they considered suspect), through the transitional period of Vietnam, to the present (when many on the “left” do much the same, particularly student protest groups). I detail the use of speech codes, and trigger warnings, and departments that have a party line (“Walden codes”) to discipline, expel, fire, and, above all, to defend indoctrination rather than education.
I include among the latter some African American studies departments that will not assign books or papers by conservative thinkers, some women’s studies departments that reject incontrovertible social science that runs counter to the official feminist ideology, and some (almost all) education departments that define their purpose as sending out “missionaries” to convert schools to their vision of an egalitarian society. I also provide a history of America’s schoolteachers, tracing how the low status of their profession has made the schools susceptible to adopting a missionary role.
Finally, I criticize the failure of universities to provide their students with the critical intelligence they need to be autonomous human beings and good citizens, despite the fact that they all state this as their chief objective.
Is this book worth reading?
Well, it will not be read unless it is published. To discuss a point made in Emerald’s letter, every reference to a person is documented by citations of published material or material in the public domain. At present, I can only cite the testimony of distinguished scholars. Some of the following were referees who sent their opinions to Emerald and some read it to give me an informal assessment.
This book is an education in itself…It is a brilliant and courageous book.
—Thomas Bouchard
That’s shocking [the rejection] even by the standards of contemporary restrictions on free speech, and especially ironic given the subject of your book.
—Steven Pinker
It is ironic that a book critical of restrictions on free speech should itself be rejected by a publisher who is worried about the book falling afoul of UK laws on incitement to racial hatred. In fact this is doubly ironic, given that the book is by Jim Flynn, after whom the “Flynn effect” is named, because the Flynn effect is all about the difference that culture and environment — rather than genes — makes to IQ scores. The draft I have seen has the potential to be an important and controversial work that will be very widely discussed.
—Peter Singer
I must admit I was shocked. Well, anyway, they have given you material for another chapter!
—John C. Loehlin
This is in-[expletive]-credible…Your book should not be considered even close to the fringes of politically correct discourse. If publishers are scared of your book, the censorship problem is a few orders of magnitude worse than I realized.
—Charles Murray
Homily
Discussing why free speech should extend to questions of race and gender necessarily involves presenting views (such as those of Jensen, Murray, and Lynn), if only for purposes of rebuttal, which upset those who believe that racial and sexual equality is self-evident. If upsetting students or staff or the public is a reason for banning speech, all such discussion is at an end. I end the book by quoting from George Orwell’s original preface to Animal Farm, which was itself rejected by Faber and Faber for being too critical of Stalin: “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”
Correction: An earlier version of this article was titled “My Book Defending Free Speech Has Been Banned,” and included a quote from Peter Singer which indicated that the book had been restricted. The title and quote have since been updated to reflect that the book was deemed too risky to be published, not that it was banned.
James R. Flynn is an intelligence researcher who gave his name to the Flynn Effect. He is Emeritus Professor of Political Studies at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand.
Photo: University of Otago
Being rejected by one publisher is not the same thing as being banned. How many other publishers has this author tried? Today we have the option of online self-publication, in which the services performed by traditional publishers are unbundled. The author arranges his own editing, criticism, marketing and distribution and is in return freed from having to deal with the traditional publisher as cultural gatekeeper.
Yes, and the publishers and their attorneys think this book covers topics that are illegal to discuss because they would incite “racial hatred.” If other publishers think this way, then in fact the book has been banned. This whole line of thinking is an interpretation of law based on a woke double standard, one rule for the so-called oppressed and the other rule for the so-called oppressor. This line of thinking cannot be questioned, because to question it is to be accused of hate speech. That’s how free speech ends.
Whilst I understand that the publisher has every right to withdraw from the agreement their intent to publish, it does strike me as rather short sighted, given that the cultural climate in the UK is set to go through one of its most monumental shifts in recent decades. James Flynn is perhaps the leading proponent of the idea that there may be more at play than simple genetics, when discussing the problematic differences in IQ by race, and has caused many to question whether environment plays a far greater role than previously thought. It does seem rather ironic then that a scholar with such a positive and egalitarian approach to the study of human cognitive development should find himself on the receiving end of what in the publishing world, might be deemed to be the equivalent of a no-platforming.
Indeed, some have speculated that a high IQ may be the symptom of a relatively high socio-economic background, at a population level, rather than it’s cause. Indeed, if we see the results of GCSE’s as a combination of intelligence and hard work, and at look at historic results through the lens of Free School Meals, then we can quickly see that class plays a significantly more important role than race, at least at a population level. The only population that seems to be largely immune to this phenomena is British Chinese, which leads one to wonder, as Trevor Philips has speculated indirectly in his excellent documentary Things We Won’t Say About Race (That Are True), how does culture impact attainment and what exactly are they doing right, that everyone else is doing wrong?
But there is probably more at play, than the simple weighing of legal advice (because if that were the case then surely Charles Murray’s book The Bell Curve would not have 36 separate listings on Amazon UK) or the controversy surrounding the well-established science of IQ. First, there is the quite legitimate fear of publishers of cancel culture and the outrage mob, which seems quite valid on a superficial level. That is, until one realises that the recent boycott of Chick-fil-A backfired spectacularly, with sales more than doubling, representing the beginning of the end of cancel culture in the US. This is sure to be mirrored in the UK at some point in the next two years, if the usual norms of cross-Atlantic cultural migration hold true. But more importantly, there is the fact that reading is on the decline amongst younger readers, especially amongst the ‘woke’ Left class, who seem to prefer spending their free time Tweeting, rather than reading a good book.
The growth in non-fiction sales in relation to fiction, might be another indicator of a shift in the composition of readers to a more mature, traditionally-minded reading public. A recent Guardian article at the end of last year showed that so-called “smart thinking” books did well, whether they were popular science, such as Why We Sleep (26), or life-guides, such as those by Jordan Peterson (32) and Matthew Syed (53). So why the reluctance?
Well, I think that there is a general reluctance on the part of cosmopolitan liberals to admit that their multicultural project has failed. Whatever the outcome of Brexit, the introduction of sensitivity readers and the publishing industry’s insistence on diverse authors, irrespective of merit, is sure to commercially damage those who pursue this objective, most single-mindedly- it’s the cultural equivalent of catering to a busload of butchers, with a serving of Quorn burgers. Far from cultural Britishness being dead, it would appear that this anti-British sentiment is confined to a small class of younger people, who don’t have the mental reserves or patience to manage a good book- that is, if recent university plans to introduce ten minute limits on Didactic teaching lectures are anything to go by.
Quite the contrary, if anything the cultural British spirit is alive, well, selling well in the rest of the world and reportedly most popular amongst the very BAME individuals that the multicultural Left purports to support. This is perhaps best epitomised by the fact that the single most successful school (for GCSE’s) by any standard, let alone for poor, multi-ethnic, inner city kids the Michaela Community School serves, is one in which the national anthem and other culturally British traditional songs are regular fixtures in Assembly. It would appear that the idea of belonging, regardless of race, under the umbrella concept of national identity, is a far more successful strategy, than sensitivity to diverse and separate cultures, within a country.
But back to science and James Flynn. I do hope this tendency to want to curtail supposedly harmful speech ends soon, especially the desire to see those who have enunciated unpopular ideas in the past, banished to obscurity. In particular, James Flynn’s own comparisons to the McCarthy era, should give us cause for pause. In the face of the growing evidence of a cultural sea change afoot, it is high time for a brave and decisive publisher to step forth, and capitalise on a growing mood for Free Speech and liberal values. I know it’s trendy to cast Brexiteers as ignorant and ill-informed, but in my admittedly limited experience this charge is unfounded, at least if their bookshelves are anything to go by. Perhaps they simply find the current choice of books promoted by publishers not to their tastes, with the noted exception of Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life.
The only thing I know about this affair, and of Emerald, is what I’ve read in this one article. So far as I can tell, one publisher accepted the author’s book for publication and then changed it’s mind. There is no mention of any other publisher to which the author may have submitted his manuscript and been rejected, either before or after his agreement with Emerald.
It’s too early for this author to state with confidence that his book has been banned, unless there are facts that he has not shared with us in this article.
There is an element of peevishness in this that is rather unseemly, given the lack of evidence - in this article - that the author’s book has been banned by anyone in any realistic sense of the word. I wish he’d shown a little more restraint. I also suggest he change the title back again. The original is far better.
Well, I hope so, too. I’d like to see the book published.
And I do appreciate learning something about the sort of company Emerald is. I’ll be mindful of their shabby treatment of the author the next time I notice their imprint.
The author’s manuscript has not been banned or censored. Censorship requires a nexus of governmental authority. Private publishers are free to discriminate and reconsider as often as they like. Such bias may not reflect well on private publishers but it is not a civil rights infringement. At worst one could possibly say it was blacklisted but that would require showing refusals and collusion from several publishers.
Just because someone has failed to live up to an obligation does not necessarily means someone was victimized. That being said the gentleman’s manuscript seems interesting and worthwhile. I hope it gets published.
For the man who proposed the Flynn effect to now be accused of inciting racial hatred seems to attain fairly high levels of absurdity. However, as others have noted, this is only the rejection of one publisher (thus far). I don’t think the first publisher offered Harry Potter ended up going with it. Sometimes publishers are short sighted and make business mistakes. The reasons given by the publisher are a bit chilling, but this is still some distance from reaching a level of “ban”.
“Primarily customers come to Emerald’s content through the 5,000 universities and corporate institutions that subscribe to its portal and offer library users direct access to the company’s articles and publications”
So this is not about anything legal as such - they are worried that uni’s populated by Wokesters may turn to other sources and they would lose sales.
Many here have argued the author’s use of the word “banned” is an exaggeration. I would argue it isn’t. A ban means legal prohibition. If the publishers fear the book would come under severe and punitive legal challenge if published, then it is, de facto, legally prohibited. This is not just a case of one book or one publisher. Even science fiction is now vetted by sensitivity readers. Insidiously, books become banned without governments having to formally ban them. Yes, he can publish online, or send a PDF file to an individual, but the author will be denied a broad audience and no financial compensation for his time and research.
What gets me, is that I always thought that class-based hatred (or resentment), who supposed to go up- that was, after all, why most or all of the Romanov’s ended up dead. Apparently not. In the modern context it has become fashionable to resent ordinary decent working-class people. Don’t get me wrong, I sill think it’s mad to go on holiday to a foreign country and not immerse yourself in the local culture and cuisine- especially given that the Europeans are willing to spend a little bit more on high quality ingredients, but the idea that all Brexiteers/Conservative/[insert here] are racists or deserve to be silenced is just vile. Apart from anything else, the suppression of knowledge leads to intellectually vulnerable young men forming bad ideas, because they don’t know the broader context. It doesn’t work- FFS!
Farris
Your comment is very interesting. I think it shows American culturalt thinking. In NZ, OZ and Britain there is no constitutional gurantee f free speech , so for us the idea of ‘‘censorship’’ is a bit different. We don’t just see it as a government matter, but as a social one too. People’s words should not be prevented from being heard unless they agree in contract to refrain from sort of utterance.
In any case, the reason given in this case for not publishing the book was that it would run afaul of what can only be regarded as censorship laws in the UK. The publisher did not censor the author’s work so much as the UK government did by chilling free speech with ridiculous ‘‘racial hatred laws’’. There’s nothing guaranteed to foment racial hatred more than racial hatred laws.
As a recently retired lawyer I was sometimes asked, several decades ago, to provide a legal opinion on a forthcoming book. It was easy then. There was no internet and no social media to facilitate mobbing. Today there is no way to assess the risk of someone organizing a mob attack on a book that may readily be misquoted, even by people who have never read it. It is then just a short step away from someone finding a lawyer willing to take a case to court for free for the reputation and goodwill it provides, especially in the US, where it is not the custom to make the loser pay the winner’s legal costs. The defendant publisher then has huge and unrecoverable legal costs, and shareholders worried about negative publicity regardless of the ultimate result in the case.
Of course I haven’t read the legal opinion for this book, but given the way that mobbing has been escalating I can guess at what the risk-averse opinion says.
The question Mr. Flynn raised about whether Britain still has free speech is a complex one. There has never been total free speech as there have been laws of defamation and more recent prohibitions against the somewhat expansive concept of “hate speech” in many jurisdictions. The scope of “free” speech has not been narrowed by legislation or even caselaw so much as by the practical desire to avoid harassment and the author even being fired from a university job. We seem to have fear, causing self-censorship by both authors and publishers.
Today, a publisher considering publishing a book that has within its pages even a small red flag for mobs will probably do some sort of risk-benefit estimation, not just for the possible flaming of that book but for the flames to spread to past and future publications.
Publishers live in dangerous times, as do academics — unless they stay well within the range of current sensitivities. I hope I live long enough to see a backlash against this excessive narrowing of the range of socially accepted speech.
America’s founding fathers did not do a perfect job of securing our rights against an overbearing government, but each and every time I read a story like this one, I say a silent prayer of thanks to those Dead White Men. Of all the things they did RIGHT, the master-stroke was the inclusion of an enumerated Bill of Rights in the U.S. Constitution. In my opinion, it is that and that alone which prevents us from following the rest of the world down the currently fashionable rabbit-hole of censorship and repression. There is a Very Good Reason that freedom of speech is enumerated first - because it is the most important right of all: the right of an American to speak his mind. It is that Amendment, and that alone, which is the reason Americans are referred to as “citizens” and the Brits are “subjects.”
The best legal reform that could occur in the US is to adopt the “English System” when it comes to costs.
If you know that you have to pay the other sides costs if you lose, you will think twice about commencing litigation. This would remove the need for anti SLAPP legislation, designed to prevent nuisance suits going ahead.
Mar Steyn is now in the 8th year of a defamation action in the US, where the plaintiff’s case is ridiculous. The threat of costs being awarded to Steyn because of delays by the plaintiff, would have ensured the suit was resolved more quickly and more cheaply.
Generally, being “rejected” by a publisher involves the author submitting a manuscript in the hope of gaining a publishing contract, and the submission is declined. This is more a speculative endeavour by the author who undertook the work without a contract already existing between the two parties.
Though Dr Flynn does not detail his arrangement with his publisher, which is a regrettable omission, it appears there was a contract between the parties. I deduce this by Emerald’s publishing a synopsis of it in its September 2019 catalogue and that it was scheduled for publication. In addition, Emerald obtained three ISBNs for the book, set pricing for three currency regions, and arranged for worldwide distribution of it. Presumably the publisher informed Flynn of both the book’s acceptance and impending publication date; it certainly undertook effort to promote it to book shops and others.
Dr Flynn has authored and co-authored 185 books, papers, and articles and his work has earned 10,936 citations. I doubt a person of such scholarly influence and prodigious output is sending manuscripts on spec to publishers. More likely, publishers are contacting him and making pitches. It appears a contract existed between the two parties and the publisher unilaterally decided to exit from it. Perhaps there was a clause permitting this, though we don’t know and the publisher’s letter to Flynn makes no mention of such one. It also doesn’t request Flynn revise “problematic” portions, or mention his refusal to do this, so it appears to me Emerald acted in bad faith.
Emerald writes of concern over breaching the law and being prosecuted. Emerald doesn’t state disagreement with Flynn’s work or other reasons for ending the relationship. Given the number of his publications and his renown, Emerald certainly had the opportunity to vet Flynn and decide whether or not he’s compatible with its business practices. I find no claim that Flynn went rogue and wrote something altogether unlike his other works.
The essence of Emerald’s rationalisation is the book violates law and thus would be bannable. Is this a valid concern or a pretext? I find no evidence of Flynn or his other publishers being prosecuted in the UK or elsewhere, and he had UK-based publishers such as Routledge & Kegan Paul publish his Race, IQ and Jensen. Have other authors of similar content been prosecuted in the UK for what the publisher fears? Again, I find no evidence of this. Further, the British Library, a government institution, hosts an annual Banned Book Week featuring books banned across the world.
Whether of not Emerald over-eggs the claim is debatable, but what is clear is Emerald states the book may cause legal trouble, and not for the customary reasons such as defamation and copyright violations. Because authors don’t submit work to a government censor prior to publication, a ban rests more on the understanding, rightly or not, of what may happen ex post facto. It is the vagueness of law and the uneven enforcement of it, both of which are an abuse by the state against the people, that establishes the real possibility of a ban.
You’re not wrong that other publishers exist, but so still does this fuzzy law and uneven enforcement. When one is uncertain about the firmness of the legal foundation underfoot, which I think these poorly crafted laws are designed to create, then risk avoidance by businesses and people is a way which the state creates bans underhandedly.
Edit: I found Emerald’s catalogue (PDF, pg 8) announcing Flynn’s book. (I’ve archived it here.) Not only does it include information of how to order it in the UK, so too is this info presented for the Americas. You’ll see that this is handled by US-based distributor Turpin Distribution of New Milford, CT. Unless the First Amendment was toppled on/about 16 September 2019, Emerald’s concern for breaching the law isn’t applicable to the US, yet Flynn’s book was also pulled from US distribution. This strengthens my opinion Emerald’s claim was a pretext.
What many people commenting here dont seem to understand is that it is highly unusual for a publisher to drop you post-contract. Yes, if you act in a way that makes them possibly liable - eg you say or do something obviously egregious - you can be dumped. It’s in the contract clause. But in this case? Very very unheard of. I mean prior to like 5 years ago…Particularly a very respected author who, let’s face it, is fairly guaranteed to bring in money. This isnt a normal “oh just one company didnt contract with me me” and no, online publishing is not an option unless you’re desperate; without the stamp of prestige conferred on this book, and after the publishers dumping him, no one would review the book; it would be ignored.
I think he should approach an american publisher, some of whom still actually beleive in doing their job, publishing books and earning money…we dont have the same laws as Britain so that aspect could be circumvented.
That said, if you’re not shocked and outraged that this company dumped him because they were afraid the truth he told would get them smeared on social media and possibly sued/tried in the UK, you are foolish. This is dangerous and alarming stuff indeed. People are such cowards. I hadnt realized to what extent until this evil cult like hysteria that has seemingly swept up so many otherwise decent minds.