The Coming Controversy in Academia

Let’s say you have a controversial idea and want to publish it. Maybe you wish to argue that colonialism was beneficial for the colonies, or that there are intrinsic and significant cognitive differences between the sexes. Both these arguments appeared in refereed academic journals — and then were removed from the online versions of these same journals. Yet, no matter how offensive you might find those claims, I suspect a reasonable percentage of the American public would agree with them or at least entertain them. It doesn’t seem right to simply censor the discussion of such topics.

You might start by sending your controversial research to the top journals in your field. But there may be bias against your perspective. The deeper problem is that most top journals encourage highly specific claims about very particular topics. Most controversialists are promoting some kind of “Big Think,” and that is out of favor in academia.