MOVING TO FRONT FROM JUNE 5--FOR THOSE WHO MAY HAVE MISSED IT (ALSO UPDATED)
Professor Cohen asked me to share his full explanation for this decision, which I am happy to do: Download Stewart Cohen resignation. This is a real shame, but Professor Cohen is to be congratulated for editing the journal with great success for the last quarter-century, and making it an indispensable forum for philosophical work.
(I believe the controversy surrounds an article by philosopher Robin Dembroff [Yale] attacking Alex Byrne [MIT]; you can get a sense of Professor Dembroff's "unprofessional personal attacks" [as Professor Cohen calls them] here.)
ADDENDUM: The linked list of "insults" from Professor Dembroff's piece is probably broader than what Professor Cohen had in mind; but comments like these clearly are "personal attacks" which an analytic philosophy journal might reasonably regard as beyond the pale:
“Byrne’s paper is fundamentally an unscholarly attempt to vindicate a political slogan that is currently being used to undermine civic rights and respect for trans persons.”
“All this leads me to wonder about the motives of someone who would so confidently insert themself [sic] into this high-stakes discourse while so ill-informed”.
Great stuff for blogs and Twitter, not so much for Philosophical Studies.
UPDATE: Professor Byrne's reply to Professor Dembroff (the reply that Professor Cohen had solicited prior to being overruled by the publisher and another editor) is available here.
ANOTHER: Apt comments from Professor Byrne on Twitter:
Any academic discipline needs to encourage skepticism and dissent, or it risks lapsing into an ivory tower priesthood where dogma replaces knowledge, heretics are shamed, and good faith disagreement with the pieties of the moment is seen as a sign of moral corruption.
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