His post is HERE.
I wish he'd allowed comments, because I would like to know how any of the principal people he talks about in the article feel about it. I don't think it would be possible for me to have higher intellectual and personal regard than I do for the current Synthese editors (Johan van Benthem, Vincent F. Hendricks, and John Symons), as well as the one of the guest editors of the volume in question (James H. Fetzer; I just don't know much about his co-editor Glenn Branch, though he strikes me as doing important work in a good cause).
Francis Beckwith has a public history of doing some very shady things, some of which have been exposed by Leiter (he provides additional links), and it is massively unfortunate if people of the moral and intellectual caliber of the current editors of Synthese allowed him and his political goons to bully them into placing a dishonest warning in the issue the way Leiter describes.
But is this enough for us to boycott the journal? When we're not already boycotting J. Phil for not being blind reviewed (and more particularly the editors' defense of the policy in the letter section of the APA Proceedings, whose response to claimed heuristic bias via specific examples (some of my best friends are black!) would rightfully receives an F in a FRESHMAN level informal logic course), or any number of other journals which are now effectively not blind reviewed because the editorial staff (two graduate students I know at one journal, which for their sake I won't name) reject over half the papers prior to any kind of review?
Maybe I'm missing something. I just don't see how bending to someone like Beckwith (and Leiter provides prima facie compelling evidence that he is morally and intellectually odious) rises to the level of necessitating a boycott. My null hypothesis is (1) that Hendricks, von Bentham, and Symons were trying to do the right thing, (2) we don't know the full story, but that (3) if it proves to have been a mistake, then it is all to the good that Leiter shined light on the issue.
But (4) a boycott of Synthese seems vastly disproportionate to me. From every relevant fact I can find, the editors are good people who work very hard to maintain a first-rate journal with an important history. And, even if we can all agree that they got Beckwithed (Leiter documents a history of such bullying by the guy), it just seems disproportionate talk about a boycott.
Anyhow, if and when Leiter opens comments, we can go over there and discuss this (I'll provide an update link). But until then, I'm really interested in what people over here think about this. Maybe my initial response is wrong? I don't know. And I publicly invite any of the people involved to respond to Leiter's post here. If any of the Synthese editors want to make an official response, we will move it to the top as a post in its own right.
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