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Retraction, Free Speech, and Editorial Ethics: A Defense of the Retraction of Lawrence M. Mead’s “Poverty and Culture”

  • SYMPOSIUM ARTICLE: THE MEANING OF RETRACTION
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Abstract

The article is a defense of the retraction of Lawrence M. Mead’s “Poverty and Culture” from the journal Society in 2020. Four reasons for retraction are adduced: the unreliable content; the faulty review process; the redundancy of the article in relation to previous articles by Mead; and the defamation of racial and national groups. The article discusses the ethics of retraction in general, arguing that retraction is an indispensable procedure for correcting errors and maintaining high academic standards. The article also seeks to allay the apprehension that retraction is contrary to the spirit of free speech. Since a statement of retraction is a form of discourse and an exercise of academic judgment by the editors, retraction is an instance, not a violation, of free speech.

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Notes

  1. Lawrence M. Mead, “Poverty and Culture.” A PDF of the retracted article was provided to me by Springer. The article was republished, but without the Abstract, in Academic Questions (Spring, 2021): https://www.nas.org/academic-questions/34/1/poverty-and-culture.

  2. https://group.springernature.com/gp/group/media/press-releases/springer-nature-statement-society-article/18232228.

  3. Strictly speaking, the retraction notice was issued by Springer Nature, the corporate entity, while the article and journal were published by Springer, one of the leading imprints of Springer Nature.

  4. Ibid. (the same website contains the two statements from July 30 and 31).

  5. See note 1.

  6. Michael Bérubé and Jennifer Ruth critique “Poverty and Culture” in “When Professors’ Speech is Disqualifying,” The New Republic (March 21, 2022): https://newrepublic.com/article/165649/professors-speech-disqualifying. The article is an extract from their book, It’s Not Free Speech: Race, Democracy, and the Future of Academic Freedom (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2022; for the part on Mead, 114-122). The authors, who have held leading positions in the American Association of University Professors, argue that academic freedom is not a license to express racist and false ideas (but they do not speak for the AAUP in their book).

  7. See the Editor’s Note prefacing the republication of “Poverty and Culture” in Academic Questions. “It was retracted on July 21, 2020 by the publisher Springer under pressure from activists, advocates, and scholars who believe, apparently, that examining cultural habits, beliefs, and attitudes as it relates to the socio-economic mobility of various groups is racist.” (Italics in original. The word “pressure” also links to some complaints made on Twitter against Mead’s article.)

  8. It is always a bit dangerous to say “there are no . . . .” However, having recently completed a history of academic freedom in the USA since the formation of the AAUP, and having consulted several present or recent officers of the AAUP about whether there are any AAUP statements on retraction, I have come up empty handed. If a reader is able to contradict me, I will welcome the correction.

  9. For a history of academic freedom in the USA that pays considerable attention to the AAUP, see Daniel Gordon, What Is Academic Freedom? A Century of Debate, 1915-Present (London: Routledge, 2022), open access at https://www.routledge.com/What-is-Academic-Freedom-A-Century-of-Debate-1915Present/Gordon/p/book/9780367511715.

  10. https://publicationethics.org/retraction-guidelines.

  11. For the statement that Springer subscribes to COPE’s retraction guidelines, see https://support.springer.com/en/support/solutions/articles/6000080090-springer-s-corrections-and-retractions-policy.

  12. I am inclined to agree that the retraction of Gilley’s article was problematic. See Daniel Gordon, “Radical Candor: On Albert Memmi (1920-2020),” H-France Salon (vol. 13, issue 4, no. 5): https://h-france.net/Salon/SalonVol13no04.5.Gordon.pdf. I note affinities between Gilley’s ideas and the insights of the post-colonial thinker Memmi. Gilley’s “The Case for Colonialism” was retracted by Third World Quarterly in 2017 but republished in Academic Questions (the same journal which republished Mead’s “Poverty and Culture” after its retraction) in April 2018.

  13. See note 7.

  14. Pew Research Center, “Key Facts about Asian Americans” (2021); https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/04/29/key-facts-about-asian-americans/; the Brookings Institution, “Asian American Success and the Pitfalls of Generalization” (2016) https://www.brookings.edu/research/asian-american-success-and-the-pitfalls-of-generalization/; The Washington Examiner (2021), “What Explains the Economic Success of Asian Americans” (March 29, 2021): https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/op-eds/what-explains-the-economic-success-of-asian-americans.

  15. Lawrence M. Mead, “Cultural Difference,” Society (vol. 55, issue 6, 2018), 484.

  16. All quotations come from the article as published in Society (see note 1). The version in Academic Questions contains small amendments I would describe as stylistic rather than substantive. Each quotation either is identical or has a very close counterpart.

  17. Richard E. Nisbett, The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently . . . and Why (New York: The Free Press, 2003), 7.

  18. Ibid., 15.

  19. Ibid., 49.

  20. Ibid., 100.

  21. Ibid., 184.

  22. Francis Fukayama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Free Press, 2006; first pub. 1992).

  23. Ibid., 225.

  24. Ibid., 221–222.

  25. Ibid., 196; see also 74.

  26. Philippe Bourgois, In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003, 2nd Edition). I wish to thank Katherine S. Newman for help with this paragraph. See also her No Shame in My Game: The Working Poor in the Inner City (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000, 3rd Edition) on the strong work ethics to be found in many poor minority communities.

  27. See note 3.

  28. Before I applied to be an editor, I was in touch with Dante Scala about Society’s procedures in the autumn of 2020 because I had submitted “The Firing of Angela Davis at UCLA, 1969-1970: Communism, Academic Freedom, and Freedom of Speech.” The article was peer reviewed and appears in Society (vol. 58, issue 6, 2020), 596-613.

  29. https://www.libraryofsocialscience.com/newsletter/posts/2016/2016-02-17-Transaction1.html.

  30. “Talking to Thinkers with Simon Blackburn” (hour 2, min. 17): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Do4bBq5PjCo. The “Talking to Thinkers” series is the creation of Johnny Lyons, who is also the managing editor and book review editor of Society.

  31. Ibid. (hour 2, min. 17–18).

  32. Ibid. (hour 2, min. 16).

  33. Simon Blackburn, “Valedictory,” Mind (vol. 100, no. 1, Jan. 1991), i-ii.

  34. The new editors have modified the homepage to make the journal’s scope even wider. Springer provided me with the old statement.

  35. Colleen Flaherty, “Journal Editor Regrets Publishing Racist Article,” Inside Higher Education (July 31, 2000): “The decision was entirely my responsibility and no other member of the editorial board of Society was consulted or participated in that decision.” https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2020/07/31/journal-editor-regrets-publishing-racist-article.

  36. Ibid. “My intent was to have this commentary published alongside two critical reviews of his 2019 book, Burdens of Freedom, on which Mead’s commentary is based, that identify flaws in Mead’s arguments.”

  37. Bérubé and Ruth, see note 4.

  38. Lawrence M. Mead, “Immigration: The Cultural Dimension,” Society (vol. 53, issue 2, 2016), 116.

  39. Ibid. This quote is from the main text, not the Abstract.

  40. Lawrence M. Mead, “The Moral Community and Immigration,” Society (vol. 46, issue 5, 2009), 407.

  41. Lawrence M. Mead, “American Power: The Challenge Within,” Society (vol. 54, issue 5, 2017), 401.

  42. Lawrence M. Mead, “Cultural Difference,” Society (vol. 55, issue 6, 2018), 482.

  43. Flaherty, “Journal Editor Regrets Publishing Racist Article” (see note 32).

  44. See note 3.

  45. The concepts of strict scrutiny and rational basis are basic ideas in American constitutional law, covered in all textbooks. One useful primer is Paul Gowder, “Note On Levels of Scrutiny,” in Fourteenth Amendment Course, https://opencasebook.org/casebooks/699-14th-amendment-course/resources/2.2.2-note-on-levels-of-scrutiny/.

  46. Robert K. Merton, “The Normative Structure of Science,” https://www.panarchy.org/merton/science.html (first published as “Science and Technology in a Democratic Order,” Journal of Legal and Political Sociology, vol. 1, 1942, 115–126; it was renamed when published in Merton's book, The Sociology of Science: Theoretical and Empirical Investigations (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973). My thanks to Andreas Hess for bringing Merton’s article to my attention and for suggesting how it applies to Mead’s work.

  47. Ibid.

  48. Akhil Amar, “The First Amendment’s Firstness,” UC Davis Law Review (vol. 47, no. 4, 2014), 1015–1035.

  49. Stanley Fish, Versions of Academic Freedom: From Professionalism to Revolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014) and Save the World on Your Own Time (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008). See also the entirety of Bérubé and Ruth, It’s Not Free Speech (per note 4).

  50. Laura Dallago, “Silence or Noise?: The Future of Public Employees' Free Speech Rights and the United States Supreme Court’s Jurisprudence on the Scope of the Right,” Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice (vol. 22, issue 1, 2016); see esp. 255–257 on the case of Garcetti v. Ceballos (2006) upholding the right of public employers to punish employees for speech related to their official duties as distinct from their speech as citizens.

  51. This was the issue in Garcettie (see the previous note).

  52. Tara Law, “Ohio Doctor Fired for Tweeting She’d Give Jewish People ‘All the Wrong Meds,’” Time (Jan. 20, 2019): https://time.com/5492461/doctor-fired-cleveland-clinic-tweets-anti-semetic/. The misspelling of “semitic” is part of the URL!

  53. Admittedly, there is much debate about when a professor’s speech crosses the line. See Gordon, What Is Academic Freedom? esp. Chapters 3-4 (per note 6).

  54. West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624 (1943).

  55. Miami Herald Publishing Co. v. Tornillo, 418 U.S. 241 (1974).

  56. Hurley v. Irish-American Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Group of Boston, Inc., 515 U.S. 557 (1995).

  57. Frederick Schauer, “The First Amendment as Ideology,” William and Mary Law Review vol. 33, no. 3 (Spring 1992), 854.

  58. Voltaire, Letters on England (London: Cassell and Company, 1894; first pub. 1733), 18. My thanks to George Fenn for bringing this passage to my attention.

  59. Ibid.

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Gordon, D. Retraction, Free Speech, and Editorial Ethics: A Defense of the Retraction of Lawrence M. Mead’s “Poverty and Culture”. Soc 60, 157–166 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12115-023-00823-2

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