After initially acting like it would publish a book about policing, and then wasting months of the author’s time, Columbia University Press rejected a book for not being hostile toward the police.
Professor Peter Moskos is an instructor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and at CUNY Graduate Center. He also is in Yale University’s Urban Ethnography Project and is a former cop.
He wrote a book about the big decline in crime in New York City in the 1990s, which Columbia University Press implied it would publish, then solicited peer review from two peer reviewers who liked it, then demanded that he write a fundamentally different book instead, including having a more hostile take on policing.
In essence, Columbia University Press rejected the book because the “reviewers were too sympathetic to policing,” he noted on Twitter.
After the book received two positive reviews, the faculty board then asked for a “critical reviewer” to look at it.
Moskos observed that “it’s perhaps unprecedented” for a book to reach the review stage and not get published. “Somebody familiar with the academic publishing business described it as unethical” to appear to approve a book, allow it to reach the review stage, then block its publication unless it is essentially replaced by a very different book.
Moskos’ book “illustrates the police perspective of a dramatic reduction in crime and violence. It explains what the NYPD did and how the police organization changed in a way that contributed to less public disorder and fewer shootings and murders.”
“I believe some faculty members on the board of Columbia University Press refuse to publish a book that is sympathetic to the idea that police and policing can be a force for good,” he said.
After receiving two positive reviews from anonymous reviewers, “the book should have been approved,” Moskos said. “Instead, the board … specifically asked for the manuscript to be sent to a more critical reviewer. This was done. And then the board demanded, in effect, a different book. That effectively killed the book.”
Columbia University Press’s diversity statement states it aims “to embody antiracist principles in all our work: in the recruitment of diverse authors; in ensuring that the books we publish elevate minoritized perspectives; in conducting a peer-review process that addresses questions of diversity, justice, and power.”
On the other hand, its code of conduct states its mission is “publishing excellence and upholding freedom of expression.”
At least one of its employees has previously tried to squelch books with a conservative viewpoint. Associate Editor Monique Laban signed a petition that demanded that Penguin Random House not publish Supreme Court Justice Amy Barrett’s book because of her vote to reverse Roe v. Wade. The “We Dissent” petition accused Justice Barrett, who is a Roman Catholic, of “inflicting her own religious and moral agenda upon all Americans while appropriating the rhetoric of even-handedness—and Penguin Random House has agreed to pay her a sum of $2 million to do it.”
Moskos hopes to ultimately get his book published by a different press, despite the hostility in academic presses to pro-policing narratives.
Moskos said that “based on the writings of other academics opposed to policing, I suspect they think policing is an evil institution” at the Columbia University Press. “I suspect they think policing is an evil institution. So writing a book that ‘supports’ policing is akin to writing a book supporting slavery. Since some compare police to slave catchers. Or something like that.”
“The idea that good policing contributes to a reduction in crime is not a controversial thesis [among those who have actually studied the issue]. What the book shows is how police contributed to the crime reduction. The book will be published by a press that does not give police abolitionists veto power.’’
