Elsevier buckles
Over at the RSMG blog, Nanni points out that Reed Elsevier will no longer host arms fairs. This has followed a long campaign by academics and others. The case raised a bunch of questions about boycotts. My general feeling was that moral suasion should be tried first, but that if that failed, boycotts should follow. It’s not clear whether the outcome was purely the product of suasion or whether increasingly loud noises about possible boycotts prompted Elsevier to move.
posted on Wednesday, June 6th, 2007 at 11:41 pm
OH! Weapons arms! …you can imagine my confusion as I was thinking physical/biological limb-arms…
Seems fair…provided they also stop publishing works by academics who receive funding from the defense industry.
Isn’t everyone who works on a government grant partially funded by the defense industry? The EPSRC, for example, receives funding from Rolls Royce…
You don’t have to be a pacifist to regard arms fairs as something the world would be better off without. They are, for example, venues for the illegal trade in landmines. not to mention the wide dissemination of clusterbombs and other instruments of state terror.
So who’s going to have the moral clarity to point out that you can’t boycott Reed Elsevier unless you first boycott everyone and everything in the world who has committed worse wrongs? Or is this line of argument reserved for special occasions?
Are you singling out someone’s complaint about singling out an issue, engels? Not very sporting. I think your anger is confected, and I can only conclude that you are an anti-singling-outer. Shame on you!
there are far worse anti-single-outers than engels, SG, though I notice that you choose to concentrate all your attacks and demonisation on him alone. What’s your real agenda here, as if I didn’t know?
damn! sprung! It`s true I`m an anti-anti-single-outer-single-outerer, from way back. Curse your perspicacity!
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