… (she left the University of Maryland a number of years ago for Miami University) writes a manuscript about organized crime and Vladimir Putin that scares the bejaysus out of Cambridge University Press. Libel laws! No can publish.
This is from Karen’s response to the editor there:
Last week the EU and the US Government issued a visa ban and asset freeze on the very inner core that is the subject of my book. Many works will now come out on the makeup of the list and why each individual was placed on it. The answers to these questions are in my book. Isn’t it a pity that the UK is a ‘no-fly’ zone for publishing the truth about this group? These Kremlin-connected oligarchs feel free to buy Belgravia, kill dissidents in Piccadilly with Polonium 210, fight each other in the High Court, and hide their children in British boarding schools. And as a result of their growing knowledge about and influence in the UK, even the most significant British institutions (and I think we can agree that CUP, with its royal charter, 500-year history and recent annual revenues in excess of $400m, is a veritable British institution) cower and engage in pre-emptive book-burnings as a result of fear of legal action…. [Perhaps some day we] can once again turn to CUP with the knowledge that it is indeed devoted to publishing “all manner of books” and not just those that won’t awaken the ire of corrupt Russian oligarchs out to make a further mockery of British institutions.
April 4th, 2014 at 6:10PM
I agree that this isn’t CUP’s finest hour, but it’s really Britain’s atrocious libel laws that are to blame here.
April 4th, 2014 at 8:05PM
Veritably British in every respect – everything at CUP goes through the head office (on paper, I believe). The British libel laws are unavoidable.
April 5th, 2014 at 2:11AM
Similar:
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140402/17325826780/chilling-effects-climate-change-deniers-have-scientific-paper-disappeared.shtml