Do you remember when nobody on the internet knew you are a dog? It’s urgent to come back to that moment/place to preserve freedom of speech. Now a new academic journal, edited by Jeff McMahan, Francesca Minerva and Peter Singer permits authors to use a pseudonym:

A new academic journal permits authors to use a pseudonym to avoid running the risk of receiving personal abuse, including death threats, or of irrevocably harming their careers. That option has become necessary even in countries that we do not think of as repressive dictatorships. Peter Singer, one of the editors of the new Journal explain

Peter Singer, Keeping Discussion Free

The Journal of Controversial Ideas, the first open access, peer-reviewed, interdisciplinary journal specifically created to promote free inquiry on controversial topics:

The Journal of Controversial Ideas offers a forum for careful, rigorous, unpolemical discussion of issues that are widely considered controversial, in the sense that certain views about them might be regarded by many people as morally, socially, or ideologically objectionable or offensive. The journal offers authors the option to publish their articles under a pseudonym, in order to protect themselves from threats to their careers or physical safety. We hope that this will also encourage readers to attend to the arguments and evidence in an essay rather than to who wrote it. Pseudonymous authors may choose to claim the authorship of their work at a later time, or to reveal it only to selected people (such as employers or prospective employers), or to keep their identity undisclosed indefinitely. Standard submissions using the authors’ actual names are also encouraged.

Now, let’s cross fingers and do not forget that six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, are enough for a tyrant to find something in them which will hang him. The tyrant today is data mining.

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Featured Image: Peter Steiner’ famous cartoon published by The New Yorker on July 5, 1993