Abstract
As we write, in early June, it is difficult to anticipate exactly how the summer will unfold. Yet we can be certain that present conditions and future possibilities will deteriorate for many of our readers, authors, and reviewers as the world copes with the medical, economic, and psychic effects of Covid-19. In the United States, the preexisting condition of violent white supremacy claims new lives daily. It is hard to imagine a moment in the 47 years since Political Theory was founded in which the unequal valuation of lives and labors has been so starkly exposed.
As the review process at Political Theory continues, it is not enough for us simply to mirror the world in which we live. Already, there is evidence that the global pandemic has had a disproportionately devastating effect on women’s research. Between March 1 and June 4, the journal received 76 new research articles from 88 solo authors and coauthors; 68 were men, and 20 were women. Although a preliminary review suggests that this disparity is not a significant departure from submission rates during the same period in 2019, it indicates why we need to gather information about longer-term patterns. It is harder to gauge the effect of the pandemic on scholars of color, but we know that Black, Indigenous, and Latinx communities have borne the brunt of the crisis in the United States, that it has fueled racism and xenophobia worldwide, and that it has ravaged vulnerable groups around the globe.
“What can I do where I am?” Toni Morrison posed this question in the face of rising protests against racial injustice in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Her question reverberates with particular force today. At Political Theory it means, at the very least, a commitment to flexible deadlines for revisions and reviews. We do not always know which scholars are shouldering new burdens at home or confronting new forms of economic precarity or coping with the ongoingness of racism. We cannot tell whether authors or reviewers have received time extensions on their tenure clocks or have seen their job prospects disappear altogether. What we do know is that the need to publish remains urgent—intellectually, politically, professionally. To that end, we will do whatever we can to accommodate authors’ and reviewers’ concerns. We also ask for help from colleagues who are in a position to offer it. We hope that you will be willing to review, when you can, for this journal and others. We hope you can draw upon available information to open broader conversations within your home institution about publishing disparities and the institutional support necessary to sustain the important research and mentoring already being done by women and scholars of color. We plan to continue to collaborate as editors and as comrades, so that the important work of thinking politically remains accessible for those from whom there is so much still to learn.