THREAD re #tax & academic gatekeeping.

Canadian #taxtwitter: in the wake of the #HaroldUhlig academic scandal (if you also follow #EconTwitter), I think it's worth looking into #tax and the @CdnTaxFdn too.

  https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-university-of-chicago-economist-black-lives-matter-harald-uhlig-20200613-hjqqlox7wjbz5iosdxkgoe7ftq-story.html

[1/11]

After his vocal criticism of #BlackLivesMatter , it surfaced that Harold Uhlig may have done some awful things. Why does this matter? Because Harold Uhlig was also the lead editor of the Journal of Political Economy, one of the field’s top academic publications.

[2/11]

It's never going to be clear how much good work was gatekept out of this publication because he was in charge. But #tax overlaps so much with econ (particularly on the academic side) that we face many of the same systemic gender- and race-based issues that plague #econ.

[3/11]

Not to pick on anyone, but, to start somewhere: the @CdnTaxFdn is probably the most widely-read tax org in Canada. It publishes a flagship research journal: the Canadian Tax Journal. The editors - you guessed it - are all white males.

[4/11]

The CTJ also has three major newsletters - Focus Tax for the Owner-Manager, and (new) Perspectives on Tax Law & Policy. ALL of the editors for these are white men.

[5/11]

Notably, while peer reviewed CTJ articles are double-blind reviewed, the editors - ALL of whom are white men - do an initial review, functioning as gatekeepers. The numbers (to follow) seem to indicate that this results in lack of diversity in the publication.

[6/11]

Submissions for many features are sought ad hoc, based on word of mouth. So, who gets published? Let's take a look at 2020.

[7/11]

Focus published 32 people this year. Of this, 16 (50%) were white men, and 22 (69%) were men.

Tax for the Owner Manager published 27 people this year. 13 were white men (48%), 23 (69%) were men. January's issue had NO women.

[8/11]

I'm most disappointed by Perspectives, which started this year, and could have had an opportunity to change things up. But no - of the 7 authors, it published 6 (85%!) men, and NO people of colour.

[9/11]

Let's talk about the CTJ. It published 19 authors this year, of which 12 (63%) were white men, and 14 (74%) were men. This Cdn journal published as many AUSTRALIANS (2) as it did women of colour (but the former wrote separate articles while the women were co-authors).

[10/11]

Know how many BIPOC I found were published this year? None. Zero, throughout ALL of the above publications (so no #BlackintheIvory posts coming from tax, I guess).

I challenge @CdnTaxFdn to do better (cc. @kevinmilligan and @HeatherL_Evans).

#Diversity #LawTwitter

[11/11]

(For further clarity, because it's come up: I'm using what appears to be the less-used version of this acronym: "Black and Indigenous People of Colour". There are a handful of PoC that were published this year, per the Tweets above, but no Black or Indigenous writers).