Inside Higher Ed has a story on the decision by the University of Michigan Press to continue distributing books by Pluto Press, a London-based leftist imprint that published Overcoming Zionism, “which argues that the creation of Israel was a mistake and urges adoption of the ‘one state’ solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in which Israelis and Palestinians would form a new country, without a Jewish character.” Michigan had responded to complaints about the book by dropping the book, then picked it up again after more people complained about the specter of censorship—but in resuming its distribution of Overcoming Zionism, the university press said it would have to reconsider whether it wanted to have any dealings with Pluto at all, considering how they would never have published such a book.
Ultimately, the decision to continue distributing Pluto’s books here in the States was “undertaken strictly as [a] business relationship,” the university press said in a statement, emphasizing that such deals were “a small part of the UM Press’s business.” Moving forward, though, the executive board is going to come up with some real guidelines for entering into future arrangements with other publishers, presumably to avoid similar controversies in carrying books from other political presses.