After reading this news, I'm looking forward to @HdxAcademy coming out in favor of campus safe spaces. bbc.com/news/amp/educa…
Snark aside, the principle seems identical. The Journal of Controversial ideas folks say self-censorship is a problem. Marginalized students on campus often self-censor even when faced with hostility in order to protect access to the benefits controlled by the majority groups.
Of course marginalized students lack power in institutional structures, while the figures behind the Journal of Controversial Ideas are some of our most prominent academics. In that sense, the JCI folks aren't just asking for a safe space, they want ALL space to be safe, for them
It's amazing to see how the same group that reacts so vociferously against students desiring a small corner of the institution as a place to feel secure and validated are so disturbed by a world in which they are not universally shielded from the consequences of their scholarship
These aren't opinion pieces, or blog posts, or political tracts, the JCI wants to publish. This is "scholarship" with all the rigor that implies. Anonymous scholarship is an oxymoron. It's pointless.
The irony is too rich for words and the lack of self-awareness among these big academic brains is laughable. Peter Singer, one of those behind the journal has been punished for his controversial opinions all the way to an endowed chair at Princeton.
If the JCI group could identify a rationale beyond what is identified as fear of "trouble" for publishing this controversial scholarship, I could possibly be persuaded. What trouble? Who is visiting this trouble upon them? What current scholarship has fallen prey to this trouble? 
Is "trouble" different from controversy or criticism? What is the line of "trouble" that has been crossed which requires pseudonymous scholarship? Granted, the publicly available reports are short, but this all feels half-baked.
What is the scholarly field for a Journal of Controversial Ideas? What defines "controversy?" Does 9/11 truther qualify? This is supposed to be a peer reviewed journal. What field or fields to these peers come from? What are the subject boundaries around controversial ideas?
I got questions.
