The Mellen Press and Rev. Richardson

You've likely heard by now via Brian Leiter's blog of the law suit that Mellen Press has filed against Dale Askey, a librarian at McMaster University. The story is also covered by the Philosophy & Religion Librarian at Princeton. Here's a petition in support of the McMaster librarian. (Update, Feb. 9: coverage by the Canadian librarians' assoc.)

Here's an archived version of Dale Askey's original post about Mellen.

The Mellen Press was founded by Herbert W. Richardson, a Presbyterian minister who was once a tenured professor in the Department of Religion at St. Michael's College in the University of Toronto. He was dismissed from his position. Reasons for the dismissal are presented at the previous link (more here).

Rev. Richardson was mentioned in a story at the New York Times on Dec. 30, 1976. According to the story at the Times, some Jewish and Christian leaders had criticized Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church for being anti-Semitic. From the Times' report, it sounds like Rev. Richardson defended Mr. Moon's church. To quote from the Times article, Rev. Richardson "charged that Moon members were being kidnapped by foes of the movement and that the criticisms by Rabbi Tannenbaum and the Christian ministers helped to excuse 'these criminal acts'."

Rev. Richardson sure has led an interesting life.