This was one of my points though: that the culture war stuff offers a covert opportunity (conscious or otherwise) for the publishers to paper over process failures.
Cynically, you could evoke it deliberately (“The safety of our students is our first priority”) knowing that the bellowing social media addicts–that Steven Pinker tweet! – will fire up with the Egregious Censorship Validating The Nazis stuff and drown out the sharper, quieter voices asking why prior publication in Math Puzzles Weekly was used in lieu of a second reviewer.
