You Did Not Just Say That!

I'm working on a project about the ethics of experience in composition research and scholarship, and in my reading I came across this little gem of a recollection by the author of a widely-used textbook on teaching writing:

Most college writing programs differ in numerous ways, but they have many goals in common. These goals were described by the Council of Writing Program Administrators (WPA) . . . and published as an outcomes statement in 1999. At the time of this writing, the president of the WPA . . . was such an important person that she was far too busy to write a one-page permission letter allowing us to reproduce the outcomes statement here (usually deemed a simple matter of professional courtesy), so instead of reproducing the statement, I have summarized its key features . . . . (281)

Are you kidding me? The first time I read this passage, my immediate thought was, somebody at [publisher] lost their job over this one. To make matters worse, the author actually uses the president's name, which I chose to elide for this post. I know academic discourse can get contentious, but jeez.