In this case, the sentence can be easily worked into the preceding sentence which it echos - by changing the place holder clause "The first order of business is.." to "The aim of section one is..".
I once was working with a horrible boss like that. I'd write a draft of the paper, she would not understand subject or prose and change some sentences into something else, based on her limited understanding of the subject and the prose. It was excruciating. You'd read her draft full of MBA-speak and couldn't make out the meaning of some of it!
"The first order of business will be" is a placeholder used in speech, to me it has the equivalent meaning of "Uhm, I will be". Care to elaborate further on what you think the special emphasis of this phrase is in this context?
>Congratulations!
Not to edit your style bro, but the condescension is a bit much. Seems like you have just soured on editors due to some bad personal experiences. Editing is suppose to be a two way conversation in which the editor marks up all possible errors and you accept the changes that you think add clarity or just rewrite it yourself knowing that your previous version was unclear to at least 1 person.
That said, I don't really see the grey area in this case.
The task of the editor is never to impose their style upon the author. There are different writing styles even in academic writing, a wordy one, one that chooses outrageous words, a very terse one, and the awful MBA-style kind.
What's worst is an editor that sees a sentence that he does not understand, and edits that, thinking it's just style but completely changes the meaning.