What a coincidence!

YEAH! especially by an ignorant, immoral, punk.

oh, wait… did you wanna leave that part out?

For those of you wondering why the HLR would publish a review of a book on intelligent design, rest easy: it didn’t. It published a review of a book discussing the establishment clause and intelligent design. One might believe (correctly, in my view) that the merits of intelligent design as scientific theory are a separate question from the constitutionality of teaching intelligent design in public schools. After all, the reason we don’t teach Catholicism in public schools, for example, isn’t that Catholicism isn’t true (it is!), but because the establishment clause prohibits it, whether true or not. One must separate the truth or falsity of the theory from the permissibility of teaching the theory itself.

Leiter is, as NRO argues, a bully. This is the second time in 3 months that he’s threatened law students or recent law graduates. See this from January:

Sadly, some of those who are not anonymous, and whose credentials might
>otherwise position them well for the legal academy, may not realize the
>kind of damage they are doing to their academic prospects–either
>through advertising their political predilections in unattractive ways
>(there is more political bias in legal academic hiring–for more, go
>here <http://webapp.utexas.edu/blogs/archives/bleiter/000252.html> ),
>or through frequently sloppy argumentation and misreadings, or simply
>sophomoric intellectual posturing–at least to the extent hiring
>schools become aware of their blogs. But given the extensive
>communication between law schools during the hiring process, and the
>decent number of law faculty in the blogosphere, it seems likely this
>will come out. This is a development worth
>watching with interest: how will these blogs affect the academic job
>prospects of these individuals? My prediction is: by and large, not
>favorably.

That post was meant, I believe, as a threat to a young lawyer who had the audacity to disagree with Leiter on is blog and to best Leiter in the public argument. The young man is a HLS grad and is quite obviously planning an academic legal career. The message was received, I can confirm.

Perhaps I should have let Jimmy have the last word.

Thomas, where is the threat in what you posted? Did you leave something out?

You can’t separate science teaching from its content and pretend that this is an abstract “establishment issue”. It actually doesn’t matter whether it’s religious or not; this is a case of a gang of con artists (who happen to have religious motivations) conspiring to replace good teaching with garbage.

I think it’s pathetic that Leiter is being accused of being a bully. The author of the review was appallingly stupid; it’s the kind of scholarship one might expect of a callow junior high school forensics team member. For just one incredible example, note that he completely misinterpreted an NCSE source to claim that 1% of scientists doubt evolution. When it was pointed out to him, he still failed to be able to read the source correctly.

What do you expect when a member of the Harvard Law Review screws up so thoroughly? That everyone will just purse their lips, go “tut, tut”, and look away? Why is everyone supposed to be solicitous of the career of a demonstrable incompetent…because he’s a member of the Harvard elite?

Let’s suppose I’m a prospective applicant and I read Leiter’s post quoted above.

“Oh no, sloppy argument and sophomoric posturings might affect my job chances! My right to post illogical trash and ill-thought-out attacks is being unconstitutionally curtailed! What a fascist is Leiter!”

Of course it [i]might[/i] be an implied threat in a certain context. But it’s not obvious that it should be taken as one.

I’m with Chun, though orgonomy’s more my bag.

The Darwin debate is the ‘permanently nutty don’t get it’ sector of Western Civ, religious or secular. What ever happened to the non-religious non-Darwinist? (e.g. Schopenhauer, although Magee tries to pass him off as proto-Darwinist) The N-R N-D figure as a ‘neither’ and Kuhnian mutant is getting a little tired of the suspiciously controlled dialectic of scientific reductionists and fundamentalists. Didn’t anyone ever notice this represents two conservative constituencies? Isn’t there a better way? Should we import Buddhists who don’t react either way on the ‘god meter’, who dah? (measure of foaming at the mouth)
Anyone, the Darwin field by a sad irony has produced two generations of Dawkins fans who don’t get it and can’t handle a book like No Free Lunch, by Dembski. Why couldn’t anyone in academia have written that book, and done it right? (I didn’t say I agreed with him).
Anyway, the resolution of the Darwin debate was pretty well handled by Kant, who apparently is beneath Darwinian contempt (cf. Evelyn Keller’s ‘sneak’ Kant in her recent book on models)but they seem to prefer to attack Paley–a bit convenient.

I’m shocked, shocked to see the National Review engaging in intellectual dishonesty!

Uh, please. Brian Leiter and implicit threats are nothing new. But it seems that he’s gone totally apeshit this time and is now threatening (touchy touchy) a defamation suit! What an assclown.

C’mon Professor Weatherson, surely it does not escape anyone with more than two brain cells that Leiter is hedging his false bravado! Why bother to outline 4 counts of “defamation” in an incensed stupor if you don’t really mean it? Now he’s reduced to juvenile intimidation rhetoric like so: “I’m going to beat you up in real life!!!1!! but I wasn’t humiliated in the first place so I won’t”. Bah!

Seriously, the notion that Leiter was threatening poor VanDyke is laughable. Contrary to the deluded ravings of Hunter Baker (wonderful name, by the way), Leiter is powerless with respect to VanDyke’s fortunes.

Re enthememe’s above erotema:

Why bother to outline 4 counts of “defamation” in an incensed stupor if you don’t really mean it?

As a rhetorical device, perhaps? Hyperbole, I believe it’s called.

You know what I’d like to read? Enthymeme “fisking” Leiter over this particular issue. Unlimited exclamation points.

Enthymeme, did Leiter spit at your mother or something? Back here on the planet earth, we’re still looking for evidence of the threat and the bullying.

Temper, temper, gentlemen!

amused, well, did he pork yours seeing that you’re so keen to jump to his defence? Duh.

Anyway, we know that Leiter has influence at least in UT law, so you can be sure that VanDyke will not be hired (assuming he has academic aspirations at all) where he holds sway. Implicit threat 1.

Leiter’s perceived influence extends beyond UT, given his work on the PGR, law rankings and what-have-you. I don’t think it is unreasonable to suppose that someone in VanDyke’s shoes will feel his academic future threatened by Leiter’s remarks and _fear for it_. I sure got the impression of palpable malice.

Say you were on a hiring committee and you bought into the cachet of Leiter’s rankings. Would you think twice before hiring someone who has attracted a great deal of controversy from editor of said rankings? Indeed, why would you stick your neck out? Any fool could see the the implicit threat contained in Leiter’s remarks and the repercussions thereof.

Given “the vagaries of the academic job-market” as old Leiter will put it, _any_ reason will count as a reason to disqualify a potential candidate – not to mention a negative and widely publicized appraisal from the editor of an influential ranking exercise. Implicit threat 2.

Professor B uh I mean Karl Marx sir,

Get real plz. Taking a dislike to Professor Leiter’s style and having a laugh while at it does not constitute “obsession”. Is Leiter obsessed with George Bush? Duh duh.

Nor did I say _I_ was threatened. I said Leiter attempted to use bullying rhetoric on me and that he has a tendency to foam at the mouth which borders on the pathological. Capiche? I think a failure on his part to respond substantively says more about his “argumentative abilities” [sic] than mine. But I digress. If the PGR editor told me I “won’t last long in philosophy”, would I feel threatened? Hell yeah. What do you expect? Even as someone _not_ in philosophy, I thought that was disgusting thing to say given that he clearly _knew_ that his perceived influence would intimidate someone who was – and one gets the distinct impression that he is aiming for that effect. Does that make him an insufferable bully? Tell me, Horatio.

And when I say “negative and widely publicized appraisal”, I don’t mean an appraisal of the merits of VanDyke’s booknote. I meant an appraisal of VanDyke’s chances in academia.

True, I think your preferred epithet, was “assclown,” which isn’t all indicative of foaming or pathology.

I think I found the exchange,

http://chun.typepad.com/chun/2003/12/antisemitism_an.html

Leiter’s remarks weren’t even addressed to enthymeme, but to the blog host.

Even more amused, now.

“chun,” “karl,” “amused”:

It may interest you to know that Prof. Leiter strongly disapproves of anonymous/pseudonymous blog commentary. He considers it “undignified”–even “pathetic.”

So, at least, he tells me.

Assuming (as I do) that he is not a hypocrite, he will not welcome your support.

djw, yes it is possible. You may point out that such and such is engaged in intellectually dishonest “work” while making no reference at all to his academic prospects or his impending professional ruin. Why not?

assclown

fool

retard

Hey! Stop! You’re getting foam all over me!

pz:

Should one attack your own fallacy “ferociously,” or should one just let it slide?

Neither. One should simply point out that it is quite obviously a false alternative.

pz:

You commit another fallacy. Critics of Prof. Leiter are not *ipso facto* “Defenders of Van Dyke.” Enthymeme made this explicit when he wrote: “I am not interested in defending creationist bilge.” Nor am I.

The problem is with the following lines from Leiter’s original post:

“I trust he has no intention of entering law teaching: scholarly fraud is, I fear, an inauspicious beginning for an aspiring law teacher. And let none of the many law professors who are readers of this site be mistaken: Mr. VanDyke has perpetrated a scholarly fraud, one that may have political and pedagogical consequences.”

This is not “excessive[ly] vigor[ous] disputation.” In fact, it is not “disputation” at all, if that implies an element of reasoning. Rather, it is, with apologies to Chris Bertram, “vitriolic polemic” that does nothing to advance Leiter’s argument.

I wish I could say that this sort of thing was unprofessional, but in fact it seems to be about par for the academic course. Fortunately for Mr. Van Dyke, there is a world elsewhere.

Brian Weatherson:

You seem not to have read Prof. Leiter’s post – at any rate, not carefully enough to notice that the passage in question is not a “conclusion” that comes “at the end.”

Were I as intemperate in my judgments as Prof. Leiter, I could now accuse you of scholarly fraud – and with rather more justification than Leiter provides for his charge against Van Dyke.

For the other thing that you might notice if you actually bothered to read the post carefully is that Leiter does not provide a *single* reason to believe “that Van Dyke’s review was, at best, a scholarly fraud” – let alone “many many” such reasons. At most (and I am being charitable here) Leiter shows that Van Dyke fails to demonstrate any awareness of the critical literature on intelligent design theory in the brief course of his note.

But if making enthusiastic public comments on stuff one is unqualified to evaluate properly without first doing one’s homework counts as “fraud,” then you had better think twice before you throw your next stone.

Weatherson and Green already responded to your substantive points. You plainly did not understand their points, so why repeat them?

Oh SURE, Green and Weatherson “responded” to my points BEFORE I even made them. Way to go, marty mcfly. Don’t waste my time, so don’t bother answering.

I’m a “retard,”

That much is obvious.

Brian, one can provide an “honest assessment” of the merits or demerits of the the HLR note without recourse to thinly veiled threats. Of course it is not a threat to call the incompetent incompetent. No one said it was. But it is an implicit threat to call someone incompetent and to portend academic ruin for said person.

See my post on implicit threats 1 and 2. Either respond to that, or don’t respond at all. Or on second thought, go ahead and set up straw men by all means. I won’t stop you.

Enthymeme, Leiter didn’t make a threat, implicit or otherwise, as I, djw, Brian W., and others have repeatedly pointed out. You cannot make it so by repeating it ad nauseum. Every claim you’ve made is of this form: what Leiter said could harm VanDyke’s career; therefore, Leiter issued a threat. Even if the premise were true, the conclusion wouldn’t follow. Also:

Say you were on a hiring committee and you bought into the cachet of Leiter’s rankings. Would you think twice before hiring someone who has attracted a great deal of controversy from editor of said rankings?

Ridiculous; no. It’s entirely misleading to refer to the PGR as ‘Leiter’s rankings’, since it’s generated by polling nearly 300 philosophers. Irritating him would have no effect on one’s department’s ranking.

The power of Brian Leiter is vastly overrated. (And I say this as a fan.)

So whether someone puts their conclusions at the top of the piece or the end of the piece is now more important than whether they make up stuff (or repeat what other people have made up) to give the appearance that scientists support a theory for which there is no scientific evidence whatsoever. Good to see we have our priorities in order. (And it was, as I said, a conclusion, although at some schools I’ve been at we’ve had problems with the freshmen telling conclusions from premises, so I’m not surprised that happens on this board too.)

I wonder what would count as scholarly fraud for some people. If I said that Darwin only put forward his theory to try and legitimise his liking for monkey sex, and cited this comments thread as an authority, would that be scholarly fraud? Would it be OK to say that saying this in a book review could have ‘political and pedagogical consequences’? Or do you have to be on Brian Leiter’s side in a debate to be a subject of criticism?

Gully is guilty of scholarly fraud and misleading innuendo that suggests that 300 philosophers actually responded when only 60% did. Scholarly fraud is, I fear, an inauspicious beginning for an aspiring list-maker. Let’s hope he has no intention of entering the list-making and polling industry. Let none of the law school list-makers who are readers of this site be mistaken: Gully has perpetrated scholarly fraud, one that may have political, pedagogical and list-making consequences.

Weatherson says: “Would it be OK to say that saying this in a book review could have ‘political and pedagogical consequences’?”

Sure, if you don’t preface it with “I sure hope he has no intention of entering law teaching”. No one is fooled, Weatherson. Law _teaching_ is pedagogical, no? What is one way to avert said “political and pedagogical consequences”? Well, deny Van Dyke an opportunity to enter law teaching, that much is implicit. This threat is implicit in Leiter’s _explicit_ reference to law teaching. Why preface comment with that if no implicit threat was intended?

No one is fooled, Weatherson.

Enthymeme has robbed me of my best reply to Brian Weatherson’s feeble and dishonest post.

Curses.

More laughs from a clown called “abe”.

All Vinteuil noted in passing was that Leiter’s “conclusion” did *not* come at the end of his piece, contrary to Weatherson’s claim (see Weatherson @ March 20, 2004 01:18 AM) that it did. This suggests that Weatherson either did not read what he purports to be defending, or was simply incompetent as to what he read.

Having exposed Weatherson’s gaffe, he then proceeded to make his main objection: that Leiter does not provide a single justified reason that shows Van Dyke to be a “scholarly fraud”, let alone many (see Vinteuil @ March 20, 2004 12:47 AM).

But nooo, an embarrassed Weatherson comes back saying:

“And it was, as I said, a conclusion, although at some schools I’ve been at we’ve had problems with the freshmen telling conclusions from premises, so I’m not surprised that happens on this board too.”

When of course no one denied it was a “conclusion”. What was denied was that it was a conclusion that “came at the end”. This makes Weatherson look incredibly stupid because it just shows he either never read Leiter’s piece, or was simply incompetent in reading. Do you have problems with freshmen reading at the schools you’ve been? With professors like you, I’m not surprised it happens on this board too.

Best change your nick to “dishonest abe”, clown. And apparently, the many dishonest scholarly frauds who are defending Leiter appear to be academic philosophers. Goes to show that _contra_ Brian Leiter, scholarly fraud gets you pretty far in academia, as far as brown-nosing goes.

Pathetic.

Honest Abe:

“Prof. Weatherson?”

Are you telling me that Brian Weatherson is A PROFESSOR?

Are you telling me that the only other human being on the face of the earth whose reading skills are as weak as your own is a PROFESSOR???

No way, man.

Things can’t be *that* bad.

Can they?