Yale and the FARMS Money Trail: A Case Study

[_Daniel Peterson]

Our discussion has been very meaningful. It took a while, but you finally gave up the silly "Quinn was not qualified" smokescreen, and conceded the real reason for BYU's demand that Quinn be removed as a presenter. Better late than never, so, again, welcome to reality.

When you stop distorting my position, we might be able to have a meaningful discussion.

[_Rollo Tomasi]

Our discussion has been very meaningful. It took a while, but you finally gave up the silly "Quinn was not qualified" smokescreen, and conceded the real reason for BYU's demand that Quinn be removed as a presenter. Better late than never, so, again, welcome to reality.

When you stop distorting my position, we might be able to have a meaningful discussion.

Our discussion has been very meaningful. It took a while, but you finally gave up the silly "Quinn was not qualified" smokescreen, and conceded the real reason for BYU's demand that Quinn be removed as a presenter. Better late than never, so, again, for the third time, welcome to reality.

[_guy sajer]

I imagine, however, that you all must have had some idea of what Quinn might have said, otherwise why the evident fear of giving him a platform?

I, personally, wasn't particularly afraid. If you really want to know, you should probably contact Professor Reynolds.

Wouldn't it have been sufficient to merely make it plain to him that he stay on topic, as opposed to outright blackballing him?

I would have been fine with that.

Thanks for the reply.

I will bow out of this debate now, as I believe it to be reaching near ridiculous proportions.

[_cksalmon]

It bears some vague resemblance to an academic conference, I'm sure.

More than vague. It was a pretty good conference, actually. Superb speakers. I'm a great fan of Marilyn Adams, Nicholas Wolterstorff, and Stephen Davis, for example. And I was there.

Excellent point, Rollo. DCP is being quite slippery about this.

How?

I've been saying forever, it seems, that Mike Quinn's participation in the conference worried some at what is now the Maxwell Institute, that they were worried because of his problematic relationship with the Church, that they objected strongly to his participation, that the Institute was a co-sponsor of the conference and thus had leverage, and etc. I've not only never denied this, I've freely stated it. Many, many times.

A cost-benefit analysis that would not have been undertaken had your associates not initiated it based on their dubious fears about Quinn. Don't try to pass it off as a process that occurred primarily because he was a bad fit. That doesn't work, and you know it.

And I've never said otherwise.

Some of you seem to be combating not me, but a bogeyman of your own devising.

That a man who has been trained in the period in question

Well, hell, Daniel, he's a lot closer than your training in Medieval Islam, or does that escape you?

I'm afraid that that escapes me.

It isn't obvious to me that a background in the social history of a nineteenth- and early twentieth-century religious movement qualifies one to comment on its theology exponentially more than a background in philosophical theology does. (I have training in medieval Islam, it's true, but also in classics and philosophy.)

Is a historian of modern German society necessarily more quallifed to comment on the theology of Paul Tillich and Karl Barth than, say, a biblical scholar or a historian of religions or a philosopher?

Daniel, you spend most of your time here minimizing things.

Minimal things should be minimized.

If you're clueless about what's going on in a field, it's wisest to withhold public comment on it.

Maybe you should take your own advice, like when you commented, in print, about Greek and Latin historiography in the FARMS Review.

???

Are you referring to the article on "exemplar historiography" that David Honey and I wrote for BYU Studies? Have you read it? If you have specific criticisms of it, I hope you'll share them.

Incidentally, I have a degree in classics.

Other than the first, not quotations by me, for the record.

[_Daniel Peterson]

Other than the first, not quotations by me, for the record.

My apologies. Copying and pasting and etc. can get confusing sometimes.

[_cksalmon]

Other than the first, not quotations by me, for the record.

My apologies. Copying and pasting and etc. can get confusing sometimes.

Hey, it happens. Just wanted to clarify.

[_Mike Reed]

I just said that I've never talked with Richard about Early Mormonism and the Magic World View. I don't know what he thinks about it these days, nor do I know, off hand, what he ever thought about it.

Bushman gave his brief opinion of EM&MWV in one of his MormonStories podcasts. He noted that there are problems in it, but overall, the "book is genius" (I think were his words).

[_Alf O'Mega]

Copying and pasting and etc. can get confusing sometimes.

I've noticed that you use "and etc." a lot lately (going back a couple of years, actually). I haven't found a usage manual that approves of this redundancy, and I've read enough of your writing to know that it is certainly deliberate. I smell a running private joke with Bill Hamblin. Am I warm?

On the topic of this thread, let me just highlight an uncommented-on angle that Dr. Peterson hinted at earlier:

ISPART's then director, Noel Reynolds, didn't want Mike Quinn on the program, and said so, strongly. A major concern of his, as I recall, was the idea of a BYU entity helping to fund a platform for somebody who is, whatever one may think of him and his scholarship, an excommunicated apostate. There was not only the principle to consider, but ISPART's own perhaps not entirely secure base withiin the University.

I read this to mean that blocking Quinn was at least partly (and perhaps primarily) a defensive move by the BYU organizers to prevent a backlash from BYU's administration and possibly their GA overseers. Despite some of the overheated conspiracy theorizing that is au courant in these parts, I think it's very likely that the Maxwell Institute and its predecessors have always been in a somewhat ticklish position with the powers that be.

As in any organization as large as the Church hierarchy, there are inevitably disagreements over how best to accomplish its mission, and it wouldn't surprise me a bit to find out that Dr. Peterson occasionally has to finesse some touchy political equations to continue his apologetic work as he'd like to. He can probably only do so because he has cultivated relationships with sympathetic GAs who are in a position to champion his work among others who are suspicious of its value.

Again, am I warm?

[_Jersey Girl]

Alf!

Just sayin'

:-)

"I see stupid people."

[_Alf O'Mega]

"I see stupid people."

I think you meant:



It's my curse.