Has John Gee Been "Booted" from the Maxwell Institute?

[_Philo Sofee]

In my experience -- in the wake of the 2012 Purge -- defamation and innuendo were very much a part of the new Maxwell Institute program.

Unlike the old FARMS Review of Books, which was neither of those things?

I had hoped that those days were past, but perhaps I was too optimistic.

Irony much?

I would like to bear my testimony that Dan Peterson demonstrates Eastern Karma doctrine is true, and not any Mormon doctrine of any kind. I say these things in the name of Buddha, Amen.

[Guest]

No, the link was intended to show the current sections in the Department of Asian and Near Eastern Languages (note: starsshine1942 mistakenly refers to it as Ancient Near Eastern Languages). Dr. Gee doesn’t seem fitted to join any of the sections (e.g., Hebrew or Arabic). Perhaps he’ll have his own space as occupant of the Gay Research Chair.

Here’s a link to the BYU class schedules: http://saasta.BYU.edu/noauth/classSchedule/
If you search for Gee using the instructor search box for the fall 2019 semester, you’ll see his class.

[_Physics Guy]

Only 100 minutes of class time per week is an enviably light teaching load.

[_kairos]

No one has posited that Gee was a Mopologist
mole at the MI passing on "information" to chief Mopologist DCP so that Dan was always aware of the inner workings and plans of the MI.
So Gee was "discovered" and ousted as far away from the MI as they could toss him. Perhaps the Gay chair was a carrot to keep Gee from
airing dirty laundry.
A puzzlement is the "memo" Woody cited and claimed DCP
had seen as well. Whose memo? Apostles? MI? BYU? and what was it's purpose? Simply announcing a personnel change? Rationale on tossing Gee for scholarly output/ probation reasons?
We need more- calling Woody to mouth off!

[_moksha]

People can be competent without possessing other, more important, scholarly qualities. It was Gee's lack of those that led Ritner to ask to be relieved of responsibility for him.

I would have assumed the disagreement was over Reformed Egyptian.

Maybe Ritner was concerned that Gee would damage the field of Ancient Egyptian with his studies and writings of Reformed Egyptian, or maybe Ritner was jealous about Gee being the heir apparent of Reformed Egyptian branch of the Ancient Egyptian language.

[_Doctor Scratch]

Chalk up a point in favor of starsshine1942--Dr. Peterson has now admitted that Gee's position *is not* "Continuing Status":

None of the staff at the Maxwell Institute have CFS, strictly speaking.

Which is to say, in BYU terms, that nobody there has a BYU "faculty slot" -- i.e., a permanent stream of professorial funding. "Slots" exist in departments. For years now, there has been a set number of them, determined by the Board of Trustees and not subject to increase.

Professor Gee, though, has the Gay Professorship, which works out to pretty much the same thing (if not, indeed, much better). It effectively adds to the number of "slots" at BYU by bringing new monetary stream into the system.

It has not, to my knowledge, been definitively established that Gee still occupies the Gay Research Chair.

[_Lemmie]

Before the thread was deleted, a poster on the r/latterdaysaints reddit had a fair amount to say, plus an exchange re Hauglid's role in this:

dice1899:

He’s just switching departments so that his work won’t continue getting ignored/buried at the Maxwell Institute. There’s been a rift happening there for quite some now, so they’re parting ways. I think it’ll end up being a good thing, rather than a problem.

dice1899:

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeters ... itute.html

There's been a professional rift there for some time, with a lot of bad feelings on both sides over the way things went down. Several members of the MI have taken quite a few shots at him over the years, too.

This seems to be how it all started: https://www.mormoninterpreter.com/wp-co ... Review.pdf

I don't know any of them personally, and I don't know more details than what they've published and what I've seen in various comments on articles at The Mormon Interpreter and the Maxwell Institute. But there's been on-going drama between Brian Hauglid and John Gee for quite a while now, seemingly stemming from this original rift/2012 "purge," so the separation is a good thing for everyone, in my opinion. The MI can focus on what they want to focus on, and Gee and Peterson can focus on what they want to focus on, and nobody's work will get buried or denied publication based on the direction of the institution.

sillywabbittrix:

So Bushman and Hauglid work at the Maxwell Institute and Gee and Dan Peterson have been kicked out?

I think I’m more of a Maxwell Institute kinda person.

dice1899:

Nope, no one was kicked out. They both voluntarily quit rather than stay associated with a group that was ignoring research and framing things to fit their narrative, rather than follow what the research showed.

Apparently, more big changes are coming for the MI in the near future, so I'd keep an eye out.

sillywabbittrix:

Gotcha. Well I like Hauglid and Bushman. Gee and Peterson seem kinda hackish to me.

dice1899:

I like Bushman a lot, and I like Gee and Peterson. I think Hauglid's shady and unprofessional, and I wouldn't trust anything he has to say these days, which is a shame because he's one of the co-editors on one of my favorite church-related books.

sillywabbittrix:

I’ve seen you and /u/atari_guy really try to demean Hauglid. You never give a reason why you think he is untrustworthy you just imply that he is. I don’t think you are fair to him just because he recently went against things you believe.

dice1899:

Nope, it's because of things like this:

https://mormanity.blogspot.com/2019/03/ ... -book.html

He ignores research that doesn't fit his narrative and pretends it doesn't exist when he gives presentations and writes papers. He only gives one half of the story and shuts down discussion. When you don't allow others to follow and publish research that goes against your narrative, it's shady and unprofessional. And it isn't just the two of us who have a problem with it. A lot of people are concerned with the direction the Maxwell Institute is taking, enough so that changes are coming.

sillywabbittrix:

It seems like the author of the article in the link is just upset that Hauglid doesn’t buy the Egyptologists garbage. I also don’t believe the Egyptologists garbage.

I don’t see how anything in the link you gave could make Hauglid appear shady or untrustworthy. I think you say those things simply because you buy the BYU Egyptologists garbage.

dice1899:

Lol, Dude, I don't care what you believe. I don't care what Brian Hauglid believes. Knock yourselves out. There's plenty of room for a multitude of different theories concerning the Book of Abraham.

But the simple fact is, Brian Hauglid is burying information he disagrees with and publicly insulting fellow scholars. That is shady and that is unprofessional, and that is not trustworthy behavior. You can fanboy him all you want, but it doesn't change the fact that his behavior leaves a bad taste in the mouths of a lot of people.

[_moksha]

It has not, to my knowledge, been definitively established that Gee still occupies the Gay Research Chair.

In his missive from London, Dr. Peterson affirmed that Professor Gee will continue being the Gay Professor and that Gee is relieved at being rid of those infidels at the Maxwell Institute and happy to be a part of the Ancient Near East language department.

[_Physics Guy]

The concept of "burying" or denying publication sounds weird to me. I once worked at a US national lab where all our papers had to be cleared to make sure we weren't giving away secrets. Short of that, I don't see how any institute or colleague can bury a researcher's work.

I guess it can happen that one or more co-authors of a joint paper refuse to submit the work for publication, but the other authors' contributions weren't big enough to make a viable paper on their own. By definition that's not a case where so much is lost, though. And the other authors can always lift their unpublishable parts above the threshold for publishability by doing additional work.

Papers are often rejected from prestigious journals and have to settle for being published less prominently. That's not being buried, though.

The only scenario I can see where research could get denied publication would be if the research is in such a small niche that there is only one possible journal and that journal has a dodgy enough review process that papers can be unfairly rejected through influence. Usually small fields just define themselves as part of a larger field, though, until they can appear in more journals. Conversely a journal without any competitors is just too narrow a journal. And a paper that could only be published in a single journal can't be much of a paper.

[_Doctor Scratch]

Lemmie:

That's incredibly interesting. And you say the thread was deleted? That's pretty remarkable. I know that there has been a lot of tension between the Mopologists and Brian Hauglid--I believe this stems from the role that Hauglid played in helping to get Schryver's work suppressed. (I assume that's what "dice1899" is referring to when he mentions that "Brian Hauglid is burying information he disagrees with." Perhaps "dice1899" is a Schryver sock puppet?)

I do wonder how many of the Mopologists' insinuations have been made with Hauglid in mind. We know there are certain, specific people at the MI that they hate: Morgan Davis, Blair Hodges, and Brian Hauglid are certainly three of them. (Kristian Heal might be among them, too. And now Spencer Fluhman, too, I guess?) And they are constantly "winking" and "nudge-nudging" each other about MI personnel. They seem to think that merely not mentioning the name somehow absolves them from what they're doing.

Still, I am genuinely starting to wonder at this point of "starsshine1942" was a Hauglid sock puppet. Pure speculation on my part, I admit, but you have to admit that the comment was--how shall I say?--"confidently assertive"? And no one has done anything to clarify questions surrounding the Gay professorship.

(Also: I LOL'ed that Kiwi57 is using some personal blogspot post as "evidence" that Gee has the rank of full professor. If that's his rank at BYU, then there should be evidence of it somewhere on BYU's website. Titles and ranks aren't the same thing.)