Jesse Pinkman wrote:Everybody Wang Chung wrote:Lying about Professor Robert Ritner and the reasons he removed himself from John Gee's dissertation committee (which ultimately resulted in Professor Ritner telling DCP to cease or he would take legal action);
CFR on this, please.
You mean you really were not paying attention when all this happened? The essentials were along the following lines, as I recall:
(a) Ritner let it be known that he had criticisms of Gee's Mormon-related Egyptology. He mentioned that, unlike his other former PhD students, Gee did not ask for his advice on his work at draft stage before publication.
(b) DCP weighed in, in a mode with which many of us are familar, hinting that those aware of the reasons for which Ritner was 'removed from Gee's PhD committee' would know what value, if any, was to be placed on Ritner's criticisms. Many understood these posts as intended to suggest that Ritner had acted improperly towards his student Gee on the grounds of religious prejudice, and had thus been removed from the committee by the Yale university authorities.
(c) It then became known that Ritner had in fact resigned from Gee's committee rather than being removed, and that he had apparently done so because he did not feel able to take part in deliberations which might result in giving approval to Gee's work. And when Ritner became aware of DCP's attempts to suggest that he had acted improperly, he took legal action to ensure that DCP ceased to speak and write in a way that spread rumors that might damage his (Ritner's) professional reputation.
(d) Since then we have seen publication of Ritner's major book on the Joseph Smith papyri, which has established his scholarly authority on that topic in a way that no Mormon scholar seems likely to match.
That account is to the best of my recollection. I would be happy to have it corrected or supplemented by anybody who has a better memory.
Goodness knows where all the relevant posts on this board and on the MAD board are to be found - indeed, I would expect that many of the latter would have been deleted by now.
