DCP Announces his Retirement from BYU

[_Doctor Scratch]

Stunning news:

I don’t intend to become a full-time tour guide — I have a lot of writing projects that I really want to work on — and I have trips of my own that I want to take. But I’ll be retiring from BYU on 1 July 2021, mainly to write without frequent interruptions, and so my schedule thereafter will be more flexible.

Of course, we had all heard rumors about this not all that long ago. Very interesting that this announcement is embedded within a post in which he defends himself against accusations of "priestcraft." I have to admit: I sort of admire his cleverness. He has basically found a way to operate within LDS culture such that he benefits, while all the dumb-assed TBMs get to suffer and endure what Midgley calls their "mortal probation." Just look at this:

Scientific American sponsors tours, as well. So I grabbed a randomly selected past issue of the magazine — that of April 2017 — to see what was being offered in that particular number. I found that, from 2 October through 14 October 2017, Scientific American Travel was running a four-part seminar aboard a cruise ship on the Adriatic Sea. For $1575 each, in 2017 dollars, interested persons would be admitted to four (4) private 90-minute seminars:

“The Nature of the Universe,” with John D. Barrow, FRS, of the University of Cambridge (a favorite science author of mine)

“Inventions that Made the Modern World,” with Bernie Carlson of the University of Virginia

“The Greco-Roman World,” with Robert Garland of Colgate University

“Engineering in the Ancient World,” with Stephen Ressler of the United States Military Academy at West Point

That’s roughly $400 per lecture. Almost $4.50 per minute. On top of the cost of airfare and other transportation and the cruise itself.

Yes: okay. But are people paying for the scholarly expertise? Or are they paying for the fact that the "expert" is LDS? This paragraph, frankly, was hilarious:

COVID-19 has, of course, virtually destroyed international travel and the tour industry, so I picked up a randomly-chosen issue of the Biblical Archaeology Review — May/June 2017 — and skimmed through its ads for tours. The issue was poorly-chosen, in a sense, because, while tours of the Holy Land are obviously very common and are (for obvious reasons) very commonly advertised in the Biblical Archaeology Review, there were no such ads in the May/June 2017 number. And there were fewer tour listings overall than I think typical in most issues of the magazine. Still, these should suffice to make my point:

• 12-24 August 2017 — Mark Fairchild, of Huntington University, was scheduled to accompany a tour on the theme of “Seven Churches of Revelation, Nicaea, and Istanbul.” (That’s a specific itinerary for which I myself have led groups. It’s one of my favorites, partly because it calls into play my interests in classical, early Christian, and Islamic history.)
  
  23 September 2017 – 6 October 2017 — Mark Wilson, of Stellenbosch University in South Africa, was scheduled to lead a tour called “By Sea and Land: Paul’s Journey to Rome,” which was to visit Malta, Sicily, and mainland Italy.
  
  7-24 October 2017 — H. Wayne House, of Faith Seminary, was scheduled to host a tour entitled “Greece and Turkey: The Cradle of Christianity.”
  
  4-11 March 2018 — Carol Meyers and Eric Meyers of Duke University were scheduled to accompany an “Eastern Caribbean Cruise,” lecturing on the Bible and archaeology.
  
  26 May 2018 – 11 June 2018 — Mark Wilson, of Stellenbosch University in South Africa, was scheduled to accompany a cruise under the theme of “Sailing the Aegean with Paul and John”
  
  8-20 June 2018 — Mark Wilson, of Stellenbosch University in South Africa, was scheduled to accompany a tour labeled “Iran: Persia and the Bible.”
  
  6-23 October 2018 — Mark Fairchild, of Huntington University, was scheduled to accompany a group under the theme of “Greece and Turkey: The Cradle of Christianity.”

In terms of providing context to this, DCP says:

There are many such accompanied tours and lecture cruises and, for all my personal depravity and my boundless lust for mounds of gold bullion, I neither invented the idea nor hold a monopoly on it.

Well. What does one say? I doff my hat to DCP for setting himself up with a post-retirement "side-hustle." Nicely done. It's still priestcraft, but hey: a guy has to make a living, right?

To claim that he hasn't been compensated or financially benefitted from Mopologetics is a total and complete lie.

[_Doctor Scratch]

Look at this:

If I had the means, I would love to take a tour led by you. You know what you are talking about and have good local contacts.

It's really hard to summarize how sad this makes me.

[_Gadianton]

"I’m scarcely getting rich from doing this. My airfare, food, and lodging are paid for, as are those of my wife. Beyond that, we receive no compensation"

How can he say he's being "attacked" when his own summary, is virtually identical to his alleged attacker's summary?

[_Gadianton]

And I guess I have to hand it to Dr. OMG, who gave the order to retire, and the order was complied with on the spot, it seems.

[_Doctor Scratch]

"I’m scarcely getting rich from doing this. My airfare, food, and lodging are paid for, as are those of my wife. Beyond that, we receive no compensation"

How can he say he's being "attacked" when his own summary, is virtually identical to his alleged attacker's summary?

He's figured out a way to get free cruises for himself and his wife. It's as simple as that. Do "normal" TBMs get to go on thousand-dollar cruises to various places around the world? It's weird that he's trying to solve this by explaining that other academics do this, too, but then you have to realize who he thinks his audience is. It really is nuts that this is what he's posting. It basically means that he thinks that the bulk of his readership is moron-level, hardcore TBMs. I mean, why depict yourself as this jet-setting, well-traveled and well-cultured connoisseur when you feel guilty about accepting fully-funded cruises around the world? Is this ethical, or not? He likes that he's achieved a class-status that's well above his general readership, but he feels uncomfortable about it.

[_Gadianton]

"When I accompany tour groups to Israel, Egypt, Jordan, and elsewhere, I give them academically solid historical background and commentary. I’m not ashamed of that."

Sure, I believe it.

But then, out comes the Mopologetics and Brethren-approved fantasy reconciliations with scripture.

As my mother used to say, Satan will tell 99 truths in order to tell one lie.

[_Doctor Scratch]

"I’m scarcely getting rich from doing this.

That really says everything, doesn't it? Think what it would mean for the average person to be able to travel, free from expenses, to the Middle East? *I* have never been to the Middle East, and I am the B.H. Roberts Chair of Mopologetic studies. Imagine how non-academic folks might feel about this.

[_Everybody Wang Chung]

But I’ll be retiring from BYU on 1 July 2021, mainly to write without frequent interruptions, and so my schedule thereafter will be more flexible.

I’m glad DCP will finally have time to write. God knows he never had time to write during his “academic” career. I just hope and pray that DCP will finally be able to finish those two books he promised his department back in 2014 when he took his paid sabbatical.

I just got off the phone with a colleague of DCP. His retirement in July was reached by mutual agreement. There were people who had pushed for DCP’s retirement months ago, but DCP fought back.

The July retirement was a compromise. Regardless, I wish DCP much luck as he fades further into obscurity and irrelevance.

If I had to guess, I would say it was a combination of his chronic plagiarism, his low marks for teaching and his constant criticism of BYU administration.

[_Dr Exiled]

That plagiarism thing might have been the last straw. Although, our fearless leader, ole Joe, loved stealing ideas from others like Clarke and Swedenborg. The brethren must know this or should know anyway. Even so, the blatant plagiarism DCP did and in the deseret news of all places was a real shot in the eye, thumb of the nose, mud thrown at power. Something had to be done. The other bombastic sins of supporting so blatant nonsense like Early Modern English probably didn't help his cause either.

[_Kishkumen]

I wish Dr. Peterson well as he wraps up his career at BYU. Personally, I don't think guiding these tours is priestcraft. Most of what passes as priestcraft in the accusations people throw at each other does not qualify, in my view. I like what the Book of Mormon says: "The laborer is worthy of his hire." We all work at something, and we hope to be able to support ourselves and our families as we do so. I don't begrudge LDS professors their wages for teaching religion at BYU and leading tours of the Holy Land. That said, I would personally pay to hear Robert Garland talk about Greco-Roman Antiquity long before I would give one thin dime to our friend Stephen Smoot to lecture on the antiquity of the Book of Abraham.

It is not that Stephen Smoot is not, on the whole, a decent fellow and an intelligent one. The problem is that the fundamental premise of the lecture is flawed, and I won't pay for the privilege of being miseducated. I can go to YouTube for that, and it is much less expensive. Good LDS people, intelligent ones, lack the framework and training to understand the flaw in this enterprise, and they are, to the contrary, very motivated to believe it is absolutely true. Of course, belief in the notion that Joseph Smith clearly saw the life or writings of a man named Abraham in a seer stone is unnecessary for having a testimony of the Restoration, but the FARMS legacy will continue to push that idea long after it has been shown to be extremely unlikely, as we can already see.

While we are sitting here trashing Dr. Peterson about his career, we should remember that most PhDs never write a single book after they complete their dissertations. Dr. Peterson has written a fair amount, and that makes him more productive than the average PhD. The fact that universities push faculty to pump out publications does not increase the value of those publications. Productivity does not equal quality, and some would say that there is a surfeit of poorly written books that were written by people who had to produce them on threat of losing their jobs. If Dr. Peterson spent much of his career teaching young people Arabic, he will have done a greater service to others than a very many people do.

Moreover, the LDS Church is responsible for encouraging its professors to engage in the kind of apologetics they have, whether they did so directly, indirectly, or both. I don't agree with their entire approach, but then they didn't ask me and I don't count in their book anyway. The fundamental problems begin with Brighamite Mormonism and its concept of priesthood authority, which encourages this kind of effort. Lacking any formal theology, the Church encourages smart, motivated members to fill in the gaps. It inadvertently incentivizes them to do so. Intolerant of differences of opinion, the Church also incentivizes people to serve as spiritual vigilantes. That Hugh Nibley would pioneer the Mopologetic career is the LDS Church's responsibility, and Jack Welch and others, welcomed into the BYU fold, followed and cultivated that legacy.

I am sure that for the most part they all did what they did honestly and with the best of intentions. It was the collusion of BYU professors with Church authorities in attacking the perceived ideological enemies of certain GAs while bearing the imprimatur of BYU institutional authority that I still find grotesque. Interpreter is one thing. The quality is still pretty hit or miss (the recent "review" of Park's book being representative of some of the most shameful stuff). But it is not BYU's thing, and I am satisfied with that.