Doctor CamNC4Me wrote:If I may, I believe Dr. Scratch is emotional about this because Dr. Quinn was fired
He resigned. As I understand it, and as I've said, he was not fired. (That may be a significant distinction.)
I recall being quite surprised when he did. I believe I even sent him a note expressing regret at his decision.
Doctor CamNC4Me wrote:and blackballed
He hasn't been hired by any college in America. There are, depending upon how you define them, somewhere between 2000 and 4000 colleges/universities in the country. That is far beyond the capacity of any Mormon or group of Mormons to have effected via "blackballing."
Doctor CamNC4Me wrote:by a cabal of colleagues, administrators, and Bretheren who didn't like what he published.
Let's now rephrase this in the light of actual fact, and see if it makes any sense:
"Dr. Quinn resigned from BYU and failed to gain a permanent teaching position at any of the 2000-4000 colleges in the United States by a cabal of colleagues, administrators, and Brethren who didn't like what he published."
It doesn't pass the plausibility test any more than it passes the grammatical test.
Doctor CamNC4Me wrote:Additionally, using Dr. Quinn's sexuality as a mechanism to hurt his reputation or facilitate his excommunication was poor form.
I don't know whether you're still accusing me of this -- I think you are -- but I did absolutely nothing of the sort.
I had precisely nothing to do with his excommunication. Nothing.
Nor did I spread any information about his sexuality.
Doctor CamNC4Me wrote:Did you personally pull the trigger? Of course not. That's absurd.
Quite.
Doctor CamNC4Me wrote:Were you part of a community that, at one time thought highly of him until he published an honest account of Mormon history, turned on him professionally? Absolutely.
The way that you've expressed this is blatantly question-begging.
Nobody disagrees with Mike Quinn's historiography on the grounds that it's "honest." People disagree with his historiography because they don't think what he's written is accurate. Right or wrong, that's the view of those who criticize his historical writing.
And, yes, I readily admit to being "part of a community" that once thought positively of his work but, to some greater or lesser degree, no longer does. It doesn't even remotely flow from that, however, that I was a major or minor part of a cabal to smear him, or that I participated in some sort of campaign to deprive him of employment, and the like.
I regret that I fell for your apparently disingenuous pose of fairness and charity yesterday.
Doctor CamNC4Me wrote:And if you don't agree with that, ask yourself this: Would you whole heartedly endorse and embrace Dr. Quinn being re-hired by BYU as a Professor of Mormon Studies?
No, I would not. And for fairly obvious and straightforward reasons (e.g., the employment of open and [apparently] practicing homosexuals is, whether you approve of the policy or not, at the very least problematic at BYU; excommunication typically means dismissal from BYU, and Mike Quinn was excommunicated many years ago; I'm very critical of his work on Mormonism; and etc.)
But the fact that I would not support his hiring at BYU -- about which, in any case, the University would never ask me, by the way -- doesn't even remotely entail the proposition that I would oppose his hiring, let alone that I have opposed his hiring, anywhere else. I've participated in a dozen or so hirings in my own department, for example. This has almost always involved voting for one candidate and, effectively, against another. My voting "against" these various people has never signified that I thought they shouldn't be hired someplace other than BYU, or that they were absolutely "unhireable" (to use Scratch's word). It simply meant that, to some degree or another, they didn't fit our needs or requirements. That they might fit somebody else's is perfectly fine with me.
Doctor CamNC4Me wrote:From what I can observe Dr. Scrtach is perplexed why you do and say the things you do, which if you're honest with yourself, is a long record of attacking (in a relatively sophisticated manner) those people and their publications with whom you disagree.
It's a long record of involvement in public disagreements. Disagreeing with the publications of other scholars is part and parcel of the scholarly life. The disputatio goes back to the earliest medieval universities.
Mike Quinn has, by the way, published far more harsh things about me than I have ever published, or would ever publish, about him.
Doctor CamNC4Me wrote:It's very strange behavior coming from a Professor of Middle Eastern Studies, but it is what it is...
There are absolutely intense and often vitriolic interpersonal disputes in Middle Eastern studies (e.g., between my acquaintance Dimitri Gutas and my friend Charles Butterworth, and, much more famously, between Bernard Lewis and the late Edward Said), which have played out for years in academic journals, books, and conferences. So, if you think that my mild little controversies are intrinsically foreign to Middle Eastern studies, you're wrong.
If, however, you intend to say that it's unusual for a professor of Middle Eastern studies to be involved in public disputes on Mormonism, I won't disagree with you. There aren't many of us. It was my choice to get involved in such things.
Doctor CamNC4Me wrote:Thank you in advance for your thoughtful reply.
Incidentally, yesterday was an aberration. I won't, I can't, spend so much time on this sort of exchange today.
Doctor CamNC4Me wrote:he's a paid Mormon apologist, writing and conducting apologia on the Mormon church's dime,
As I've said before, not a single cent of my salary is paid to me for my apologetic work. That the University tolerates my apologetic efforts is true, and somewhat surprising, and I'm happy with that. It has never encouraged me, though, let alone obliged me, me to do them. Quite the contrary, in fact, when I first arrived.
I would be paid the same salary, at least, if I did no apologetics. It is possible that I might have received higher raises over the years, and be receiving a higher salary today, if I had done no apologetics whatever.
Doctor CamNC4Me wrote:but at the same time he claims . . . he's really a full-time Professor of Middle Eastern Studies.
You seem to be alleging dishonesty on my part.
Again, I'm embarrassed that I took you seriously yesterday.
But the fact is that I teach Middle Eastern studies. I have never taught a course on apologetics. No such courses exist at BYU. I teach in the Department of Asian and Near Eastern Languages. This last term, I taught the Qur’an in Arabic, and an English-language seminar on the Qur’an. During the term prior to that, I taught the senior seminar (or "capstone" course) for Middle East studies majors, as well as a readings course in Modern Standard Arabic and the introductory survey course for new majors.
During just this past month, my lengthy and extensive annotated bibliography on the Zaydiyya (the so-called Zaydi Shi‘ites) has gone up on the Oxford University Press website; my article on "The Qur‘anic Tree of LIfe" has appeared in both a festschrift for a Lebanese professor, published in Beirut, and in a slightly Mormonized version in a book published by the Maxwell Institute; and the new Islamic Translation Series anthology of dual-language texts on classical Islamic philosophy of education has begun to be distributed by the University of Chicago Press. (I'm the editor-in-chief of the Islamic Translation Series.)
If my Islamic work is a fraudulent cover for my apologetic efforts, I certainly do seem to spend a lot of time and effort on it.
Doctor CamNC4Me wrote:So, I don't think Mormon apologia is beneath academics. In fact, apologia is a legitimate academic field. I believe at some point Dr. Peterson's CV finally came to light, and the majority of it consisted of Mormon apologia. So, clearly it's an academic venture funded by the Mormon church.
That doesn't follow at all. It's a non sequitur.
And I'm not sure how you arrive at the notion that the majority of my CV is apologetic. By simply counting the titles of articles and books as if they're of equal weight? How much weight did you assign to the twenty-three published dual-language volumes, some of them very large, of the Middle Eastern Texts Initiative, which I edit and produce? (It's distributed by the University of Chicago Press.) That's a pretty substantial legacy by itself.
Doctor CamNC4Me wrote:Regardless, I find it odd that a Professor of MES is engaged in Mormon apologia to the degree he is.
Your finding it "odd" is not much of an argument, actually.