New Home for Maxwell Institute

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_Kishkumen
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New Home for Maxwell Institute

Post by _Kishkumen »

As we have found out very recently during exchanges between MI and Interpreter folk, the Maxwell Institute is going to be housed in a new building on BYU campus, closer to the center of the action. I congratulate the Maxwell Institute on the support they are receiving from BYU and the LDS Church. You guys must be doing a lot of things right!

One is reminded of past unfulfilled dreams of the FARMS Ziggurat, an artist's rendering of which once graced the front page of the Provo Daily Herald. The longed-for Ziggurat never came to be, and the successor organization to classic-FARMS, Mormon Interpreter, is housed where? If anyone knows, please tell me.

In any case, during the dust up of recent hours, Blair Hodges showed up in various conversations to affirm the University's and Church's support for MI by referring to their future building. Blair's news was followed quickly by DCP blogging to diminish as much as possible anyone's enthusiasm for MI's institutional support. Let's look at what he had to say:

DCP wrote:Some are saying that a new campus building is to be constructed for the Maxwell Institute and that this illustrates the enthusiasm and complete support of the Brethren for the course that the Institute has taken since 2012. Well, let’s not overstate this. The Maxwell Institute has been housed in University buildings for decades, since before it had the name Maxwell Institute and since long before it adopted its new course. (I had an office in its third campus building that I was ordered to clear out and to leave immediately upon my return to the United States from the Middle East in June 2012.) Significantly smaller now than it once was, the Institute has recently been moved to temporary housing in another university building – which is its fourth. And, when the new West View Building is completed, the employees of the Maxwell Institute will be among its various tenants.


See: https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeterson/2018/12/my-alleged-war-against-the-maxwell-institute.html

This piqued my curiosity. Is it true that Blair would exaggerate the size of his future office in a little spat with Mormon Interpreter? Past experience would indicate that Blair is on the receiving end of Interpreter pettiness, but not one to dish out in kind. So I did a little digging into this question on the MI website:

See: https://mi.byu.edu/moving2020/?fbclid=IwAR30n_h7Zwzci6bgqGx-wVjcYg6t9De9Y7EObazlQIc7tkMLdbyKAYB7N3U

Here is what Blair wrote in November, long before this recent little imbroglio:

“In that new space,” said Institute executive director Spencer Fluhman, “the Institute will be poised for a significant campus role long into the future. Close to our colleagues in the Humanities and Religious Education and near the BYU Library and other important campus locales related to our work, the Institute will bring interested campus members together more easily and more regularly to pursue disciple-scholarship together. Our new space itself will reflect in its very design our new mission and priorities.

The Institute’s new space in the West View Building will better accommodate small lectures, weekly brown bag sessions, faculty gatherings, advisory board sessions, student mentoring, the research of our resident and visiting disciple-scholars, and all the other Institute happenings. (It’ll be the new home of the Maxwell Institute Podcast, for example.)


OK, hold the phone here. DCP has not accurately represented this situation at all. Look at what Fluhman said very carefully:

Our new space itself will reflect in its very design our new mission and priorities.

Guys, the West View Building would seem to have space specifically designed for the Maxwell Institute. Designed to fit its new mission and priorities. If we add to this the fact that in recent times the Institute has hired Phil Barlow from USU, the Givenses, and Peck, well, this begins to look like a significant expansion of the Institute in a very positive way.

Consider this: if one were to ask where they could find seasoned scholars of Mormonism who have already made their mark in peer-reviewed monographs, where would people in the know direct them? To DCP, Midgley, Hamblin, Hancock, or Greg Smith?

Hardly.

They would naturally name people like Terryl Givens and Phil Barlow. These are not guys who have a reputation for nasty polemics and hit pieces. They have a reputation for producing widely respected scholarship published by reputable university presses. And they have been at this for a long time. The LDS Church went out and hired some respectable big guns for the MI, and now we are to imagine that they will be stuffed in the broom closet next to the English Department or some such?

No way. Instead, the Church made sure that these great scholars would have a commodious new office and classroom complex designed for the MI's "new mission and priorities."

Think again about what Blair Hodges wrote regarding this space back in November:

The Institute’s new space in the West View Building will better accommodate small lectures, weekly brown bag sessions, faculty gatherings, advisory board sessions, student mentoring, the research of our resident and visiting disciple-scholars, and all the other Institute happenings. (It’ll be the new home of the Maxwell Institute Podcast, for example.)

I know of few departments in the Humanities that are equipped so handsomely with their own rooms and technology for all of these things.

So, rest assured, fellow MDBers, that the Mopologists are up to their old tricks of spinning things in the way that makes themselves feel good and others look not as good. DCP wants us to imagine a shrinking MI that is stuffed in a crowded building because, well, this little MI thing has to be wedged in some corner, right?

No. Not at all. MI is being forged and outfitted for an exciting future, and Holland's talk to them was not a rebuke of the past; it was a mandate and pep talk for that exciting future.

Well, we can't blame DCP for trying!
"Petition wasn’t meant to start a witch hunt as I’ve said 6000 times." ~ Hanna Seariac, LDS apologist
_Everybody Wang Chung
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Re: New Home for Maxwell Institute

Post by _Everybody Wang Chung »

It looks like the Church is building very nice accommodations for the Maxwell Institute.

Remind me again, where is the Interpreter builiding?
"I'm on paid sabbatical from BYU in exchange for my promise to use this time to finish two books."

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_Kishkumen
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Re: New Home for Maxwell Institute

Post by _Kishkumen »

Everybody Wang Chung wrote:It looks like the Church is building very nice accommodations for the Maxwell Institute.

Remind me again, where is the Interpreter builiding?


If you get any intel on that, Everybody Wang Chung, please let me know. For all I know they have a fancy office complex in the COB! Or maybe a basement office under Nightlion’s Apocalrock Visitor’s Center.

They must be somewhere, and I’d like to be able to visit both the MI and Interpreter to see their fancy digs with my own two eyes!
"Petition wasn’t meant to start a witch hunt as I’ve said 6000 times." ~ Hanna Seariac, LDS apologist
_Everybody Wang Chung
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Re: New Home for Maxwell Institute

Post by _Everybody Wang Chung »

Kishkumen wrote: If you get any intel on that, Everybody Wang Chung, please let me know. For all I know they have a fancy office complex in the COB! Or maybe a basement office under Nightlion’s Apocalrock Visitor’s Center.

They must be somewhere, and I’d like to be able to visit both the MI and Interpreter to see their fancy digs with my own two eyes!


The only intel I have is that various board members have been known to frequent a rather modest office located on the second floor at 311 South State Street, SLC UT 84111.
"I'm on paid sabbatical from BYU in exchange for my promise to use this time to finish two books."

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_Kishkumen
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Re: New Home for Maxwell Institute

Post by _Kishkumen »

Everybody Wang Chung wrote:The only intel I have is that various board members have been known to frequent a rather modest office located on the second floor at 311 South State Street, SLC UT 84111.


LOL! I hope I never have need to go there!
"Petition wasn’t meant to start a witch hunt as I’ve said 6000 times." ~ Hanna Seariac, LDS apologist
_Gadianton
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Re: New Home for Maxwell Institute

Post by _Gadianton »

What I'm really missing is the point to all of this. Okay, I get human nature enough that it's not a total mystery, but --

What do they think the chances are that by taking pretty general statements by Holland and insisting he is speaking of very specific events of importance to only them, that by saying over and over "you better take heed!" that anyone will be convinced?

If I thought victory was coming soon and that the wrongs would be righted I'd keep my mouth shut to avoid jinxing it. I mean, how inappropriate would it look if the Mopologists really close to the "source" wrote all these encyclopedia entries getting real personal and then suddenly, it really happened, and made the Brethren look like they were taking sides in a personal war? I have to think that they don't actually really believe any change is coming down the pipeline and so this is all they got, a desperation rally.

It's even humorous to watch the battle lines drawn by the new method of saying they are neutral on Givens or neutral on the new MI buildiing -- this is the new way of saying "we just drew a red target". It was hilarious over at MDDB today "I'm neutral on this guy --" "oh yeah, I'm also neutral on that guy...take it or leave it" lol.

The New MI building holds a special place in the drama. The purge reversal is just around the corner, a new building is underway that won't be ready tomorrow -- and so what they're really saying by noting the new Building is barely a shoebox, is that their future home after the purge happens will kind of suck. right?

Certainly they can't think that a new building severl months to a year out that's going to suck is for the current regime but then a totally new project for a much nicer building is going to be financed when this one is already halfway done, for the return of FARMS?
Lou Midgley 08/20/2020: "...meat wad," and "cockroach" are pithy descriptions of human beings used by gemli? They were not fashioned by Professor Peterson.

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_Kishkumen
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Re: New Home for Maxwell Institute

Post by _Kishkumen »

You know, Dean Robbers, I have to wonder what would have happened here if Midgley had never gotten involved. Sure, anyone who knows DCP would see that he was happy to imply that Elder Holland was scolding the MI, while appearing at the same time to be an eager and happily obedient servant of the Q15, but wasn’t it really Lou who was openly making this out to be a huge deal and revealing all kinds of information to support his argument?

Why, Lou confronted Blair Hodges in person, as far as I can gather, to rub the Holland thing in his face, which undoubtedly seemed bizarre to Hodges, who saw it differently. In his posts on SeN or MDDB, Hodges said something about an email of apology he received from Lou, which Lou evidently wasn’t really sincere about.

Blair says a bunch of mildly interesting stuff in support of his employer, and then DCP comes in to defend his ego by minimizing the significance of what Blair has said. “It’s not really a building for the now tiny MI!” The only mistake Blair made was in not including the fact that other units would be housed in the building too. But if you look at the November MI blog post, Blair’s enthusiasm seems entirely justified.

What if Lou had responded in a measured and Christlike way? Well, we would not be sitting on this goldmine of intel, for one thing. DCP would not be vague-blogging about us. The whole thing is really quite amazing!
"Petition wasn’t meant to start a witch hunt as I’ve said 6000 times." ~ Hanna Seariac, LDS apologist
_Philo Sofee
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Re: New Home for Maxwell Institute

Post by _Philo Sofee »

The old FARMS guard just can't seem to get much of any intel accurate can they...
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Re: New Home for Maxwell Institute

Post by _I have a question »

I’m reminded of the phrase “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.”
“When we are confronted with evidence that challenges our deeply held beliefs we are more likely to reframe the evidence than we are to alter our beliefs. We simply invent new reasons, new justifications, new explanations. Sometimes we ignore the evidence altogether.” (Mathew Syed 'Black Box Thinking')
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Re: New Home for Maxwell Institute

Post by _Fence Sitter »

Kishkumen wrote:You know, Dean Robbers, I have to wonder what would have happened here if Midgley had never gotten involved. Sure, anyone who knows DCP would see that he was happy to imply that Elder Holland was scolding the MI, while appearing at the same time to be an eager and happily obedient servant of the Q15, but wasn’t it really Lou who was openly making this out to be a huge deal and revealing all kinds of information to support his argument?

Why, Lou confronted Blair Hodges in person, as far as I can gather, to rub the Holland thing in his face, which undoubtedly seemed bizarre to Hodges, who saw it differently. In his posts on SeN or Mormon Dialogue & Discussion Board, Hodges said something about an email of apology he received from Lou, which Lou evidently wasn’t really sincere about.

Blair says a bunch of mildly interesting stuff in support of his employer, and then DCP comes in to defend his ego by minimizing the significance of what Blair has said. “It’s not really a building for the now tiny MI!” The only mistake Blair made was in not including the fact that other units would be housed in the building too. But if you look at the November MI blog post, Blair’s enthusiasm seems entirely justified.

What if Lou had responded in a measured and Christlike way? Well, we would not be sitting on this goldmine of intel, for one thing. DCP would not be vague-blogging about us. The whole thing is really quite amazing!


Did you see the comment by Midgley where he sarcastically told Blair he "hoped that Blair enjoyed his new great and spacious building"? This is the PR guy for the MI for Christ sakes! Who had nothing to do with Peterson et al ouster. And they wonder why the MI decided to take a new approach. If they were really interested in getting back in control of the MI you would think they would realize this sort of nonsense isn't going to help their cause.
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