Dan on his ouster from the MI - part 39428

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drumdude
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Dan on his ouster from the MI - part 39428

Post by drumdude »

DP wrote:Steve Smoot alerted me a couple of days ago to the fact that John Dehlin is still claiming, on the basis of alleged inside information, that Elders Marlin Jensen and Jeffrey R. Holland were “involved” in my 2012 removal from BYU’s Maxwell Institute. Supposedly, too, this was a “direct” result of my “unwillingness to back down.”

I’m not exactly sure just what it is from which I’m supposed to have refused to back down. Mr. Dehlin likes to imagine that the Maxwell Institute drop-kicked me out the door because we were moving toward the publication of Greg Smith’s manuscript about, well, the views of John Dehlin. (By the way, I’m happy for this opportunity to call attention yet again to that meticulously researched and eye-opening paper. See “Gregory L. Smith’s Review of “Mormon Stories.”) I don’t believe it to be true that Greg’s paper was the principal cause of my dismissal as editor of the FARMS Review, though it almost certainly played a role. If, however, Mr. Dehlin is alleging that I refused to back down from publishing that article, he’s flatly wrong. When, in a face-to-face meeting between the two of us, the late M. Gerald Bradford, who was the still relatively recently-appointed director of the Maxwell Institute, requested that we not run Greg’s article, I immediately agreed to his request, noting that we had another article in hand that we could easily substitute in its place. My only question was whether we were being asked to withhold the article permanently or whether this was just a temporary request, pending Dr. Bradford’s having an opportunity to read it. (He had not yet read it — virtually nobody had, outside of our editorial team — and, so far as I’m aware, he never did.) My question was never answered.

The Maxwell Institute never did publish that substitute article, of course, because, shortly after our meeting, Dr. Bradford altogether terminated publication of the journal. Coincidentally, though, the proposed replacement-article was also by Greg Smith, and it eventually appeared in Interpreter as ““Endless Forms Most Beautiful”: The uses and abuses of evolutionary biology in six works.”

But back to John Dehlin’s assertion that I was shown the door of the Maxwell Institute on the orders of Elders Jeffrey R. Holland and Marlin Jensen: I have absolutely no reason to believe this to be true. On the contrary, I have very strong reasons for my confidence that it is not true. (I’ve shared some of the most convincing of those reasons orally, with people whom I trust not to publish them in print or on the internet, but — because they are based upon private conversations — I will not share them publicly unless and until my papers go into the L. Tom Perry Special Collections archive in Brigham Young University’s Harold B. Lee Library.) To reiterate: I flatly deny John Dehlin’s claim.

I’ve denied false claims about this matter from John Dehlin on several previous occasions, most particularly perhaps on 16 October 2013 and, in a reposted and slightly expanded version of that 2013 statement, in a blog entry posted here on 29 May 2017. Here is that expanded statement, yet again:
We are asked to dismiss John Dehlin's claimed inside information, and substitute DP's claimed inside information.

Given that we have no way to verify either, which man is more credible?
consiglieri
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Re: Dan on his ouster from the MI - part 39428

Post by consiglieri »

Dr. Peterson admits that the Greg Smith hit piece on John Dehlin “almost certainly played a role” in DCP’s getting cashiered?!?!?!

Stop the presses!

This is quite the admission!

My follow up question would be why Dr. Peterson is “certain” this is the case if he agreed to not publish when scheduled and nothing ever came of it?

One gets the feeling Dr. Peterson is being less than forthright.
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Doctor Scratch
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Re: Dan on his ouster from the MI - part 39428

Post by Doctor Scratch »

Good points, Consig. I’m not sure what Dehlin means by “back down,” but I was told by multiple reliable sources over the years that DCP and the FARMS apologists were given repeated warnings from the Brethren to “tone it down” and/or to knock it off with the “Metcalfe is Butthead”-style antics.

Dr. Peterson himself has repeatedly said that the main point of contention was whether or not the Maxwell Institute would continue to “do” apologetics. He and the other Mopologists have always tried to spin this to mean that the “new” Maxwell Institute would totally abandon any and all defense of the faith, but I think everybody else understood it to mean that the personal attacks, smear articles, Midgley-esque stalking, and so forth, needed to stop. If DCP had given Bradford his assurance that there would be no more of this nonsense, then he might have kept his posit as Editor. But instead—as DCP himself has said—he objected to the idea that there would be no more “apologetics.” There has always been a reluctance (or inability?) to admit that some of those Mopologetic antics were unwise. And that intransigence is ultimately what brought FARMS to an end, and I assume that that’s what Dehlin means as well.

But, of course, the Mopologists have very much carried on that tradition of toxic Mopologetics, with two key examples being their attacks on the JSPP and their war with the Heartlanders. Really, Steve Smoot’s “Neville-Neville Land” is in many ways the offspring of “Metcalfe is Butthead.” They have never been able to completely extract their version of LDS apologetics from the junior high locker room.
"If, while hoping that everybody else will be honest and so forth, I can personally prosper through unethical and immoral acts without being detected and without risk, why should I not?." --Daniel Peterson, 6/4/14
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Kishkumen
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Re: Dan on his ouster from the MI - part 39428

Post by Kishkumen »

I find it sad that after all this time DCP still thinks what Greg Smith was doing in writing hit pieces was at all appropriate. Thank goodness this kind of garbage is no longer published on BYU campus. Good riddance to all that mess.
“If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about the answers.”~Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow
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Moksha
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Re: Dan on his ouster from the MI - part 39428

Post by Moksha »

Kishkumen wrote:
Sat Aug 06, 2022 4:28 am
I find it sad that after all this time DCP still thinks what Greg Smith was doing in writing hit pieces was at all appropriate. Thank goodness this kind of garbage is no longer published on BYU campus. Good riddance to all that mess.
If the Church cannot wield obsidian scimitars against members in the Maxwell Journal, where else can they wield them? I mean come on, these are platoons full of Saturday's warriors, not some weak scholar enclave.
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Fence Sitter
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Re: Dan on his ouster from the MI - part 39428

Post by Fence Sitter »

Some people can leave the MI but they can't leave it alone.
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Dr LOD
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Re: Dan on his ouster from the MI - part 39428

Post by Dr LOD »

DCP is parsing words like always.

This is what I heard from a past MI, board member. The FAIR bunch was removed including DCP. Under direct supervision of Holland, and possibly Oakes. This included putting Marlin Jensen on the board.
kairos
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Re: Dan on his ouster from the MI - part 39428

Post by kairos »

Has anyone asked MJ or JRH what role they played in DCP’s ouster? Then someone should or ask John Dehlin to produce the emails bearing witness!
This so much kicking cow pies down the road!
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