So Brian has decided, in his latest “issues in the profession” thread, to recognize the following question as worthy of note and discussion:
AnonUntenured said…
Can someone explain the Leigh Johnson mystery: http://www.readmorewritemorethinkmorebemore.com/p/curriculum-vitae_16.html How do you go from apparent tenure denial at one obscure college to a tenure-track job at another obscure college with almost no publications? (She seems to mostly blog and tweet.)
This is a moderated thread. So there can be no question that Leiter at least had to deliberately press ‘publish’ on this comment. It is less clear, as his own comment further down indicates, that he had fully thought through the implications of doing so.
Brian Leiter said…
Yes, I suppose I should not have approved #2, but I've been approving almost everything. On the other hand, Johnson is a very public and rather noxious presence in philosophy cyberspace, so I'm not surprised there is interest.
I’m sure we’re all glad to know that Brian has some standards (he didn’t approve everything, after all). Still, what he did approve seems to merit some comment.
- The speculation about the reasons for Leigh’s ability to secure a second job in professional philosophy is untoward, given that she is a) non-tenured, b) not in any way credibly accused or even suspected of professional misconduct, and c) the characterization of her current position is inaccurate. Publishing this comment and thereby generating a public sense that Leigh does not deserve her current employment is at very least an obvious instance of bullying on Brian’s part (and fits his by now well established pattern of directing this sort of attention toward junior, precariously employed members of the profession).
- In what has to be one of the great whoppers of his entire blogging career, Brian goes on to justify leaving such a comment up by validating a more general interest in the question of why someone who is, in his view, a "a very public and rather noxious presence in philosophy cyberspace” should have a job.
To say that the implicit standard in 2) risks implicating Brian himself is rather obvious. More interestingly, it seems to be perhaps as candid an admission as we are likely to get from Brian that he sees nothing wrong with harassing people he doesn’t like if he can possibly pull it off. And so we find him abusing the pretext of discussing ‘issues in the profession’ to pursue his own petty little vendetta.
Jeff Bell
Helen De Cruz
Lisa Guenther
Gordon Hull
Carolyn Jennings
Ed Kazarian
Eric Winsberg
*Note: Post has been edited to include signatures of NewAPPS authors who requested inclusion after it was originally published.
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