April 20, 2008
"University of Michigan legal blogger Ann Althouse called Brian Leiter a 'jackass,' to take a famous example. (She also called him a 'nerd.')"
The Boston Globe makes the University of Michigan take the heat for my — famous! — transgression. Here's the 2004 post where I called him a "nerd" after he insulted me. I expanded on my point in the comments, where I called him a "jackass." I have since that time had a sandwich and a nice conversation with Professor Leiter.
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34 comments:
Who bought the sandwich? Was it egg salad?
rode in a suburban limo with one of the UM law profs just a few weeks ago and he knew of you and your blog Ann. I think he was somewhat miffed that UW trumped UM for your blogtalents.
Could this be the beginning of a vast conspiracy?
started a petition against the rankings, accusing them of being methodologically flawed and harmful to the profession; he got close to 300 signatories.
Petitions signed by philosophers are usually published by their targets.
Eg. angry letter from Quine published by Derrida in an amused chapter of Points (click p.419)
Jackass isn't a body part. This is not widely known.
I apologize, I don't see how he insulted you by simply saying "Althouse defends it [it being what he calls sexist legal humor]." Do you disagree that you "defend" it, or do you disagree that it was "sexist legal humor" in the firt place.
In any case, for it to be insulting presupposes knowledge of your internal thought processes, not just what you display to the public in your writing.
Boston Globe is NYTs proxy. No surprises about their reporting.
As someone who is from Wisconsin and lived in Boston as well as NYC I will say that many people I encountered could not tell the difference between Wisconsin, Michigan or any other flyover state. One guy I met thought Wisconsin was "somewhere by Idaho".
So when they made the mistake that your a Michigan legal blogger what they really meant to say is somewhere "out there" where "others" live.
They probably did it on purpose.
Brian Leiter inspires strong reactions in many people; I remember once googling "Brian Leiter" and coming across fellow UT professor Keith Burgess-Jackson's blog, "Brian Leiter, Academic Thug."
Now a pale shadow of its former self, BL,AT lists Leiter's "attack victims," including Ann herself.
From a 2005 posting on K B-J's "Anal Philosopher" blog:
How Good a Philosopher Is Brian Leiter?
Brian Leiter would have you believe that he is a star (or at least a rising star) in philosophy. Is he? Let's take a look. According to Leiter's curriculum vitae, which is available online, he has published only nine refereed essays in philosophical periodicals, even though he earned his Ph.D. degree in 1995. One of the essays appeared in a periodical (Legal Theory) of which he is an editor. Make of that what you will. The essays were published in the following periodicals:
Journal of the History of Philosophy (15 pages)
History of Philosophy Quarterly (9 pages)
Australasian Journal of Philosophy (8 pages, coauthored)
British Journal for the History of Philosophy (32 pages)
Legal Theory (11 pages)
Ethics (35 pages)
Canadian Journal of Philosophy (20 pages, coauthored)
European Journal of Philosophy (20 pages)
Ethics (23 pages)
I think everyone in philosophy knows that Burgess-Jackson is a bit of a nutter. See this:
http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2005/10/keith_burgessja_1.html
Michigan...Wisconsin...whatever....close enough. It isn't like thare are "real" States with people who actually matter like Massachusetts or California.
/sarcasm off
Sorry, link didn't work, I'll try again with it on two lines.
http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2005/10/
keith_burgessja_1.html
everyone in philosophy knows that Burgess-Jackson is a bit of a nutter.
This assertion would be more convincing had peter a. not used Leiter himself as his source.
It wasn't an argument from authority, did you read the post and the evidence adduced: Burgess-Jackson incited violence against Leiter's family, insulted and threatened his wife and kids? Anyway, google turns up lots of other stuff. Try this: "Keith Burgess-Jackson is not mentally stable.
http://dadahead.blogspot.com/2005/02/
keith-burgess-jackson-is-not-mentally.html
did you read the post
When I see a pissing contest, I don't expect to get the exact truth of the matter from either participant.
Both posts are pretty well-documented. Anyway talk to some people in philosophy, KBJ is a well-known crazy.
"I want to go back to Michigan, to old Ann Arbor town..."
Burgess-Jackson is not a UT professor. UT is Texas-Austin. Burgess-Jackson teaches at UT-Arlington.
Leiter and I disagree about pretty much everything, but I would trust him to evaluate any of my work. He's a straight shooter, and he knows quality.
titus and DBQ have said all that needs to be said.
I'm sure the Boston Folks are pissed that WI is number 1 in cranberry production, and this is their way to take it out on us.
hmmm...are you a WolverBadger or a Badgerine?
Boston called itself "the hub of the universe" and the "athens of america" and they believe it.
The rest of New England calls them Massholes.
It is fabulous there though.
New Jersey's cranberry harvest goes equally into making glass and cranberry shortcake, so doesn't show up in the list.
They are nasty drivers there too.
The good news is you rarely see any domestic cars. Very euro.
Lots of international hog also which is always a plus in my book.
Whatever country you may be hankering for they got it.
Also, you really can't beat the Italian/Irish combo-pure heaven.
Was the sandwich fabulous with exotic sprouts, an organic tomato, mesclun greens with some rare mustard?
I hope so.
Ann, I tried to scroll down to put this link in a more appropriate setting. Like Insty, it doesn't seem you're covering a lot of the Pope's visit (not a slam, neither am I, and I'm Catholic and a huge fan of Pope Benny).
In case your readers are interested, I'm live blogging the Yankee Stadium visit.
You're a Yankee fan, right?
http://futuremd.blogspot.com/2008/04/live-blogging-popes-yankee-stadium-mass.html
He's got use of the home team locker rooms. That made me smile. :)
Cheers,
Victoria
It just occurred to me that the phrase "whole hog" has a whole new meaning when titus is around.
Hey! Victoria's back!
But is it just for a plug or is she going to visit AA more often?
Stay tuned...
(Sorry, just putting it in a format rhhardin can understand.)
You know, I was actually witness to the sandwich-sharing back when I was a student at UT. I was busily eating away at my own when I recognized your voice from the Valenti Blogging-heads dust up a few weeks prior... and then looked up and saw you at a table with Leiter.
That was really weird.
I'm glad someone mentioned the Keith Burgess-Jackson anti-Leiter blog. It was a source of some serious internet comedy gold, at the expense of its author, not Leiter. I see that for some reason Burgess-Jackson deleted all of his posts except for one (the simple list mentioned above), but when it was up and in full swing, it was a truly amazing stream of monomaniacal batshit rants against Leiter, and it even spawned a short-lived parody blog in which Burgess-Jackson was the satirical target. Funny stuff.
It would have been interesting to witness the Althouse-Leiter lunch. As they say in that city, keep Austin weird!
Brian Leiter is pretty much of an asshole, at least in his online persona (I don't know him personally). It isn't too hard to find examples online of numerous childish insults and vendettas on his part.
I haven't read any of his published work, but the things he has published online make what we called vulgar Marxism look sophisticated. So I'm underwhelmed by his philosophical acumen myself. On this point, I could be wrong--maybe someone can point to Leiter's absolute best published philosophical work, and I will try to read it.
hdhouse said...
rode in a suburban limo with one of the UM law profs just a few weeks ago and he knew of you and your blog Ann. I think he was somewhat miffed that UW trumped UM for your blogtalents.
Could this be the beginning of a vast conspiracy?
It's a vast UW wing conspiracy.
Where ya been?
I've only read one of Leiter's books, so I can't tell you what's his best work. However, I have read his Guidebook to Nietzsche on Morality, and it's definitely a book worth reading. I'm not a philosopher (just a simple country lawyer), but I enjoy reading work like this from time to time, and he provides a really good discussion of Nietzschean philosophy, which doesn't go too much into unintelligible academic-speak.
I'd agree that his online persona is a pretty harsh one, but most of his targets bring the abuse on themselves (the creationist/ID crowd, for example, or people who try to start arguments with him directly), and he isn't one to let a false sense of civility get in the way of getting some points across. I would agree that (online) he isn't necessarily to everyone's taste, however.
His papers on legal realism, especially "Legal Realism and Legal Positivism Reconsidered," are very, very good.
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