meow

No, being described as an "intellectual anti-semite" will not harm anyone's career. But when someone goes around obsessively investigating aliases, leveling slightly paranoid accusations (and what is more rational than paranoia?), collaborating with the police in their prosecution of a "scheme to influence a debate," and flaunting public threats to sue one's opponent, then yes, one can end up hurting one's career. Wiener, Robin and Mallon have described many such cases. Hopefully we are not seeing another one now.

meow

Of course. What's being alleged is that the guy defamed Schiffman and used aliases to "influence a debate." Trial or persecution of an anonymous whistle-blower? You decide.

Toto

Even an academic career?

You seem to be referring to

Scandals and Scoundrels: Seven Cases That Shook the Academy (or via: amazon.co.uk) by Ron Robin

Stolen Words - The Classic Book on Plagiarism (or via: amazon.co.uk) by Thomas Mallon

Historians in Trouble: Plagiarism, Fraud, and Politics in the Ivory Tower (or via: amazon.co.uk) by Jon Weiner

You seem to have a high opinion of yourself.

meow

Assuming that the allegation is false and that most academics are not fools, then it should be easily rebutted and without consequence. But since you raise the question, let us examine it. The claim seems to be that the individual in question referred to the Jewish Revolt as "a political uprising." Indeed, he has responded as follows:

Well, does not the lady protest too much? The claim being made does not seem to involve any "judgment ... on the actions of either the Jews or the Romans." Rather, it seems to be that a disregard has been shown for the specificity of Jewish history. One frequently finds such a disregard in works written by Christian scholars, and even in works written by some Jewish scholars. Norman Golb seems to be criticizing this phenomenon in his commentary on a museum catalogue dealing with the Dead Sea Scrolls, on the Oriental Institute website:

[pp. 11-12]

Well then, enough said. Is the attitude in question, to the extent it exists, properly described as "intellectual antisemitism," or is it simply a legitimate, principled choice of museum curators and academics? You decide. Regardless of the terminology used, if a job candidate is ignorant of Jewish history, or if he has intentionally disregarded it or avoided its vocabulary in favor of "neutral" or non-Jewish concepts, then that may or may not affect his candidacy for one or another academic position, depending on the opinions of those who are to be his colleagues.

meow

With all due respect to the neutral moderator (quite an accomplishment) of this delicate discussion, I'm sorry you feel that way.

P.s. I'm sorry if I removed a link while editing the above post; the machine wouldn't let me complete the edit unless I removed the link.

barfly

Seems to me plagiarism is a form of identity theft. I'm sure people who are plagiarized must feel that way, no?

Toto

I'm having some problems finding a logical thread here. Is there a "disregard for the specificity of Jewish history" or just a phrase that you don't seem to like because it refuses to take sides on a specific event?

Would you prefer these, from Martin Goodman's Under the Influence: Hellenism in ancient Jewish life

. . . the unhappy history of the political relationship between Jews and Rome. . .

Even after the mid-first century C.E., when the relationship between the Jews and Rome went terribly wrong, ending in the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple and the refusal of successive Roman emperors to allow the Temple to be rebuilt, . . .

Are you trying to read too much into a single phrase?

I notice that Dr. Norman Golb does not use the term "intellectual antisemitism." That phrase is used of late to refer to serious antisemitic political tendencies in Europe and Russia, not academic tiffs over the interpretation of events of 2000 years ago.

When you think that you are correct but others reject your ideas, it is easy to retreat to the idea that everyone who doesn't agree with you is corrupt or prejudiced. This is always possible, but you have to consider the possibility that you have not been sufficiently persuasive. You might even have to consider the possibility that you are wrong.

edited to add - and in any case, you make more friends and influence more people if you find common ground and at least pretend that you respect their ability to reason.

ps - new socks for Christmas?

meow

Well, I don't find your own logic very convincing. (I'm tempted to ask you if you find it convincing, but I've made up my mind not to get involved in the little ad hominem suggestions that seem to be going back and forth here.) Let's take a look at it. First, you cite a good example of something we might delicately call "British discretion." And you seem to find such discretion commendable. I don't necessarily disagree with you. But it seems to me that criminal defense proceedings aren't a very delicate "scholarly" context. In fact, they're a context where people are probably more likely to state their views in a rather blunt and direct way.

Then you point to a piece of "Oriental Institute" discretion. But if the pattern Golb describes is in fact "intellectually antisemitic," Golb's delicacy also doesn't mean that it's "wrong" to call a spade a spade. I noticed that Golb didn't call Schiffman a "plagiarist," but if what Golb describes in his book constitutes plagiarism, it wouldn't be something else just because Golb didn't use the term.

You also suggest that one can "make more friends" by "finding common ground." Well, I noticed that you don't seem to have pointed out anywhere in this "logical thread" that getting someone arrested is not really such a good way to make friends. In fact, sending "information" to the police, making certain statements in one's dissertation and elsewhere about Norman Golb, and contacting the University of Chicago with demands that they remove an article by Norman Golb from their website, seems to be a pretty good way of opening up a can of worms and losing some friends.

You see, Toto, obsessively compiling and broadcasting a "case" to get someone sentenced to jail is not a very "friendly" kind of business for a scholar to get involved in, and maybe it's not all that convincing to strut around with a show of rhetorical "I was falsely accused" indignation after doing something like that. I never heard of Martin Goodman doing that to anyone, and I actually don't think he would do it, even if someone suggested that he was putting things in an "intellectually antisemitic" way.

spin

Let's call a spade a spade and realize that this soapbox thread has nothing directly to do with BC&H. It shouldn't be in this forum and if there were a caged forum where heavyweight drive-bys could hang out and hurt each other, that's where I'd have this thread sent. Most people in this shooting match don't care a damn about BC&H and I wish the moderators would put the thread down.

We have had people popping up here specifically for this thread, people who have not posted elsewhere and apparently have no interest in doing so. That says something about the thread.


spin

meow

Well, the moderator of BC&H did choose to open the thread and provide what appears to present itself as a "neutral" forum for the vicious accusations, didn't he, and you yourself seem to have made your views on the topic quite clear:

That seems like a legitimate perspective, but what if Schiffman did engage in "similar wrongdoings"? In that case it certainly wouldn't be very discreet or "friendly" of him to go to the police, would it. Zahavy, who is no fool, decided to say something about this, and you also seem to have made your view clear, in this very thread.

What I'd really like to know, is what kind of indignant or embarrassed reactions we will hear if people begin examining Schiffman's book a little more closely. Because people are bound to be curious about this issue of "similar wrongdoings," aren't they.

But we've seen these kind of things before, and we know how academic delicacy deals with them, don't we. Mallon has a lot to say about the tendency, as he delicately puts it, "to keep the dirty secret from spreading through the extended professional family, and perhaps above all, to keep from getting sued."