um . . . well if you had googled his name, within about 10 seconds you would have discovered that he is pretty much the only pure philosophy of mind person currently on the Oxford faculty.
Where did Gallagher get his PhD from? His CV doesn’t say, and Wikipedia says Bryn Mawr–which doesn’t have a PhD program any more. Did it back in the day?
Ph.D. (Philosophy) Bryn Mawr College 1980
M.A. (Economics) State University of New York (Buffalo) 1987
M.A. (Philosophy) Villanova University 1976
B.A. (Philosophy) St. Columban’s College (Wisconsin) 1971
Do I have this right? Patterson spent $1000 to get a political theorist with no record in epistemology to write a review of his epistemology book? Patterson then goes nuts because the review is not favorable and in Patterson’s view doesn’t really engage with the content of the book?
There seems to be some ambiguity about whether Brennan got his $1000. Personally, and I’m not saying I couldn’t use a grand right about now, I think that’s too low to read an amateur’s refutation of contemporary epistemology. (As a contemporary epistemologist, I thought Brennan, whose political views I really don’t like, did a very good and fair job of trashing the book, which sounds stupid beyond belief.) (WordPress’s spell checker underlines “epistemologist” in red – way to make me feel even more marginal this morning!)
Feel like these two were made for each other. JB is a bit of a dick that needs easy targets to be a dick to. SP is a narcissist who needs someone to abuse him. I wish them all the happiness in the world.
Anyone see the story in the Chronicle about the fellow who was awarded a PhD in “Communications” for producing a rap album? One suspects he’ll be rewarded with a sinecure at at little Ivy. Meanwhile, the better part of a generation of philosophers (most least marginally talented) will be shut out of academe for want of stable employment options. Draw what conclusions you will.
That rap is a legitimate art form, finally being recognized by the academy? That creative theses are going to be a thing in the arts side of the humanities? That making a work of art is at least as hard as writing a mediocre dissertation? That the world values average music far more than it values average philosophy?
Bitch, nigger, bling bling, money, hoes, ass, tittays, guns, pussay, beeotch! Oh, I got it bad when i grew up in the projects. See, that is social critique.
A non-exhaustive list of rap albums that might entitle their authors to a terminal degree: Criminal Minded, Illmatic, Step in the Arena, 36 Chambers, 93 till Infinity, Death Certificate, Nation of Millions, etc.
Do you REALLY think this guy has doctoral level flow?
Although I take the point about creative theses, we distinguish the MFA and other terminal arts degrees from the PhD for good reasons. Indeed, I cannot see how a (to be generous) middling rap album–or, for that matter, a middling work of fiction–is supposed to be a contribution to scholarship.
The “legal realist” and Chavist Leiter is suddenly shedding crocodile tears for “democracy” and “habeus [sic] corpus.” If Trump is Hitler, I guess in Leiter’s fevered imagination that would make him Hans Kelsen, right? It’s hard to think what principled reasons the Chavist and “legal realist” would have for opposing the Trumpist dictatorship, just as Kelsen had no reason to object to Hitler’s legal takeover of the German state. But at least Kelsen knew how to spell “habeas corpus.”
“Habeus” is indeed a very embarrasing mistake. Poor fellow was never taught Latin although he clearly likes “per se” and “miscreant”. Aligns perfectly with his constant name dropping.
I know, how embarrassing never to have been taught Latin! Probably went to a state school.
And then, ha ha ha, using expressions like “per se” anyway, pretending that he was taught Latin! What a fraud.
Ah, of course.
That pretender Brian Leiter went to school in the United States! And he claims to be an educated person! Thank god you exposed him for what he is.
Hm, I wonder if he knows how to spell “douche bag”. Probably not–I bet he was never taught any French at all.
The smells of envy and jealousy rise from your post. Brian Leiter is clearly rendering many public services with no hint of gain. What are you doing? Quibbling about spelling errors in Latin?
Nice try attempting to paint Leiter as an enemy of democracy. I guess you missed his excellent post the other day on the Reichstag fire and its relevance for today.
I feel sorry for any young person subjected to your disorganized thoughts in a classroom.
Not a typo, the letter A is not even close to the letter U. It shows that Leiter is not the educated person he constantly paints himself as. He so much wants to be an European intellectual in the hope to be recognised as something special among his America peers, that it is actually quite funny.
“It shows that Leiter is not the educated person he constantly paints himself as.”
Correction: It shows that Leiter is not the educated person he constantly paints himself *to be*.
“He so much wants to be an European intellectual in the hope to be recognised as something special among his America peers, that it is actually quite funny.”
Correction: He so much wants to be *a* European intellectual in the hope *of being* recognised as something special among his *American* peers, that it is actually quite funny.
Yes, European intellectuals have an untarnished record of serving as role models in recent centuries. What U.S. academic wouldn’t aspire to those heights?
“People say Trump is a narcissist. I don’t think so: I think Trump hates himself and with good reason. What he loves is his image–that garish, vulgar, money-saturated image. This is why he hates to be criticized and disrespected: it hurts his image. Once you grasp that everything he does is meant to promote his image it begins to make more sense. There is really nothing to him apart from his image.”
You have to admire Dr. McGinn’s commitment to knowing nothing about what he expounds on. Not the psychiatric condition, not the myth, nothing.
Classic reveal over at the Snooze, as the violence against Murray at Middlebury (which put a woman professor in the ER) is treated to some thinly-veiled special pleading before being used as the occasion for an outside-the-box chin-stroking fest about whether there is ‘a defense of shouting down a speaker at a university’.
You know how you can tell the ethical principles Whinebag actually takes seriously? They’re the ones he doesn’t treat like this. Imagine: ‘Is there a defence of tolerating casual racism?’ Yeah, me neither.
If true that’s a great appointment for Oxford – MGF Martin is surely the smartest philosopher of mind out there, even if he has published less than is usual these days. Also pleasing, if true, that they didn’t choose someone who does cog-sci dressed up as philosophy.
Leiter not only wrote ‘habeus [sic] corpus’; he also wrote, years ago, ‘de riger [sic]’.
The crazed Keith Burgess-Jackson once said that, according to rumor, Leiter doesn’t speak German very well. Shortly afterwards Leiter’s wikipedia entry was updated to include the line: “Leiter is fluent in German.”
I don’t like the whole ‘talking about a private person publicly online’ thing, but let me just say that, by all accounts, including Dembroff’s, that article does not reflect her current social/political outlook.
One copy of her CV has the expected degree date as 2019, but the current version says 2017. That’s three years into her work at Princeton (though I guess she started at ND). That’s still really fast. Wow.
Well, if I understand Haslangerian ontology correctly, to be is to be the value of a bound variable in a logic that advances bien pensant political objectives. Ergo, the above mentioned article doesn’t exist.
This is a sincere question: why would it be considered ‘misconduct’? Idon’t see why you’d be actually *obliged* to put particular pieces of information on a CV, unless specifically asked for them. Leaving things off isn’t lying. Don’t lots of senior people just list selected publications, rather than a complete list, simply because there are too many? It would seem odd to call this ‘academic misconduct.’ Of course most junior people do list all their publications because it is usually a good idea. But it seems s stretch to call it ‘academic misconduct’ (classifying it with plagiarism or cheating on an exam) to leave things off. Especially when it’s a popular piece – but even if it were a journal article, why would it be ‘misconduct’ rather than just a bit odd not to mention it?
Leiter: “I thoroughly disapprove of this bogus and opaque ranking. However, they did ask me to rank things, so I diligently told them who I think the 17th best applied neuro-ethicist in the world is, and the 9th strongest department in french-language poststructuralism. A field of which I also disapprove, but it is important that the rankings, which are wrong and stupid, nonetheless rely on the insights of an expert ranker.”
Nobody’s gonna have better rankings than me. I tell you I have the most reputable guys in the field – give them a hand people, give these tremendous reputable guys a hand, aren’t they tremendous? – and you’re gonna love the rankings they come up with. We’re gonna have all of philosophy ranked, this year. Crooked Carolyn, she wants you to look at placement? Placement? Who ever heard of this, it’s fake news. I tell you I’ve got the best guys, and I tell you, I’ve been ranking my whole life. My first job – Michigan people, remember those days, huh? Who thought I’d be here – well I did, but who? – I was ranking. Nobody ranks better than me. You give me something I tell you where it ranks. Just like that. And I rank it right, and everybody knows this about me, you know this about me. I rank the Chinese, the Russians. They all know I rank the best – they’re worried about being ranked by me, because they know I’ll rank it right. They’re not afraid of Crooked Carolyn. But these rankings I have, they’re the best, from the best guys, and you’re gonna love them. You know who I hate though. Donald Trump.
Oh look, protestors? Somebody wants to have their fun, they want to pretend these rankings aren’t the best rankings. It’s not serious! Get them out of here. I tell you, if somebody wants to send them something in the post, hey, I’ll pay the postage. You gotta be tough with these people. They don’t get it, they don’t get that a guy from New York… I’m not here for your feelings. I’m here to give you the best ranking you’ve ever seen. I had Crybaby Carrie coming to me, “oh I was on a scooter…” a scooter? You believe this, she’s so hurt she has a scooter and she’s telling me that my followers, that my language is too aggressive…? All these haters, they just hate that everybody knows I have the highest rankings, me, from New York, and Michigan, and Chicago. I drained that Ivy League swamp, and now these insiders they want to tell you that the rankings were wrong, that he can’t win… But we see what happens every time. The fake Nous media, they’re going to tell you I lost readers. I gained readers, I have Whiny Justin tapping my emails – publishing them! – I have David and Sally – you ever hear of these two, I tell you, I got to respect that they rank high, but they don’t even like the rankings! you show me someone who doesn’t like winning and I show you a loser! You can’t vote for these people. And I have numbers, great numbers, from the best numbers guys – David Wallace, you love this kid, right? – he’s got numbers Crooked Crybaby Carolyn can’t even count to – these numbers, they show you that I’m winning. And the more I’m winning, the more I get the worst people trying to tear me down. But we won’t let that happen, right? We have to make philosophy great again. And we’re gonna have that ranking that everybody’s gonna KNOW that it’s great. And who’s the 6th and 9th greatest.
But people ask me, and they know I rank every minute of every day to make the best ranking for this wissenschaft, but they say what about the places where nobody’s even TRYING to rank? And they know I care about those places too. That’s where half these haters come from! But seriously, some of the best people too, the most tremendous people. But every place that can be saved, we’re going to rank it. And the haters, they even hate that. They hate that great guys like my guy Dan, who’s doing tremendous work for me, that even people I don’t rank they still love my rankings. But we gotta be serious too, there are places we can’t rank, not even me. The haters have taken over these places, they set up no go zones. You heard about Kooky Linda! I tell you, she tries to make a ranking – she’s unrankable! Who would rank her? These are the people… we need a wall: I love continentals, some of the best guys I work with are continental. Nietzche, what a guy! And my guys tell me Karl Marx is doing some great work out there. But then there’s Babette, Simon, Jacques. We can’t let Nietzche in because we have to worry about keeping Barmy Babette out! When I hear continental, you and me we know there are these bad hombres. You hear about the way they massacre, a massacre in Paris, in Verso, in Stony Brook! We got to make philosophy great again, and we can’t do that with these guys running around. We got to keep them in Cairo, unranked ! But if we’re gonna build that wall, we’re going to make them pay for it: it’s not for them, I mean, it’s to keep them out! And if we’re gonna build that wall we need a guy who can rank. Right? You’re with me. And you know that I rank better than anybody, anybody either side of that wall. You are gonna be so impressed with this ranking. You’re gonna start wanting to rank me! I kid, I kid. My department ranks 21st and that’s final.
Wery good my DC friend. I drink a wodka toast to you topless atop my faworite steed. Well done my good and faithful servant. But I still have the–ah–wideos–so mind your wolgical pees and queues.
Even if we assume for the sake of the argument that academia is a meritocracy, there is little reason to think this hypothesis can explain the philosophy gender gap. Scientific and mathematical abilities may be important for some philosophical subfields like logic, decision theory, or philosophy of science, but it is less clear that these skills are required for an individual to do excellent work in ethical theories or some topics in the history of philosophy.
Further, the argument for this hypothesis in STEM fields may not be compelling either. Some of the evidence used to support it—the existence of gender differences in distributions of the SAT mathematics section—changes over time (showing a decrease in the variation in distributions) and there is even a reversal of the gender difference in variation in other countries such that women make up the higher end of the distribution. These abilities are malleable, at least in part, by social and environmental factors to the extent that the gender differences can completely reverse.
Given all of the caveats necessary to get to this point, at best the gender difference in abilities hypothesis is woefully insufficient to explain the gender gap in philosophy. (It’s also worth pointing out that women do not earn worse grades in philosophy courses than men, and at Elon University, women earn better grades.)
————————————————————————————————————————
‘…less clear that…’
‘work in ethical theories’ (is this even an expression?)
‘…may not be compelling…’
‘…other countries…’
‘at best … woefully insufficient’???
This is some reeeeeally bad motivated reasoning. How can anyone even pretend to take this as an intellectually serious attempt at anything?
Women are significantly majorities throughout higher education, and throughout the world (OECD, where the average is about 57% women to 43% men), and this has been so for several decades.
In the US, the figure is about 57% women and 43% men. In particular, for medicine, vet , law, biological sciences, psychology, social science and humanities (except philosophy and economics), women are large majorities, as well as for many vocational training course, such as nursing, teacher training and social work, where woman are vast majorities. Men are majorities in mathematics, computer science, physical sciences, philosophy, and economics, and for some vocational training courses.
Nowhere in that Daily Nous post is there any attempt to explain why women are majorities throughout higher education; nowhere is there any attempt to explain why women are majorities in law, medicine, biology, psychology, English literature, history, and so on. In other words, its starting assumption is to reject all the empirical evidence available. Furthermore, the empirical claim “imbalance in proportion is due to discrimination” (or similar claims in that ballpark) is assumed, but without any evidence whatsoever. There is no evidence to support such claims. All the evidence points the other way, showing that women in higher education receive far more preferential treatment than men do. Similarly, the empirical claim “imbalance in proportion is due to biological difference” is rejected with no empirical evidence cited. But if “imbalance in proportion is due to discrimination” is true, then it is men who are discriminated against throughout higher education, because they are small minorities, and they are minorities in law, medicine, biological, psychology, humanities and social sciences, etc. So are men being discriminated against? Why are there so few men in higher education?
It’s political propaganda, riddled with mistakes, fallacies and faulty presuppositions: it excludes all the empirical evidence; it dismisses all the scientific evidence concerning sex differences in humans; it makes political assumptions, for which there is no evidence.
Exactly. The only plausible, empirically well-confirmed explanation is ruled out by these weasel words, and instead we’re offered “Intersecting Identities” as a “major area for future research”.
“…But women have many other identities that make a difference to their experiences as women. Future studies of a large enough size to study students’ experiences at many of the intersections of their identities are necessary to determine whether our interventions on the gender gap target only some women and whether it comes at the expense of women with other intersecting identities. In cases where there are too few women with particular intersecting identities, such as women with particular kinds of disabilities or trans women, to get adequate numbers for quantitative methods, researchers may have to include qualitative methods in their research as the folks at Elon University did.”
what the fuck? are we just playing SJW buzzword bingo?
Measurable imbalances in proportions involving males and females (in any species) are generally biologically caused, by sexual dimorphism. These include physiological, anatomical, behavioral and psychological differences. It’s a pity that a seemingly high proportion of philosophers are scientifically ignorant; don’t understand evidence or scientific reasoning; and promote politically-motivated “social justice” claims, which assume repeatedly discredited and refuted blank slate ideology, which contradict the empirical evidence and which contradict the known science of biological and psychological sex differences. But that’s the situation.
You want to explain this garbage? Start by looking at the incentive structures in contemporary academic philosophy. A research program that uses sloppy social science to address non-existent “problems” often leads to: stable employment, publications, conference invites, and general plaudits from many corners of the discipline. Assuming, of course, that these “problems” speak to concerns of identity politicians.
As far as I can tell none of them are funny. (For reference, 5:15 am’s comment about Jonathan Ichikawa’s hair is indeed funny.) A few, like the Nietzsche quote, come close enough to be recognizable failures at being funny. But most are just stupid and hateful.
You’re probably the kind of person who thinks Tosh.0 or whatever is funny.
“Ray looks like one of the guys who escaped Jeffrey Dahmer’s apartment.” De gustibus non est disputandum, although the same does not hold for dresses and haircuts.
I don’t know these people, but lots of academics give me the same basic vibe. I can’t fully articulate it, but I think it amounts to something like the secondhand embarrassment one feels upon witnessing an adult thinking or acting like an adolescent by virtue of having an impoverished sense of what is edgy/transgressive/etc.
For instance, Itchy has the exact haircut of countless thirteen year olds who are on the road to becoming punks but haven’t heard Discharge or Minor Threat yet. It’s what you end up with when you want a devilock but your mom won’t allow it.
Boy, was she a rebel when she attended those private schools. And whilst at Cambridge, she led the Vegans against garish incest in nature association (VAGINA) to never seen heights. One day she even smoked a cigarette in protest of her philosophy tutor who had argued against smoking and drinking in a previous one-to-one tutorial.
Nothing against polyamory but this is ridiculous and embarrassing. I sometimes have thought that all the beating up on the CIJ and JJI is just sour grapes, but this really is lame as fuck. I hope they one day cringe at it.
Indeed, that is very surprising. I had thought the first rule of PENMA was to loudly and publicly proclaim that you are a member of PENMA, but that you can’t tell anyone about it.
The last thread had a discussion of the NDPR review of rightness as fairness, including speculation about whether and how Arvan would respond. Now we know: with a meta-discussion.
Key graph: “Because reviews can be fair or unfair, charitable or uncharitable, etc., it is not hard to imagine philosophical or professional reasons why an author might want to respond to some reviews. And indeed, as a new author, I have given some thought to doing so myself.”
To compress: “I have thought about responding to a review of my recent book for professional reasons. The professional reasons for responding to a review come from the review being unfair or uncharitable.” (It doesn’t seem like a review being fair or charitable would be reasons to respond to it.)
So: “I have been reviewed uncharitably (like this here review of ‘A Theory of Justice” … just to give an example).”
In the end, he decides it’s probably best not to respond, and opens the matter up for discussion, making his overall point “Richard Dees’ review of my book was unfair or uncharitable, but I’m not going to say anything about that.”
I can sympathize. It’s frustrating to work hard on something for years and see someone come along and shit all over (what seems to you, at least) a careless reading of it. Yes, to invite comparison with Rawls, even if unintentionally, is unfortunate. But kudos to Arvan for mostly restraining himself. Has anyone ever caricatured your work on a highly trafficked site? It’s pretty annoying. For a while, you wonder of everyone you meet whether, if they heard about the ‘sick burn’, they saw through the stupidity or just accepted it at face value. This is a problem that will only get worse as every dumbass in philosophy eventually starts a blog and uses it to attack people’s work. The sooner we start developing norms of self-restraint the better.
It wasn’t a blog that criticized his book. It was the NDPR, and the criticisms look pretty reasonable (although I haven’t read Arvan’s book so I can’t say with confidence).
I didn’t say it was a blog, and I didn’t endorse Arvan’s assessment of the criticisms. I said that over the top attacks might become more common as more people enter the blogosphere, and that people should try not to give into the temptation to get in fights on the internet.
Well, the thing to keep in mind is that Arvan’s book (which I’ve looked over, but not read carefully) is terrible; the reviewer was if anything too charitable. His whole idea is to ground morality in broadly formal requirements of diachronic rationality–which he for some reason presents as radically original, even though it’s been pursued with way more depth and finesse by tons of people (Nagel and Korsgaard most famously, probably)–a fact he barely acknowledges. There comes a point at which it’s better for everyone if people drop the pretense and tell you not to quit your day job.
Confession: I only come here because I have a deep conviction that professional philosophers are *the worst* and here I find, on the one hand, confirmation of that conviction, and, on the other hand, people who seem to share that conviction.
They have done shocking things in the last few years, things that no other profession seems to do. They distribute slander about innocent people. They hounded people out of their jobs using public smear campaigns. In some cases, outrageously. David Barnett was hounded out of this job at Colorado, for defending his student from false accusations. Jeffrey Ketland was hounded out his job at Oxford with smears, and his family driven out of town by cyber-harassment, for telling a stalker and sexual harasser with a record of violence, who had stalked him and his wife for years, to stop stalking him at his seminars. They ran a smear campaign and tried to hound Laura Kipnis out of her job at Northwestern, for writing an essay about the climate of sexual paranoia in universities. And those are just the uncontroversial cases. They ran a public smear campaign against Brian Leiter and got him removed from his Philosophy Gourmet Report for merely arguing with someone who publicly attacked him; they falsely accused Peter Ludlow at Northwestern, called him a rapist, and hounded him out of his job.
1. Carrie Jenkins threatened not to treat BL as a “normal member of the profession” the day after Justice Whineberg and others attacked BL because he cut Crazy Carolyn to pieces.
2. In neither case was Ludlow found guilty of the original charge. Wait to you read the Kipnis book on this!
1. Boo fuckin hoo. Poor Brian Leiter, was not going to be treated as a “normal member of the profession” by CJ? The dude says that kind of thing about other people on his blog all the time, including whatever “cutting to pieces” you’re talking about.
2. Ummm … He was so found guilty of the trying to get his chubby 50 something year old fingers down the pants of the 19 year old. Matter of public record. But yeah, can’t wait to read the Kipnis book.
You mean the 19 year old Yoona Ha who invited Ludlow out on a date, lied about her age, tried to fuck him, failed, and then lied about him when he rejected her?
Yoona Ha invited him out on a date. The evidence shows this. Ha then lied about her age. The evidence shows Ha tried to initiate a relationship with him, but he rejected her. She then lied about him. But her story contradicts the evidence, including CCTV evidence.
Your epithet “fat old balding men” is sexist. It is also quite revealing. But some women appear to like “fat old balding men”. Examples of women who like “fat old balding men” are Yoona Ha and Lauren Leydon-Hardy.
Nov 23, 2011, 8:38 PM from Peter Ludlow: Nothing is perfect. And elements of our situation suck really hard,
but the wonderful parts swamp that. I want to optimize for happy.
I need u in my life for that.
Nov 23, 2011, 8:40 PM from Lauren Leydon-Hardy: I can promise you that you will always have me in your life.
Nov 23, 2011, 8:40 PM from Lauren Leydon-Hardy: And that I’ll always love you. So much.
Nov 23, 2011, 8:41 PM from Peter Ludlow: I promise back.
Nov 23, 2011, 8:41 PM from Peter Ludlow: So much.
Nov 23, 2011, 8:41 PM from Lauren Leydon-Hardy: Good promises.
Nov 23, 2011, 8:42 PM from Peter Ludlow: The best.
Addendum: In the book, I explicitly reject formal approaches to/constraints on diachronic rationality. I instead defend defend a substantive account of diachronic rationality based on actual human motivation that is not at all like Korsgaard’s account or Nagel’s account.
“I am beyond disgusted. That I’m not also surprised speaks terribly of our discipline.
All my best wishes to Joanna Ong, who I am sure would not put herself in this public position frivolousl”
Of course, it is not remotely possible that Ong is trying it on for possibly large sums of money. No best wishes to Searle who may of course be perfectly innocent. I don’t know. Perhaps he is guilty and she has is brave. But how the fuck does Itchy know that? His crappy comment “speaks terribly of our discipline”. Especially in the context of his shitty discussion of epistemology and his implied view that being ‘orthodox’ makes his epistemic assumptions correct
“To those of you defending Searle or anyone else in he said/she said contexts as innocent until proven guilty? Um, no. This is not a criminal matter. And the very structure of it is different than contexts where the accused is prosecuted by the state on behalf of the people. In he said/she said contexts, if he’s innocent until proven guilty, then she’s guilty of lying until proven innocent. And I have personally mentored women who he’s done this to before. Who have since dropped out of philosophy. So I would ask you to please reconsider the common instinct to exonerate powerful men. It’s the flipside of misogyny’s shaming and punishing of less powerful women (or so I’ve been arguing anyway) and it’s massively damaging.
I am on Joanna Ong’s side.
That is all. Please refrain from comments engaging on the substance of this post just this once. I am tired and beaten from this week and need to say my piece for moral reasons, and then disengage for the night for personal ones. Thanks friends.”
The idea that “innocent until proven guilty” implies a presumption that accusers are lying is bizarre. Because in this context “innocent” doesn’t mean “shown to be innocent”; it means something like “not shown to be guilty”. The proper response to a Buzzfeed article and a lawsuit isn’t strong belief that Searle is guilty, or strong belief that Searle is demonstrably innocent, or strong belief that Ong is lying. The proper response is to suspend judgement and wait for more evidence. Manne doesn’t appear to so much as notice that this is an option!
One more point: people allege all sorts of things in lawsuits — Peter Ludlow alleged in a lawsuit that Jennifer Lackey lied about him, for example. So the idea that someone’s saying something in a lawsuit is strong testimonial evidence is clearly not going to cut any ice for FPers.
If by ‘innocent’ you mean ‘did not do the thing he is accused of doing’ that assuming that a person is innocent until proven guilty *does* imply a presumption that the accuser is lying.
If by ‘innocent’ you mean ‘has not been found guilty or held liable in a court of law’ then ‘innocent until proven guilty’ does not imply a presumption that the accuser is lying.
But given context, it is reasonable to assume Manne means the first of these. And it is also unreasonable to assume that she hasn’t even considered the option of suspending judgment – more likely that she just disagrees with you that this is the proper response in this case, given the evidence she already has available to her.
In an explicitly *legal* context (namely, that invoked by legal phrases like ‘innocent until proven guilty’), ‘innocent’ means the latter and not the former. Unless you’re in Scotland.
Even so, assuming someone didn’t do the thing they’re accused of doing doesn’t require assuming that the accuser is *lying*. The accuser could instead be faultlessly mistaken.
True. But in the current context, it seems really unlikely that the accuser is faultlessly mistaken (I mean, maybe there is someone who has been impersonating Searle, and that’s the person who harassed her, but this seems pretty unlikely).
There’s nothing special about this context. If someone really thinks that by presuming X innocent you presume all of X’s accusers guilty of perjury, then that person should think the entire criminal justice system in the English-speaking world presumes millions of prosecutors, witnesses for the prosecution, and victims of crimes are guilty.
That’s not correct. The problem isn’t with the interpretation of ‘innocent’; it’s with the interpretation of ‘presume’.
No-one said anything about perjury. I think you’re getting confused between legal standards about what you can presume and ordinary standards about beliefs and assumptions.
If you mix the two like you are doing, you have a similar problem – if we really think that everyone ought to assume that a person is innocent until proven guilty, then no-one would ever be convicted of anything because the jury would not be allowed to believe that they did it and therefore find them guilty until that same jury had already found them guilty.
After half a century the house of cards is finally going to collapse. I’m sure he harassed plenty of women, but most of Searle’s Girls were consensual, it always looked like. The ones who consented and gained from those arrangements are probably looking at this Buzzfeed thing with apprehension.
I personally think that it is very possible that those alleged events took place, but this is just based on my personal impression of Searle from interviews. Although someone commented on Manne’s post that during her years at Berkeley it was well-known that Searle had a habit of engaging female undergrads.However, given that recent witch hunts in the philosophical community were unjustified and that similar student-professor-arrangements like that of Ludlow and whatshername seemed to involve quid pro quo, I am a bit surprised that someone like Manne is so willing to condemn Searle.
Laura Kipnis’s book, _Unwanted Advances: Sexual Paranoia Comes to Campus_, will be out on April 4. Apparently, it’s full of gossip about the Ludlow case. Stay tuned!
I commented on that thread at The Daily Nous. I described a genuine sexual assault, for which the police were called, in 2010, after which I was threatened and stalked. I’m pretty sure Justin Weinberg deleted it because it described the facts about Charlotte Coursier, my stalker. Jonathan Ichikawa Jenkins said he agreed with Ong, who has made accusations against Searle. So, I described being sexually assaulted by Charlotte Coursier and then being stalked for a further two and half years by her. I was subjected to false accusations and witch hunted, with a horrific and appalling smear campaign. I didn’t keep a copy of them. so I’ll just repeat what I recall.
——
Charlotte Coursier sexually assaulted me on 24 November 2010. There was a separate eyewitness and because she began shouting, the police were called. They gave me a note of the incident and asked me to consult victim support. But I didn’t press charges. But I kept that incident note. Subsequently, she threatened, harassed and stalked me for a further two years. She stalked not only me, but also my wife (on an earlier occasion, Coursier had been detailed by the police for a confrontation with my wife). She followed me and my wife to Oxford. There she stalked my wife and son, with whom she was obsessed. She stalked me at my seminars, so I told her to stop. But she lied about that; and then stalked me again later.
——
Another commenter, “Hey Nanny Moose”, mentioned, “for the record”, two news stories. The first (The Daily Mail) was a fabricated story, about which I was not consulted, making vicious false criminal accusations against me, and for which there’s no evidence. These were lies. The second (The Sunday Times) was based on facts, evidence and witness reports.
I replied, for the record: “Charlotte Coursier was a rapist, a liar and stalker”. Which is true.
The Sunday Times report of the violence, harassment and long-term stalking by Charlotte Coursier was accurate. As I noted above, Coursier sexually assaulted me on the night of 24 November 2010. Do you approve of sexual assault and stalking?
As I have said, Charlotte Coursier sexually assaulted me in late 2010, and then stalked me for a further two and a half years.
Do you approve of sexual assault, harassment and stalking? It’s a simple question.
What do you think victims of sexual assault and long-term stalking think? As you know, Charlotte Coursier was a rapist, a liar and a stalker.
Let’s go through some possibilities concerning sexual violence with you:
1. Victims of sexual assault and stalking should be victim-blamed?
2. Victims of sexual assault and stalking should be smeared with false accusations, cyber-harassed, driven out of their homes and have their lives wrecked?
3. Victims of sexual assault and stalking should be silenced?
I’m not the same person (if it is the same one person) you’ve been communicating with so far.
I do not approve of sexual assault. I do not approve of stalking. I do not approve of victim blaming. I do not approve of false accusations or wrecking lives. I do not approve of silencing victims.
I’ll be happy to answer other questions you might want to ask.
Will you answer one question? Is The Sunday Times report that you moved out of your family home and began an affair with the now-deceased student accurate? Maybe it is. Or maybe it isn’t. The fact that The Sunday Times accurately reported on the many aspects of the situation that you have confirmed does not mean that they have accurately reported on this aspect of the situation.
If their reporting of this issue is accurate (or inaccurate) this does not change the fact that their reporting of the aspects you have confirmed is accurate. If you did have an affair with the student this does now show that you were not assaulted, stalked, or violated in other ways — of course not. And if you did have an affair with this student it does not even follow that there was anything improper about this.
Jeff Ketland’s comments are clear evidence that the man has no shame. What a reprehensible human and disgrace to the profession.
I believe you, Jeff. I believe you. I am sorry that philosophers and apparently even some feminists have treated you so poorly. Please know that the “feminists” who refuse to believe or extend empathy to victims of sexual assault are such in name only.
This is in answer to 7:23 above.
Coursier and I knew each other for several years starting in November 2008. She received nothing except kindness and care from me. Maybe about a week or two after she first contacted me (asking me to read an essay), she made a serious suicide attempt, which I prevented and I asked her to get help. In February 2009, she took an overdose (a paracetamol & sleeping tablets overdose), but texted me saying no one cared about her. I found her and took her to hospital, Edinburgh Infirmary. I reported this to the department, and requested help from counseling (who refused), and Professor Andy Clark can confirm this. Her life was turned around by me.
She then calmed down in early 2009 and returned to university. She was, however, in love with me. And she was in contact with me on and off for the next couple of years, usually asking about work and things. We knew each other very well.
About two years later (the end of 2010), this, and I omit some other important events, had now led to huge rows with my wife. I moved out and stayed with a friend, Matthew. Coursier asked me if she could visit. There was a brief affair. Three weeks later, she assaulted me, pinning me down; then refused to leave and began shouting. The police were called. Matthew had been outside the flat and heard this happening. Matthew banned her from my flat and later told me he’d seen her hanging around outside. He noted these things down in his (physical) diary. I distanced myself. Just after Christmas that year, she sent me a volley of harassing text messages, which I couldn’t reply to as I was ill (I did write them down later); so I notified her friend Rosa and asked her to help. I then went to work in Germany a few weeks alter, in January 2011.
So you creep did fuck her, despite all your fears that she might be stalking you. I know it’s complicated. People like you are unfit to teach young students. Yeah, the allegations were wrong but you still could not keep it in your pants although it was very clear that nothing good could come out of this. It was more than clear that she was unstable, she was infatuated, obsessed with you. But the gentleman you are, you thought in a highly logical matter that pussy is pussy and one pussy is more than zero pussy. Jeff, you need therapy not a job that puts you near living people.
The interesting thing is that this attitude of yours is partly what led to her death. Had people not thought in the confused way you appear to, and paid attention to welfare notifications given, she’d be alive.
Look in the mirror and see the lethal consequences of your ideology.
It’s clear from your own testimony here that you took advantage of her fragile mental state and used her as a means to your own end of getting your end away.
Coursier took advantage of me; she manipulated me into helping her, which I did at great cost and to zero benefit for me. You can play the feminist narrative all you like. It is a lie. I had no other interest in her, as all the evidence shows. For the next two years, Coursier then pursued me, as a potential boyfriend – in fact, she wanted to marry me. She eventually got what she wanted. Then Coursier sexually assaulted me in November 2010. Then she harassed me; then she stalked me, and also stalked my wife and son – and Coursier did this for years.
What is clear, and a matter of public record, is that Coursier was a long-term stalker with a history of violence. Your comment suggests you want to excuse violence and stalking and blame the victims of that. You may do that, if you please. It makes no difference. Coursier was a violent stalker.
“What a reprehensible human and disgrace to the profession.”
On the contrary, the treatment Coursier received in Oxford is a disgrace to the profession. She was manipulated to her death by feminist activists, who prevented her receiving emergency medical attention; while notifications that I made, and that another person made directly to the Faculty of Philosophy in March 2013, were ignored. In Edinburgh, where she was for six years, I saved her. There is no “disgrace” in that, no matter how much vitriol you emit.
In Oxford, she had a nervous breakdown because her relationship with boyfriend broke down, was neglected and driven to suicide, when her boyfriend did eventually leave her.
Look in the mirror, philosophy profession; and feel the shame you deserve for the monstrous mistreatment of a student about whom welfare notifications were ignored.
It’s exactly this kind of unhinged gaslighting that likely pushed Coursier over the edge. However you attempt to recast the facts, you were psychologically manipulative to a fragile young woman with whom you then engaged in an inappropriately close and, eventually, improper sexual relationship. When she needed a friend, she found a predator. That a psychologically fragile young woman might react badly to such patently inappropriate behavior on the part of a faculty member in a position of power should be obvious to any reasonable person. From your disgusting and shameless comments, however, it is clear you are anything but reasonable.
Your shouting does not reflect well on you and is a fabrication. Coursier was in love with me for many years; and was almost certainly borderline personality disordered. She was not “fragile” — she was a violent stalker, as many others witnessed; a stalker, who assaulted me. You need to stop victim-blaming, despite your reflexive urges. She also stalked my wife and son. You can shout as much as you like, and try to excuse violence, but it reflects poorly on you.
Coursier was also not “pushed” over the edge in 2008, or 2009, up to 2012. Was she? On the contrary, she had her life turned around and an excellent future for her, as she freely said on many occasions.
Coursier was pushed over the edge in 2013 by feminist activists, who prevented her receiving emergency welfare help, despite notifications being given. Try to hide this as much as you like, or ignore it, but it is what happened. Had those notifications been heeded, or had I been told what was happening, she would be alive. Just as she was in 2008, 2009, etc. But they were ignored.
These are the lethal consequences of feminist hysteria.
Who’s engaging in an internet campaign of intimidation now? The Searle/Ong story has nothing to do with you, so shut the fuck up already. You don’t need to be the centre of attention every time someone mentions ‘harassment’.
Please comment if and only if you agree with us that Ong is a hero and Searle is guilty. There will be plenty of other places to express other opinions. Like Daily Nous… oh, no, wait, sorry. Well, at Leiter’s blog… nope. Yeah, okay, go comment at that cesspool. Three cheers for diversity!
Is that addressed to me? They cajoled Coursier into making bizarre false complaints; they knew of her background; they knew she was pursuing me; they had been notified of her prior history and they ignored welfare notifications (though the welfare notification to the Faculty of Philosophy from a friend of mine, an Austrian woman, went to another person, involved in organizing graduate teaching). In fact Coursier herself wrote, after one conversation with an American feminist, “when I spoke to her, her reaction suggested that she was more concerned with firing him than with my welfare” (17 March 2013). Another American feminist told her to “delete oldest correspondence from her time as an undergraduate” (15 May 2013). Another American feminist persuaded her to make wild accusations, which she then withdrew. And shortly after this, she stalked me again (which I tried to report to the police). Coursier, by the way, was a conservative, and hated feminism.
Laura Kipnis tells me that she thinks feminist hysteria is dangerous and harmful for female students and I suppose this will be a topic in her book due out in a few weeks. She is right, of course. A student died in Oxford in June 2013, because of feminist hysteria. Not because of me; or because of her boyfriend (he had to flee). But lethal feminist hysteria.
And with that, I bow out.
“In March 2017, Searle was the subject of sexual assault allegations. The Los Angeles Times reported that, “A new lawsuit alleges that university officials failed to properly respond to complaints that John Searle, an 84-year-old renowned philosophy professor, sexually assaulted his 24-year-old research associate last July and cut her pay when she rejected his advances.”[9][10] Berkeley’s alleged protection of Searle was seen in some quarters as a recurrence of earlier problems in dealing with similar accusations.[11] The suit, which was filed by the Los Angeles-based law firm Kristensen Weisberg LLP, said Hudin, the director of the John Searle Center for Social Ontology, admitted that Searle “has had sexual relationships with his students and others in the past in exchange for academic, monetary, or other benefits.”
Wow! Makes you think who took part in this quid pro quo. Is he abusing his position? I think so. Why, however, are apparently so many women willing to “participate” I only know about his mind stuff and the people sucking up to him are usually men.
That is an advantage women have over men. I probably would have
Wait, you mean, according to her boyfriend, Coursier committed suicide on the day that he dumped her but the feminists want to blame Ketland? I don’t get it. I thought they believed in justice.
Wait, you mean, according to her boyfriend, Coursier committed suicide on the day that he dumped her but the feminists want to blame Ketland? I don’t get it. I thought they believed in justice.
So basically the whole Ketland story is one massive Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender by feminist philosophers. No wonder their story about it never fitted the facts.
Well, it was demonstrable sexual harassment from Coursier, who romantically pursued me for two years til the end of 2010 and then stalked me for years afterwards, following me to my new job in a different country, stalking my wife and son with whom she was obsessed and stalking me, repeatedly, as others saw. But they lie about it. I described being pinned down in November 2010, her trying to remove my “pants” (to use feminist terminology) and “get her end away” (to use feminist terminology). She was prevented from “getting her end away” by me and then began shouting. I told her to go home; I hid in the kitchen because her anger was so extreme, and the police were called because of her shouting. The eyewitness, Matthew, heard this happening. He described it later in his diary a few weeks later, saying Coursier “refused not to sit on him”. I didn’t press charge against her, but I could have, had I wanted to. And because there was ample evidence and a separate eyewitness, she would have ended up in prison.
Contradicting the facts, some nut above inverts the evidence and says that a woman sexually assaulting a man — an event for which there is evidence from a separate eyewitness — is the man’s fault. But it’s actually the perpetrator’s fault, not the victim’s. The woman has indeed been described as trying to “get her end away” and the man stops her and tells her to go home; that, apparently, makes the man a “creep”. But the man is not a “creep’; it the female perpetrator of sexual harassment who is a creep. All of this is classic rape culture and gaslighting, from feminists. They’re delusional. They seem to lack the notion of responsibility: a woman sexually assaulting a man is responsible, not the victim. A woman stalking a man and others is responsible, not the multiple victims.
And it’s curious how far down the rabbit hole they go with their delusions. They run public witch hunts against victims of sexual violence and stalking; not just one, but multiple victims. They’re even prepared use cyber-harassment and drive victims (plural, including a 4 year old child) of stalking out their home. This is all a matter of public record. This grotesque misbehaviour is, using a phrase from one of the above liars, a “disgrace to the profession”. They never back down; never apologise, no matter how many times they are proved wrong; and never tell the truth.
I can only imagine Coursier receiving these sorts of utterly deranged emails from Ketland. It’s truly terrifying to witness how an otherwise gifted mind like his can be used to distort reality and twist the facts. The Daily Mail piece (which, by the way, Paula Boddington noted on Leiter’s blog was the most accurate account of the evidence presented at the inquest) details how Coursier was afraid that nobody would believe her and that they would take Ketland’s side. And it’s clear why: Ketland was in a position of immense power compared to her, and he quite evidently has the ability to spin things around. There can be little doubt that this saga of manipulation by Ketland contributed to her frame of mind when she tragically committed suicide. Now we can thank him for demonstrating just the sort of person Coursier was dealing with. It’s downright horrifying and would be enough to derail even a well-adjusted student, much less one with a history of mental illness. And it’s all the more disturbing that Ketland continues to malign the reputation of his victim when she can no longer defend herself against his crazed accusations. Good grief…
I will now bow out if people continue telling lies. And those are lies. There is no evidence whatsoever to support the fabrications published in The Daily Mail. Not a single piece of evidence. I was not consulted. And no witnesses were consulted – not me, not my wife, not people present in Edinburgh; not people who had witnessed her violence and stalking. Later the Coroner wrote to me, “these were things she told her friends”. The Daily Mail even accused me of time travel, inverting the fact that Coursier stalked me to Oxford, as the eyewitnesses know, and then she stalked my wife and son and stalked me. All of the evidence, and all of the witnesses, contradict the lies published there. On the basis of no evidence whatsoever, you make false accusations against me. And you are defending sexual harassment, sexual assault and stalking. Charlotte Coursier was a sexual harasser; she committed sexual assault; and she stalked me and my wife and my son for years. The victims and eyewitnesses are fully aware of her violence, harassment and abuse.
Coursier was driven to suicide by feminists in Oxford, who pushed her into a hole and prevented her getting emergency medical help; and she committed suicide when her boyfriend, who had persuaded her to have an unwanted abortion, dumped her and ignored her suicide threats. Prior to that, I had made welfare notifications (including to the police) and an Austrian woman made a detailed welfare notification to the Faculty in March 2013, after Coursier had stalked my wife out of town. These were ignored. Stop telling lies. Since the lies continue, I now publish that Austrian woman’s own description of the welfare notification she had made to the Faculty in March 2013:
——-
“I said she reacted to stress with violence against herself and others and if the rumors I heard were true, she would have scars on her wrists. I recommended that she should have female tutors rather than men and that they should know how to get professional help very quickly if she behaved in any unusual way”.
——
This was ignored. This is evidence. It was covered up.
[that should say “not bow out”, rather than “now bow out”.]
If I was so “powerful”, then why were the welfare notifications ignored? And why was I disbelieved and automatically treated as a liar, when I was telling the truth?
Look in the mirror, you appalling human beings. And take *responsibility* for your appalling behaviour.
You’re the appalling one here, and you clearly have shit for brains. What the fuck are you doing, inserting yourself into the discussion at every turn? The world doesn’t revolve around you and your petty insecurities, you dumb fuck. Get a haircut and grow the fuck up.
salt bubberubberubber we all think the same thing
salt bubberumberumber we all think the same thing
pontius elpatrication, a dudder rubber loaf philosophical
rending reading, brittle and soggy, reading gone on holdy
eat the edge of a wheat banana! it’s philosophical! P.S. Leiter and metabro en route.
I go through these lies one by one. When you distribute lies about innocent people it wrecks their live. So expect a response. You get a response to appalling lies.
1. “Coursier was afraid that nobody would believe her and that they would take Ketland’s side.”
That is false. Everyone she spoke to took her side, and treated me automatically as a criminal. And that feminist “believe the accuser” mentality led to her death, because she was in fact, lying and stalking me, as others witnessed.
2. “And it’s clear why: Ketland was in a position of immense power compared to her, and he quite evidently has the ability to spin things around.”
That is false. Coursier, being a woman had all the power – she was able to recruit multiple people who automatically believed her delusions – with an appalling outcome. I had no power. No one paid attention to the notifications given. No one. Had they paid attention to us, she would be alive. All the power was in Coursier’s hands: a delusional stalker.
3. “There can be little doubt that this saga of manipulation by Ketland contributed to her frame of mind when she tragically committed suicide.”
Her suicide was caused by her being mistreated by hysterical feminists in Oxford, who ensured she did not receive emergency welfare help and because her boyfriend dumped her. Your accusation is a lie. The evidence shows that she manipulated me into helping her. And much later she sexually assaulted me and began stalking me. And later still, in June 2011, she wrote, “you are still the person that saved my life and my degree”. In August 2011, she wrote, “for three years you were my life”. She was infatuated with me and in love with me for years. All of the evidence contradicts your lies.
4. “Now we can thank him for demonstrating just the sort of person Coursier was dealing with.”
Indeed. Someone who stopped Coursier killing herself in 2008; someone who prevented a suicide attempt in February 2009; someone who notified others of what was happening (Prof Andy Clark); someone who was kind to her and turned her life around for the next three years (“for three years you were my life”, August 2011); and someone who later, in 2013, tried to notify others in Oxford of serious concerns for her welfare. Which were ignored and then covered up.
5. “It’s downright horrifying and would be enough to derail even a well-adjusted student, much less one with a history of mental illness.”
What is horrifying is the mistreatment Coursier was subjected to in Oxford. Those around her knew of her background, but made no effort to protect her welfare. In fact, Coursier herself said this.
6. “And it’s all the more disturbing that Ketland continues to malign the reputation of his victim when she can no longer defend herself against his crazed accusations.”
Coursier died because of the feminist hysteria she was subjected to in Oxford and her breakup with her boyfriend. I am the one who tried to help. I was ignored. An Austrian woman tried to help too. Her notification in March 2013 was ignored. But Coursier was also a rapist, a liar and stalker. We were her *victims*, for years. That does not “malign” her reputation. It is the truth, and our experience of being stalked for years was horrendous. And then it was our lives that were wrecked again, with a shocking vigilante campaign of intimidation, cyber-harassment, lies and false accusations. We were even driven from our home.
Deal with the evidence and the facts. If you don’t want to hear the truth, don’t distribute appalling lies and fabrications against innocent people whose lives were deliberately wrecked by a vigilante witch hunt. I’m quite happy to keep going if the lies and false accusations continue. People like you deliberately wreck and destroy people lives, with lies. Expect to hear a response — the truth, based on evidence — to those lies and false accusations.
Jeff Ketland I’m sorry that you have to deal with this harassment, and all this on top of what you’ve already been through. The double standards at work here are truly appalling.
You write: “The second (The Sunday Times) was based on facts, evidence and witness reports.” Well, The Sunday Times reports that “police gave Ketland a harassment warning on May 22.” Are you denying that you were given this warning? You never answered another poster’s question in regard to this.
Moreover, as an anonymous U.K. philosopher writes on Leiter: “I’m no friend of the British police and I can quite see the potential for them to tar someone’s name without due process here. But anyone overseas who gets the impression that there’s an epidemic of unjust applications of such warnings would be getting the wrong idea. In fact, in cases of which I have knowledge, it was very difficult to prod the police to do anything at all. That’s also consistent with the general reluctance of law enforcement to help women in cases of domestic violence etc.”
It seems then we only have one piece of hard evidence beyond Ketland’s dubious testimony: Ketland, not Coursier, was the only person actually cited for harassment. Let’s allow the facts speak for themselves, not Ketland’s crazed post hoc self-rationalization.
First, this is not my “testimony’. This is hard evidence, from eyewitnesses. My flatmate, who partly witnessed an incident of Coursier sexually assaulting me and also witnessed her stalking me, isn’t a liar; my wife, whom Coursier stalked obsessively, isn’t a liar; the various witnesses are not liars; the woman who gave the welfare notifcation to the Philosophy Faculty is not a liar and I have quoted verbatim what she said. This is hard evidence.
Second, the claim above is speculation. In the UK, the police hand out PINs like confetti. There is no evidence required at all and no consultation of the victim of the accusation by the liar.
Third, I was given a PIN because I told a violent sexual harasser Charlotte Coursier to stop contacting me at my seminars. She stalked me on 6 May 2013, and she stalked me the following day, at a club I organized at my college, sitting one seat away from me, pretending not to know me. There were multiple witnesses. And I reported it immediately to people I knew. This is hard evidence. I told her to stop contacting me and stated, “You may recall that Matthew […] banned you from his flat after you assaulted me, and the police were called when you began screaming abuse at me” (15 May 2013). A few days later, Coursier withdrew her lies anyway. A few weeks after this, she then stalked me again (3 June 2013). I contacted the police to discuss this (5 June 2013). There is hard evidence of this too. None of this is “post- hoc”. It refers directly to events during the campaign of a violent sexual harasser against me. It is what happened at the time and is why I was terrified of this violent sociopathic stalker.
Those are the facts: a record, some of which is already public, of Coursier’s several year campaign of violence, stalking and harassment of me. And they do speak for themselves. Coursier was a rapist, a liar and a stalker.
“in cases of which I have knowledge, it was very difficult to prod the police to do anything at all. That’s also consistent with the general reluctance of law enforcement to help women in cases of domestic violence etc.” Whoever said this is a liar. Nothing is easier than getting the police to take precipitate action against men, however obviously bogus a woman’s accusation is.
Yes, that’s why when I went to the police with clear evidence of a sexual crime committed by a man, he was instantly interrogated and arrested. Oh wait–I remembered that wrong. Nothing happened.
In every case I know of a woman or child going to the police about an adult male’s domestic violence related crimes or sexual crimes, nothing happened to the man. The academic studies on the subject show that it is very difficult to get police to act in these situations. You are an MRA troll.
Everything you said here is a lie. You never did any such thing, you do not know of any such cases, the academic studies show know such thing. You’re a typical feminist. That is to say, you’re a liar.
If I go to the police right now and accuse you of harassing me the UK police will give you a harassment warning. They will do it however obviously bogus my accusation is. They will do it despite my being drunk or raving or a well known liar. They will do it even if I have made 20 accusations in the past that have been proved false. Merely on receipt of an accusation, they have to give you the harassment warning. So you see, you need to understand that harassment warnings were created as a device to allow women to use the police to harass men man without any evidence, proof or anything.
A major problem with feminist extremists is that they are promoting rape and domestic violence. As is well-known, a man who is raped and abused is automatically disbelieved and often arrested and punished. A woman is automatically believed, no matter how abusive and violent she may be, and how many lies she has told in the past. They just axiomatically defend rape and abuse so long as it is the man who is raped and abused. They’re insane. I’ve experienced:
1. Being sexually assaulted and long-term stalked (by Charlotte Coursier).
2. Being subjected to a vigilante witch hunt of slander, intimidation, fabrications, cyber-harassment, being driven out of home and public abuse.
Of these, the second is worse. The behaviour is pathological. They hunt down victims of sexual violence and stalking; the victims are left terrified.
I have a story about the effect of this horrifying campaign of vigilante harassment on my son, which I might write down later. It’s already in the public record what these vigilantes did in driving us out of our home. But the particular story isn’t.
Ketland’s the troll here. That, or his own mental health is deteriorating. It wasn’t enough that he was legally cleared of responsibility in Coursier’s death. Instead he’s decided that he has to tell the whole metablog that feminism is cancer, because women have hurt his feelings and JFK was abducted by lizard-people who are holding him hostage at the centre of the earth. Boohoo.
No, you’re the troll. A dirty femtroll. Go voice your support for Ong at femphil blog, everyone will agree with you on the femphil blog because dissidents are not allowed to post there. But on here we want critical discussion without personal attacks, not an echo chamber.
“Ketland’s dubious testimony” Aren’t we supposed to believe victims of domestic violence and sexual assault?
*Ketland, not Coursier, was the only person actually cited for harassment” First, Ketland was not cited for harassment. Harassment warnings are not citations: their factual content is nothing beyond being informed that someone has made an accusation. More importantly, her assault of him is not only recorded by the police but was witnessed. Her stalking of him and his family was testified to by his wife.
A citation is a legal act of an policeman to an accused stating the nature of the charge against them and giving notice to appear in court to answer the charge. A harassment warning is merely a statement that someone has made an accusation. So yes, the point of a harassment warning is to sound like a citation without being anything of the kind. It is purely a device of the state to exert discrimination against men and as such is a constituent part of the institutional oppression of men.
Feminism is cancer and this case is the proof of it. Ketland was evidently subjected to a campaign of harassment and intimidation by a woman with borderline personality disorder. In any just world he would have been protected from her. Instead, and entirely due to the connivance in and promotion of her malice by feminists, his family fled Oxford in fear of a feminist mob and his career has been destroyed.
The logician fails to realize that
A) Person X was a scary stalker toward Person Y, and is morally responsible for that
and
B) Person Y was a creepy lecher toward Person X, and is morally responsible for that
can both be true.
Answer the question…
“That, or his own mental health is deteriorating.”
Being sexually assaulted and stalked does have a bad effect on one’s mental health. This is true. And Charlotte Coursier was a sexual harasser and my stalker. So does being vigilante witch hunted with lies and driven out of one’s home. As far as I am aware, no one anywhere has ever accused me of anything connected to Coursier’s death. It’s a foul false accusation. I believe a pathological liar and cyber-stalker who was involved in Coursier’s death did this; but no one else I’m aware of. It’s simply a disgusting lie.
Back to the actual facts. Coursier’s death was caused by feminist hysteria, neglect of welfare notifications and her boyfriend dumping her on the day she died. Here’s the welfare notification again, given to the Faculty in March 2013 by a friend of mine, that was ignored:
“I said she reacted to stress with violence against herself and others and if the rumors I heard were true, she would have scars on her wrists. I recommended that she should have female tutors rather than men and that they should know how to get professional help very quickly if she behaved in any unusual way”.
Hard evidence. Had our notifications been listened to, Coursier would have gotten emergency attention and be alive.
But the feminist struggle is far more important than mere matters of life and death.
1. Did you have an affair with? Why did you have an affair with her?
2. You think it’s a foul false accusation to accuse you of contributing to Charlotte’s death, but not a foul false accusation to accuse feminists of contributing?
1.I bet you say that to all the women when they have been stalked and sexually assaulted.
2. Obviously its a false accusation to accuse him of contributing since nothing he did had anything to do with it, and that is why it is foul. Equally obviously, its a true that the feminist philosophers contributed because they used her to pursue their agenda against male philosophers. In pursuing that agenda they do not care what the truth is: they only care about promoting the narrative. They used Coursier and Ketland to promote the narrative despite the obvious fact (from the boyfriend’s evidence at the coroner’s court) that Ketland had nothing to do with her death. That is why his accusation is not foul: it is a true accusation that exposes the foulness of the feminist philosophers.
We have been over this. Charlotte Coursier was a rapist and stalker and you seem to want to deflect attention from that to the victim.
Why did the feminists who cajoled Coursier into making false accusations ignore her welfare? Why did they not notify a professional psychiatrist to protect her from her suicidal behaviour? Why did they not, as recommended, “get professional help as quickly as possible if she behaved in any unusual way”?
I’m still not understanding why Ketland was ever held responsible for any of this. The boyfriend whose evidence was given to the coroner’s court is the boyfriend by whom she got pregnant and at whose behest she then had an abortion. The evidence from this very boyfriend was that on the day he dumped her, she threatened to kill herself if he dumped her but he refused to give into her threat. Unable to change his mind, she then returned to Oxford and carried out her threat.
Quite obviously the boyfriend was scared that he was going to be blamed for her death. So why should we believe anything he says when he starts making self-serving accusations in order to deflect the blame onto Ketland?
Is it not enough of an explanation as to why there was a sexual relationship to notice that she was hot? I guess one of the lessons of this utter tragedy is the maxim: don’t stick your dick in crazy. Or perhaps the falsehood thereof as she committed suicide as soon as someone refused to stick his dick in crazy, and we don’t want a cute hot girl to commit suicide, now, do we?
Another lesson is that a sexual harasser is not a bad person; it’s much more nuanced. Have some sympathy for McGinn too, give the guy a job. He won’t do it again.
But the person who sexually harassed me was a bad person: a stalker. Bad enough to be imprisoned for sexual assault, had I pressed charges in late 2010; or for stalking, had my wife done what she wanted to do, and reported Coursier to the police in early 2013 for stalking.
I understand your feelings but I don’t think it’s that black-and-white. Try to forgive her, remember that she was mentally ill, and think of the good moments also. In the end, she was a good loving person trying hard to “stay alive”.
For all I know, Ketland may well have suffered at the hands of someone who was mentally unstable, however:
a) As he voluntarily and unwisely chose to have sex with a student he is partially the author of his own misfortune and b) his claim that the British police give out harrassment warnings like confetti is false.
Ketland has a long history of nutty claims on the internet, going back to a manifesto he wrote praising ultra-right-wing ideologue (later quoted approvingly by mass-murderer Breivik) Melanie Phillips. I don’t regard his testimony on any matter other than logic as reliable.
My claim that UK police give out PINs like confetti is true. No evidence of any kind is required and the victim isn’t consulted. The police use them routinely to stop people arguing. Because they are so routinely handed out and victims of accusations have no right to reply to them, there are steps in law to revise that. Bear in mind that the PIN here was part of what prevented Coursier receiving emergency medical help. You need to think more carefully about this. I am not the “author” of being stalked by a sexual harasser: that is victim-blaming. I’m certainly not the author of being witch hunted by a vigilante mob.
I am not very interested in “ladies”, contrary to what the person above said about me. And it was Coursier who pursued me. I am more interested in guitars and politics. So on the politics point, Melanie Phillips is lovely, though a bit bonkers. She’s not “ultra-right wing”. She is a conservative, as was Coursier, who admired Melanie Phillips.
The fact that Coursier was a conservative does not make her wicked somehow. Coursier hated feminists too, whom she called morons. She supported Israel quite ardently, and also opposed abortion. If she came back to life, philosophy’s left-wingers would probably kill her again.
I have not written any such manifesto. Don’t be so absurd. Are you referring to Norman Geras, a (deceased) Marxist academic at Manchester, who wrote a manifesto opposing anti-imperialist extremism? You think Norman Geras is connected to Anders Breivik? Ha.
I think we can take your comments here with a pinch of salt.
Ah Jeff, you have my apologies for misremembering: you didn’t praise Mel P as such, you named her as a “source” (presumably of wisdom) in your “Cretino-Leftism, Political and Epistemological: A Brief Guide”, which I won’t insist on calling a “manifesto” if you object. Anyway, poor judgement, on your part.
The point remains, in any case, that, of your own volition, you had sex with a student. That’s the sort of choice that may turn out fine or may unravel into disaster. In this case it did. Well, I feel sorry for you, but you really shouldn’t be on here shouting about your victimhood.
I leave other metametametablog readers to judge whether this counts as a ‘nutty claim on the internet’ and whether we should, in light of it, distrust other (non-logic-related) claims that Ketland makes.
And maybe also if Coursier had been a bit more circumspect with her crazy cunny all this unpleasantness could have been avoided. (Though this Mid-February thread would have been less lively.)
As a counterfactual, that is false. Because she would have stalked me either way; because she was in love with me. As for your speech act, are you going to say that about Benjamin Fardell’s “prick” – he impregnated her with his “prick”.
Maybe you should try to learn to reason and to be reasonable?
Melanie Phillips is fine. Leave her alone. I wrote an essay about far-left stupidity, true. I am right. Just look at the current state of the social justice loons. And order your copy of Laura Kipnis’s book on current state of left-wing delusionality in higher education tomorrow. I cited Norman Geras, Michael Walzer, etc. These people are not connected to Anders Breivik. And neither is Melanie Phillips. I can’t remember how Melanie Phillips is connected: maybe through her book Londonistan. So, what just happened in London, by the way, two days ago? An Islamist murdered a bunch of people.
“That’s the sort of choice that may turn out fine or may unravel into disaster.”
Any sort of choice may turn out fine or unravel into a disaster, so your comment is logically irrelevant. Benjamin Fardell chose of his own free will to have a sexual relationship with Coursier and how do you think he feels? He must still feel traumatized every day. Do you think Fardell should not have had a relationship with her because she might eventually commit suicide? Should Fardell be publicly demonized and chased out of his home? He made a call. Everyone does. That’s life.
What happens in the real world depends on the behaviour and outlook of others. So let’s look at your ideology, which seems to be, “Adults at universities should be forbidden from having relationships, getting married, etc.” But this is crazy. It is imposed nowhere I’m familiar with. Thousands of people meet, have relationships. Are you going to fire thousands of academics? Should gay marriage be banned? What happened to people when gay relationship were banned? Just think about these obvious things. Did they feel paranoid? Did they have to hide them? Were they made to feel ashamed?
But it’s much worse than that. The disaster inflicted on Coursier was caused by people with this ideology. It creates paranoia; fear; hysteria and panic. Coursier came into contact with American feminists with this ideology and within three months she was dead. Do you think she wanted to reveal she was in love with the person she was badmouthing? Of course not. They terrified her to death. She wanted one thing: to re-engage contact with me, because her *boyfriend* was going to dump her. This was made impossible by them, because of their mad ideology. They were pushing her, manipulating her and cajoling her. But she was even trying to contact me again, after these nutcases got their knives stuck into me. This puritanical ideology you are promoting is not good. It is bad. It has been tried exactly once in the United Kingdom, by American feminists in Oxford and … bang! It *killed* someone. It’s lethal.
As for being a victim. That is simply true. Charlotte Coursier sexually harassed me, stalked me and lied about me. You are just victim-blaming, repeatedly.
I know nothing at all about the facts of underlying Joanna Ong’s lawsuit but I admire her bravery for filing it and asking for large damages against various parties. Whatever the merits of the allegations, she has done a brave thing. So brave, in fact, that the bravery alone warrants a guilty finding against all parties and an award of damages – triple damages in fact, though even that does not adequately respond to the courage displayed in the lawsuit. In the unlikely event that the facts, which I still know nothing about, do not completely support the allegations, John Searle should still pay damages because he has not been brave.
Jeff Ketland’s primary mistake was that he got involved with someone whom he knew to be quite unstable. It’s not just that this kind of thing *could* end badly: this kind of thing *typically* ends badly. The fact that she was a student at his institution made matters worse, not morally, but prudentially: it gave various parties ammunition against him, something that was also predictable. Bottom line: getting involved with a mentally unstable student at your own institution who is 20-some years your junior has a very high probability of ending either badly or very badly. If he had never gotten intimately involved with her, then he might have suffered stalking, harassment, assault, etc., but nobody would have had any ammunition against him.
I almost did something similar. She was a grad student at a different institution. We were at a conference together, and ended up hanging out all the time, sharing personal stories, etc. She was very sexy and very flirtatious and very troubled. Anyway, towards the end of the conference, there we were in her room, talking and drinking late into the night, she making it clear she wanted action. Then, in a flash, I came to my senses and took my leave. Boy was she pissed off the next day! Though I have my regrets, I think that I dodged a bullet. Even while in her room, laughing and drinking and flirting, I kept imagining life-destroying possibilities in the aftermath: late-night phone calls, emails to my fiancée, stalking, complaints around the profession (I didn’t have tenure yet), etc. Anyway, that was over 20 years ago and I’ve avoided such situations ever since. It’s just too imprudent.
Professor Ketland, may I ask: did you resign from Oxford some time recently? And if so, why? I mean, where I work, you can pretty much avoid your colleagues if things get toxic. And at least you get paid.
“Even while in her room, laughing and drinking and flirting, I kept imagining life-destroying possibilities in the aftermath: late-night phone calls, emails to my fiancée, stalking, complaints around the profession (I didn’t have tenure yet), etc. Anyway, that was over 20 years ago and I’ve avoided such situations ever since. It’s just too imprudent.”
And this, my friends, is precisely what Rightness as Fairness argues moral judgment and motivation involve (with ample empirical backing to boot). This fellow encountered what I call “the problem of possible future selves” when he began worrying about the possibilities. His worries led him to see fairness to himself–and by extension fairness to a disturbed person–to require leaving the room and avoiding situations like it again.
Sort of ironic to see the truth of a theory that has been much-maligned here illustrated *on* the very blog where it has been maligned. And notice–just to clarify–that it had nothing to do with “formal constraints” on diachronic reasoning of the sort defended by Korsgaard or Nagel. It came instead from nothing more than a very precise and isolated *fact* of human motivation: the fact that, sometimes, when we are tempted to act impulsively, we worry about the possibilities–which is exactly what I argue in my book.
Awesome! Professor Arvan reappears, just as we’re beginning to forget his previous contributions upthread, to bring the metametameta-discussion back round to good old 1st-order philosophy – and in defence of his own book to boot! Great Segue.
Now I’m really hoping ex-Professor McGinn might pop up here and chime in with some comments that both defend his own critically disparaged recent books and discuss the risks and rewards of tupping one’s own students.
I never tupped her! I just sent her some sexy sexy emails about prehension and what I’d like to do with my hand – which led me to repeatedly prehend myself and do a special sexy wee-wee in my pants. Anyway, I much prefer being unemployed as it allows me to really concentrate on my work.
Concerning the critical reaction to my books: did I ever mention that Steven Pinker said that I “think like a laser and write like a dream”?
“Isn’t this quite obvious, though? Do you want credit too for saying that people sometimes weigh the pros and cons of a decision before they make it?”
That is not what the book says either. It does not hold that morality is just an ordinary process of weighing pros and cons. The book argues that morality is a very specific *way* weighing pros and cons that (A) psychopaths lack capacities to do, (B) children and adolescents have underdeveloped capacities to do, (C) normal adult subjects sometime do, but also (D) we do not always do very well (which my theory aims to explicate and show why we should do it better).
I said above I’d tell a story about what happened when we got driven out of our home in Oxford by these crazed loonies.
For months before this Inquest (26 Feb 2014), I’d been told by the assistant there that I wasn’t going to be mentioned, as Mr Salter (the Senior Coroner) thought I was irrelevant. And the police, whom I’d asked to tell me what happened, had told me I was irrelevant too. But a lawyer I’d asked for help found out that a “lecturer form Hertford College” had been making allegations against me to the Coroner, and was pressuring them. Then, a few days before it occurred (22 Feb 2014), we got anonymously cyber-harrassed by someone calling me a “murderer”. My wife was terrified and I reported this to the police and to my college. And just before that (19 Feb 2014), the same lawyer emailed me saying the University was had just now contacted the Coroner. So they were now pressurizing the Coroner. But the assistant there still replied that I wasn’t going to be mentioned, which is what I had been assured of for about five months. But with this happening, everyone said, you need to get away for your safety. So, that morning, we fled and drove to Scotland. We were scared shitless. Petrified.
Half way there, maybe around Liverpool or Lancaster, we began to get phone calls about plans by the press to publish appalling lies about us. These calls came originally from my college. I stopped the car and took a couple of these calls. One said The Times was going to publish some attack on me, My wife was crying. We were discussing what was happening, what disgusting and insane claims were going to be made, etc.
Suddenly, my 4 year old son, Sammy, who was in the back of the car, said, “I want to kill myself”.
My wife stopped crying and started talking to him about going swimming. We got to Edinburgh about midnight, and my wife found the disgusting fabricated filth had been published online about me in The Daily Mail.
The people who did this, including the “lecturer from Hertford College”, will never be forgiven for what they did.
As I found out later, it was Boddington — someone I’d never heard of then, and who certainly didn’t know Coursier, and who now seemed to be libeling me all over the place online.
Catarina Dutilh Novaes asked me who Boddington was. I said I had no clue. I’ve never seen her or met her. But she had been slandering me for months without my knowing. I looked her up and there she was: some kind of lecturer at Hertford College. Boddington said the fabrications in The Daily Mail were “accurate”. Dutilh Novaes told Boddington on Twitter they had inverted the chronology – it was Coursier who followed me to Oxford.
(In fact, when I discovered in March 2012 that Coursier was following me to Oxford, I became seriously ill, as I was so scared of Coursier. I wasn’t able to walk for two months and had to leave Germany and needed medical treatment in the UK for stress-related illness. Plenty of people know about this.)
Boddington wouldn’t back down, even though her claims were literally insane.
One more question: if what you say is true (and I have no reason to doubt you), have you considered legal action action against either the Daily Mail or Boddington?
Defamation time limit expires after 12 months, very strictly. There’s nothing I can do about Boddington’s defamation of me. Or others really. They can just call me a murderer, or whatever, and I’m stuck with it.
I complained to The Daily Mail via the Press Complaints Commission, PCC, in April 2014, I think. They ignored it. The PCC was wound up anyway a few weeks later, because of the scandals involving the UK press intrusions into privacy and The Leveson Inquiry, which aims to protect individuals from massive intrusion into their private life. Obviously no one consulted me about the lies they published and no one gave me a right to reply. PCC was replaced by a body called IPSO. I complained to them in mid 2015. They were sympathetic but insisted their time limit forbade any action.
I complained again against The Daily Mail through a lawyer in Jan 2015. After a fight for a few weeks, they agreed to remove Boddington’s time-travel fantasies, but refused to change anything else, citing “legal privilege”. My lawyer said it would cost me around half a million pounds to challenge them further, and they can win on legal privilege anyway. He advised me to give up.
I know Paula Boddington slightly, and she’s always struck me as calm, rational and level-headed, and certainly not a malicious or ideologically-driven person. She is a feminist, and Ketland doesn’t seem to like them very much.
Really? Explain how inverting the order of events in time — it was Coursier who demonstrably followed me to Oxford — thereby accusing someone of some kind of time travel, “rational”, pray tell?
It’s insane libel, by the most elementary standard of rationality.
The Oxfordshire Senior Coroner, Darren Salter, apologised about Boddington’s crazy false accusation in a letter to me in June 2014 and even The Daily Mail removed Boddington’s false accusation in January 2015.
On 5 September 2013, I was anonymously cyber-harassed by being sent a message calling me a “murderer”. I showed a couple of people a screenshot of it and asked them what they thought, “wtf is this?”. The answer: “Sure, it’s some insider calling you a murderer”. So, I reported it to the Thames Valley Police and to the college and to the university. Police officer did nothing about it, as it was anonymous. A few days later, the person i reported it to contacted me and told me a “woman involved in the Coursier business” had been in contact with the police, and the police then called me. I missed the call and walked to the police station. They wouldn’t tell me what happened. As it turned out, the person I reported it to had leaked my report to this “woman involved in the Coursier business”, and she then went to the police and called me a liar. For accurately reporting being cyber-harassed! I asked him who she was but he refused to tell me. That was September 2013. (And connected to this, on the very same day, 5 September, 2013, an American graduate student called me a murderer on Twitter, but I didn’t see this until April 2014 when someone found it and showed it to me.) In March 2014, after being driven from home by these witch hunting loons, I returned to Oxford and asked the person I’d reported it to again who this person was. He revealed that it was Boddington.
So summarizng the level of craziness here:
1. This “woman involved in the Coursier business” — Boddington — basically went to the UK police in Sept 2013 and called me a liar, to cover up me being cyber-harassed which I’d reported to the police (it was very scary). And this was all kept secret from me.
2. It turns out that Boddington was the “lecturer from Hertford College” who was making “wild accusations” against me to the Coroner (in October 2013, I think), which my lawyer said the Coroner did not take seriously.
3. And she seemed to have been involved somehow in The Daily Mail story filled with grotesque false accusations in February 2014.
5. Boddington followed up this by publicly libellng me all over the place.
6. Boddginton’s insane false accusation that I “followed” someone to Oxford (the exact reverse is demonstrably true) was corrected by Catarina Dutilh Novaes on Twitter, but Boddington ignored the facts. Even so, Boddington’s bizarre false accusation was apologised for by the Senior Coroner in a letter to me in June 2014. And it was even removed by The Daily Mail in January 2015.
I’ve never once set eyes on this person and know nothing about her, except that she is a tornado of libel, who went behind a colleague’s back to smear and ruin that colleague’s and his family’s lives with false accusations. What kind of person behaves like this?
Anybody who can seriously conclude that PB is saying the whole Daily Mail article is ‘accurate’ needs to take a lesson in logic. Read it!! What she says is “As someone – one of the few – who attended the inquest into the death of CC, I can tell you that the most accurate report of the evidence presented at the inquest is actually to be found in the Daily Mail although of course any report is only a part of all the evidence presented.”
She doesn’t at any point state what Ketland or ‘Anonymous’ (ha, ironic ha) claims, that the whole article in the Daily Mail is the most accurate, she says that the Daily Mail write up of the inquest is the most accurate. As a professor of logic I’d have thought JK could have spotted the difference, but no. Never let the actual truth get in the way of a good excuse to pin the blame on someone eh, and most people are too lazy or disinterested to investigate.
I can’t really believe Ketland is stupid enough not to realise the difference between actual reality and what he claims, so one must suspect his motives are disingenuous.
Read it, Mr. Anon, or Drongo, or Ketland, or whoever you are, and then you will discover that you are telling massive porky-pie lies. For that is NOT what she said. As anyone with an IQ over 80 will understand.
Maybe I did make a mistake by defending it here. I despise this forum and have generally stayed away from it, have never done anything to promote this place, and have done my best to contribute positively to the profession. I am sorry if I failed on this occasion. I am only human.
I humbly ask for forgiveness, but also charity. It has been difficult to see years of hard work misrepresented. This was the first and only time I have ever posted here, and now it will be the last.
5 Sept 2013 is also the same day I was cyber-harassed with an anonymous message “jeffrey ketland – murderer”, which I reported it to Thames Valley Police and the University. I was pretty scared of this. But my report was leaked to a woman “involved in the Coursier business”, who contacted the police and called me a liar. Many months later (March or April 2014), this turned out to be Paula Boddington, the “lecturer from Hertford College”, whom my lawyer earlier had told me had made wild accusations against me to Oxfordshire’s Coroner’s office; and who also seems to have successfully pressurized Oxfordshire’s Assistant Coroner to make these wild accusations against me in February 2014.
I was anonymously cyber-harased the same way on 22 February 2014 as well, calling me a “murderer”. My wife actually saw it, as she had my phone with her and she started crying; we reported it to the police immediately. It was extremely creepy, like something from a horror movie. That’s when we were advised to leave for our safety.
Anyway, it then transpired that Paula Boddingtion was Brooke Berndtson’s BPhil supervisor. Berndtson apparently had great control over Coursier during Coursier’s final few weeks alive; she then spent months slandering me as a “murderer”. Apparently, according to others present, she did this at Coursier’s funeral, upsetting the mourners.
So having read everything on this thread about the Ketland affair, here is my attempt to draw some fair and impartial conclusions:
One may not accept that all of Ketland’s claims are totally accurate. Indeed it would be pretty unwise to do so simply on the basis of his posts on this blog. And one may well still think that he is not absolved from responsibility or moral blame etc for sleeping with the student Coursier.
But I think it is pretty clear by now that he is not a ‘sexual predator’; it is pretty clear that he did not pursue Coursier, nor did he ‘bully’ her (it seems rather to have been the other way around); it is pretty clear that he has been the victim of some nasty ‘cyber-bullying’ and false, perhaps slanderous allegations from the Daily Mail.
There is hard evidence that Paula Boddington was actively promoting the Daily Mail’s false version of events at Leiter’s blog. And there is hard evidence of her student, Brooke Berndston, falsely accusing Ketland of ‘bullying’ Coursier to death on Twitter. In light of this, Ketland’s story about Boddington also making allegations to the coroner seems highly plausible.
I would suggest that this is already enough to raise very serious questions about professional misconduct by Boddington and by Berndtson. If there are any metametametablog readers at Oxford (other than Jeff Ketland!), I suggest that it would be entirely reasonable to raise these concerns at the faculty level. Moreover, I would suggest that any philosophers who are considering inviting Boddington or Berndtson to speak at conferences or workshops should give serious thought to whether it is appropriate to invite people who appear to have engaged in this kind of professional misconduct towards a colleague at their own department.
There is currently a pretty ridiculous debate at the Feminist Philosophers blog as to whether one should even teach Searle’s work, given the (as yet unproven) allegations against him. However, a less ridiculous question is whether it is appropriate to, say, invite Searle to be a keynote speaker. I would certainly have 2nd thoughts about inviting Pogge to speak at a conference. Given the evidence we have publicly available, I suggest that the same might well apply to Boddington and perhaps also to Berndtson.
I would be genuinely interested – i.e. that is honestly not meant in a snarky or sarcastic way – as to whether the bloggers at Feminist Philosophers, or anyone else for that matter, would agree that Boddington and Berndston have a very serious case to answer and that it is therefore right to think twice about inviting them to academic events? And would it be reasonable for students to be concerned, given the available evidence, at the prospect of being taught by Boddington or Berndston?
If Ketland’s comments on here had any merit, he would have taken official action. He had plenty of time to press charges against Coursier, bring a libel suit against his accusers, or to file harassment complaints against Boddington et al. He could have done a lot of things. Instead he’s taken to the slum of the internet to post an entirely one-sided account of the whole affair. Bear in mind that we haven’t seen *any* actual evidence from him. And none of this is official testimony. Heck, we don’t even know if it’s actually Ketland on here or just some troll.
Here are a few facts that we do have:
– Ketland engaged in a sexual relationship with an already emotionally disturbed student who was many, many years his junior.
– Ketland was given a harassment warning by the police.
– Ketland was reinstated and was never brought up on criminal charges.
Minimally he showed a complete lack of judgment. Morally, I think, he did indeed do a great wrong by Coursier when he engaged with her in an intense platonic, and later overtly sexual, relationship. Does that make him a murderer? Of course not. Does it make him a bad person? That’s something each person can decide on their own. But if he’s a victim at all, he’s one of his own doing.
One thing is clear to me: Ketland’s trying to push the blame onto others in this way is really beyond the pale. And calling Coursier a “rapist” demonstrates a unique form of shamelessness.
So why in the world would you give Ketland the benefit of the doubt and not Boddington and Berndston? At most his comments on here should lead one to suspend judgment about the case altogether for want of better information.
“He had plenty of time to press charges against Coursier, bring a libel suit against his accusers… Instead he’s taken to the slum of the internet to post an entirely one-sided account of the whole affair.”
Yeah, and Rachelle Bascara could have sued Thomas Pogge but instead took the story to the slum of the internet… plug in any name for an accuser and accused, and you’ve given a recipe for doubting accusers. Is that the intended effect?
I don’t think you are being as fair as impartial as you think you are.
(1)”it is pretty clear that he did not pursue Coursier, nor did he ‘bully’ her”
On what grounds did you reach this conclusion? There are people who say that he did. Ketland says that he didn’t. So what happened is not clear at all.
(2)”There is hard evidence that Paula Boddington was actively promoting the Daily Mail’s false version of events at Leiter’s blog. ”
In that post you refer to, Boddington is careful to point out, several times, that the report is a report about the evidence that was presented at the inquest. Why would she go out of her way to point out that the evidence is not tested, and is merely a report of what was presented, and should not to taken as an attempt to provide a full picture, etc if she was intent on ‘actively promoting’ the false version of events? If this was the goal, it would be better not to respond at all.
(3) And there is hard evidence of her student, Brooke Berndston, falsely accusing Ketland of ‘bullying’ Coursier to death on Twitter.
There is hard evidence of the accusation. There is not hard evidence that it was false – only Ketland’s say so. Note that she also does not refer to Ketland by name in that post.
The fact of the matter is, there is very little actual evidence other than what Ketland himself is saying. And of course given the nature of this blog there is a possibility that the poster is not even Ketland.
On Boddington, here’s yet another example of her pointing out that the assertions made at the inquest were not necessarily correct – here she points out that it was not the coroner who described Ketland’s email as crazy and rambling, but that he was just reporting the opinion of a witness. https://feministphilosophers.wordpress.com/2014/03/05/more-on-the-oxford-letter/
This doesn’t fit the narrative Ketland is pushing above.
Ketland did take official action. He complained to Oxford University about being harassed and stalked and also to the police. The police were called when Coursier assaulted him and there is a witness to that assault. On the libel issue, first, you need money to sue people for libel; second, because the libels were made as claims in the Coroner’s court they were made under privilege and the papers can get away with re-iterating such libels so long as they report it as statements made to the court. If you look at the reports you will see they all were very careful to assert those claims under that protection. So what happened was the boyfriend who dumped her on the day she killed herself made a load of self-serving claims in an attempt to blame Ketland and the newspapers reported them under the privilege of court reporting. Only the wealthiest can sue that kind of libel.
I would put more weight on testimony given at an inquest versus what Ketland is writing here without fear of consequence. After all, lying at an inquest would be considered perjury and could result in criminal charges. Besides, the boyfriend’s comments don’t look all that self-serving to me. They seem to express a lot of personal regret.
This is the boyfriend to whom Coursier had made the threat of killing herself if he dumped her, which boyfriend then dumped her, and in response to which Coursier killed herself a few hours later? Perhaps you didn’t notice the bit where he’s trying get people to blame Ketland rather than himself? You know, just almost everything he said.
As another poster says below, the fact that Ketland was reappointed by Oxford IS strong independent evidence that he did not ‘bully’ anyone. It is therefore also strong evidence that Berndston’s tweet was false.
And whilst it is of course a possibility that the person posting here under the name “Jeff Ketland” is not actually Jeff Ketland, I think you know perfectly well, as does anyone else who has read all the posts on here, that it *is* indeed the real Ketland.
I think there is a further fact the speaks very strongly in Ketland’s favor. No one gets fired by a university and then re-instated. Yet that is exactly what happened to him: first Oxford fired him and then they completely back-tracked on that and re-instated him. Something must have been massively wrong about that firing for them to have reversed it.
This is a really good point. If you can *get your job back* (as opposed to, *keeping your job*) even after the kind of shitstorm that Ketland faced, this speaks loudly on your behalf.
You have entirely missed the point of the previous post. Whilst it is common enough for big organizations to cover up scandals committed by their employees, it is *not* at all common for big organizations to reappoint employees that they have already fired. It is reasonable to infer that they would only do so if there is *strong* evidence that the employee (or ex-employee) was innocent of the alleged scandal after all.
Oh ok, so all of those Catholic priests who were forced into laicization for fiddling children but still get their pensions must actually be innocent. Gotchya.
Still getting a pension after being removed from your job is not at all the same thing as being re-appointed to your job. Obviously.
Your attempt at a sarcastic, cynical comment does not alter the fact that Ketland’s reappointment is clearly considerable evidence in his favor – though hardly conclusive, of course.
“Boddington is careful to point out, several times, that the report is a report about the evidence that was presented at the inquest.” This is an instance of her dishonesty. The self-serving lies of the boyfriend who dumped her on the day she killed herself are not evidence of anything except his willingness to try to divert blame from himself. And you can now see why he did that: if he hadn’t, the feminist mob would have been after him.
How on earth is it an instance of her dishonesty? What you are saying does not make any sense. How exactly is it dishonest to point out, as she does, that “It should be carefully noted that the newspaper reports are reports of what was presented as evidence at the inquest, and should not be read as attempts to provide a ‘full picture’ of circumstances around Charlotte’s tragic death.” and “These reports should also be read very carefully, noting that they are reports of the evidence presented at inquest, as indicated by the use of quotation marks, and of phrases such as ‘the inquest heard’.” and that “An inquest is not adversarial, so evidence presented is not tested in the same way as it would be in a criminal or civil case”
Apparently you are unable to recognize that her judicious self-presentation is humbug, humbug she is using to cover up the essential point. It is dishonest to pretend that the self-serving evasions of the boyfriend count as evidence of anything related to Ketland when that boyfriend is the boyfriend to whom Coursier had made the threat of killing herself if he dumped her, which boyfriend then dumped her, and in response to which Coursier killed herself a few hours later. In those circumstances the suggestion that Ketland had anything to do with her death is disgraceful. Boddington knows it, the coroner knows it, and the senior coroner knows it, which is why he repudiated the irresponsible conduct of his subordinate coroner (the conduct of allowing the boyfriend to promulgate his self-serving evasions).
(1) Boddington does not refer specifically to any particular evidence (2) Boddington repeatedly states that the reports are reports of things that were presented as evidence, and that the evidence was not tested. (3) she does not express any opinion whatsoever about whether any of the things said were true.
What is dishonest is blurring the distinction, as you quite deliberately are doing, between some claim counting as evidence for a conclusion, and something being presented ‘as evidence’ in an official proceeding. You seem to be saying that the fact that Boddington states the latter is somehow some sneaky way of covering up the fact that she is really pretending the former. But there is no reason whatsoever to believed this.
Since it is obvious that Boddington is exploiting the blurring of that distinction, it is now equally obvious that your judicious self-presentation is humbug too.
No she isn’t. She is explicitly pointing out that the reports are reports of the ‘evidence presented’ and that the ‘evidence presented is not tested’. There is no way to read that as a blurring of the distinction, even if you were intent on being deeply uncharitable.
“Coursier had made the threat of killing herself if he dumped her”
And where was this? The closest you get to it is in the Daily Mail article, where the boyfriend’s testimony was reported: “She was crying and told me ‘I don’t want to live without you’.” That’s not exactly the ultimatum “Dump me and I’ll kill myself.”
“the conduct of allowing the boyfriend to promulgate his self-serving evasions”
How in the world do you get “self-serving evasions” out of testimony like the following: “I can’t help but feel my breaking up with her was the tipping point but I understand I am not responsible for her death[…]I deeply regret not picking up the phone when she called. I wish she would have waited for me, I would have come to Oxford.”
All I see there is heartbreak and regret. Why Ketland, whose actions were clearly improper, doesn’t similarly feel regret for his part in the whole thing is just beyond me.
Great to see such intellectual dishonesty on display from you. Yes, let’s just pretend that he didn’t tell lies about Ketland in order to deflect blame from himself.
Doesn’t strike me as “intellectually dishonest” in the least to put more stock in a genuine expression of regret that was given under penalty of perjury than in Ketland’s one-sided account of events. What is intellectually dishonest is to belief the drivel Ketland is talking without a shred of actual evidence.
There is plenty of detailed evidence already listed above.
Evidence from a flatmate who eyewitnessed an assault against me and eyewitnessed Coursier stalking me. Evidence from my wife who was also one of Coursier’s victims, a victim of Coursier’s years of stalking us. Evidence from an Austrian woman I quoted above, who notified the Faculty in March 2013 of our concerns, that Coursier might need “professional help quickly if she behaved in any unusual way”. Evidence that Coursier herself thought the person she spoke to didn’t care about “my welfare”. Evidence that she was told to “delete older correspondence”. Being told to delete correspondence is serious misconduct by the way.
Fardell, who certainly did dump her and ignore her suicide threats, was not present at that inquest – one that I was not invited to, or asked even to reply to and that had been told I wouldn’t be mentioned. That outrageous event occurred solely because of direct pressure from others, including Paula Boddington, as the actual evidence listed above shows. So there was no threat of any kind. It is merely a statement which an assistant read out, for which not a shred of evidence exists. None. He was not there, obviously, and has no idea what the facts were. These are things “she told her friends”, as the Senior Coroner Mr Salter put it to me in a June 2014 letter, when apologising for what happened and correcting the absurd fabrications that Boddington distributed. That is more real actual evidence.
Charlotte Coursier was a liar and a stalker, who assaulted me, pursued and stalked me for years, as all the evidence shows and all the eyewitnesses testify to. This includes further eyewitnesses in Edinburgh and multiple eyewitnesses in Oxford who witnessed Coursier stalking me. Coursier stalked my wife and son, with whom she was obsessed. We were petrified of this long-term stalker, and many others knew about this before June 2013. When she revealed to me, in March 2012, that she was following me to Oxford, I became seriously ill, as is a mater of public record, as as many others know and witnessed. She was a stalker and we were terrified. And there is not one single piece of evidence otherwise.
If you want more evidence of this stalker’s behaviour, ok fine. Here is some more actual evidence. From the deranged emails to me from my stalker, Charlotte Coursier, through eight months in 2011, when she continued harassing me after she’d attacked me at the end of 2010 – as is a matter of public record. And during Coursier’s campaign of harassment against me during 2011, I replied to her, “I have no idea what you’re referring to. Please stop sending abusive and threatening emails.” (9 July 2011) She was harassing me. This is clear. I had no ill will against her, irrespective of her violence towards me. I simply didn’t want to be harassed and threatened by her.
Evidence
——-
2 January 2011 19:23:16 GMT: “… It’s sad that it always had to end like this. … I’ll always love you.”
4 January 2011 20:41:57 GMT: “I know you don’t want to hear from me but this is the last chance I’ll have to say goodbye.”
25 March 2011 18:52:33 GMT: “I just want to make things better. Can you just explain why you’re ignoring me please?”
3 June 2011 18:30:50 BST: “I just wanted to say sorry for anything I did to hurt you. … after all you are still the person that saved my life and my degree! … I’ll always love you and be wishing you well.”
15 June 2011 14:20:40 BST: “Would you like to talk on the phone at some point Jeffrey? I’d really like to know how you’ve been.”
9 August 2011 00:54:17 BST: “I haven’t been completely honest … I’m still so obviously in love with you. … I split up with my boyfriend because I’m still not over you: … I pushed myself through the rest of my degree for you. I will continue to push myself.”
14 August 2011 21:01:00 BST: “I’m terrified Jeffrey. I don’t know what to do. I really need help. Please tell me what I should do and that’s what I’ll do”.
14 August 2011 22:15:29 BST: “I need someone, anyone to help me. I can’t do it. I’m begging the world for another option. Please, I don’t want to hurt anyone. I never have. I just want it to stop. How do I make it stop? I want it to stop.”
16 August 2011 00:18:32 BST: “No one will help me. Why? I can’t answer. They don’t care, in which case I shouldn’t be concerned, although I still am.”
16 August 2011 00:37:59 BST: “I’ve made it very clear that I still care about you and I don’t want you to be hurt. SO, remember that ok. Goodbye my old best friend. … But I wouldn’t change any of it, to love someone so completely is the only real way of living.”
16 August 2011 19:36:52 BST: “I’ve been trying my hardest to carry on Jeffrey. … Like I said before, I carried on with everything for you, but I see no end to all this pain. … I don’t want to hurt anyone Jeffrey. I’m not being threatening or manipulative”
18 August 2011 14:46:01 BST: ”I’’m honestly not going to message you anymore Jeffrey: you’ve made yourself perfectly clear by ignoring me. … for three years Jeffrey you were my world, I loved you more than I’ve loved anyone. You put so much on the line to help me … I genuinely did push myself through the rest of my degree for you, whatever that’s worth.”
You really don’t understand how things like discovery work in a trial, do you Jeff? I’m not saying that you are on trial here (you’re not), but your insistence that you are innocent of any wrongdoing or lack of judgment forces the issue. Evidence isn’t usually filtered through the very person suspected of wrongdoing. So all of the “evidence” you’re providing merely serves as one data point representing your particular view of things. And while that’s an important view for any objective person to consider, there are other data points too — ones that I personally find more reliable. (Bear in mind that even a written statement at an inquest would still be subject to perjury charges if information in it were falsified.)
Moreover, *even if* everything you’re saying were true, there remains the fact that you engaged in a sexual relationship with this student who was clearly troubled — and you did so well after becoming aware of how deeply troubled she was. How can you not see the error in your judgment? The putative texts you’ve pasted above are only further evidence of all this. They seem to show the immense pain of someone who was emotionally fragile and (quite predictably) reacted very badly to the ending of an improper and emotionally-charged relationship that never should have been available to her in the first place.
Also can we stop it with this “she was following me to Oxford” nonsense? It’s not like Oxford is some random university in the middle of nowhere that would be easily avoidable. Oxford is arguably the center of philosophy in the UK. It’s just absurd to assume that who signed up for the BPhil was drawn to study there for any reason other than the academics.
You acted imprudently. You’re not a murderer, but let’s not pretend that you’re a good guy either. Grow up and take some damned responsibility for yourself. The more you fight this and call Coursier a “rapist,” the worse you look.
What makes the repeated insistence that she ‘followed him to Oxford’ worse is that Ketland is well aware that she had decided to apply to Oxford well before he had applied for and gotten a job there, as this comment thread shows:
“Ketland is well aware that she had decided to apply to Oxford well before he had applied for and gotten a job there, as this comment thread shows:”
It shows exactly the reverse. This lie has been repeatedly proven false and is proven false there. *Coursier* knew I was going to Oxford because I told her. Please stop lying about this. I applied in 2011 (this is demonstrable) and I told her on Skype. She knew this. She told me then that her plan was to be a school teacher. Coursier then applied the following year, in 2012. This is also demonstrable. She did so deliberately to follow me. This was revealed to me by her in March 2012. This is also demonstrable. And when she revealed it, I was so shocked at what she’d done, I became ill. This is also demonstrable.
This is all a matter of public record. She harassed me through 2011 with abusive emails that I’ve quoted above and which I ignored. Eventually, after months of this harassment, I told her, “Please stop sending abusive and threatening emails” (9 July 2011). This is demonstrable. And then she followed me to Oxford in 2012. Please stop repeatedly telling lies which have been prove false.
What do you think “”Please stop sending abusive and threatening emails” means?
“Hello once again,
Sorry for the length of this post but try to remember this is not about some matter of academic tittle-tattle, but about (as Christie rightly emphasises above) the tragic suicide of a uniquely talented student. I cannot any longer sit back and watch the memory of the most gifted student I ever knew be made into a subject of gossip and speculation by commentators who often seem to me at best poorly informed, if not actively malicious. However, sometimes you just have to try and get the facts out somehow. Anyway:
A) I don’t know what Jeffrey thinks may have been clarified but I notice from posts he seems to have made elsewhere that as of May this year, he has amended several earlier attributions of remarks to Mr. Fardell. (E.g. scoring through mentions of Mr. Fardell’s name and substituting mentions of the Daily Mail at several points.) See for example the link here:
These emendations suggest to me that Jeffrey has had second thoughts. However I think the need for further clarification remains and perhaps Mr. Fardell is owed an apology from several individuals.
Again, on a technical point of reportage, if any of you are at all unclear as to the difference between direct statement of views by one party (or parties) and the reporting of those views by another party (or parties), please remember to approach the re-statement of either with the utmost caution. Likewise, reporting a statement and reporting a fact are not the same.
B) I hope you can forgive some re-posted material but in case anybody missed my post to this thread of August 22nd therein I said the following:
‘My reference for Charlotte was dated January 5th 2012. However, Charlotte had decided to apply to Oxford by the end of July 2011. (The other referee for her Oxford application confirms this.) To the best of my knowledge, she did not formally apply elsewhere because she was assured of a PhD. place at Edinburgh had Oxford said ‘No’.
One odd point is that on December 8th 2011, an e-mail posted to all the Edinburgh philosophy academic staff (and into which Jeff’s new Munich address was CC’ed) informed us that (and I quote) “Jeff Ketland will be leaving Edinburgh shortly to take up a post at the LMU in Munich”.’
Further oddities have come to light since I made that posting. Please correct me if I’m wrong, Jeffrey, but my understanding was that the Munich post you were offered was for no less than six years, (or so at least you seemed to be claiming via e-mail on August 29th 2010). Even if it had had immediate effect, a six-year appointment would have taken you to, at the earliest, late August 2016 – a time which is still roughly two years in the future as I write this. Why then were you telling Charlotte in November 2011 that you were moving to Oxford, and this merely a few days before an announcement was made to Philosophy staff at Edinburgh that you were going to take up a post at Munich?
C) On a semantic point, I would emphasise that the words “reinstatement” and “exoneration” are not generally regarded as synonyms, or even as co-extensional in reference.
Again, my utmost sympathy and condolences to anyone who genuinely cared for Charlotte and who genuinely cares about her memory.
Yours sincerely,
Alasdair Richmond”
Alasdair Richmond is a notorious nutcase. In fact, on the exact day Coursier attacked me (24 November 2010), Richmond had spent five minutes screaming at a colleague of mine (Inna Kupreeva), making wild accusations against various people, in a meeting. I had to calm both down, and prevent my friend Inna making a complaint to Andy Clark against Richmond. His public tantrum was witnessed by several others. He’s a bad-tempered nutcase, who seems to feel very free with his groundless accusations.
In March 2014, Richmond — who knows absolutely nothing whatsoever of these matters and is blowing smoke — sent an ” increasingly bizarre set of gratuitously insulting e-mails
bizarre emails to Brian Leiter”. Brian reported them here.
Goodness me – what an extraordinary set of comments. (And what a remarkably edifying thread to stumble upon.)
I’m afraid that I simply cannot recognise the events that Jeffrey is trying to describe above from his reconstruction so I’m afraid I am unable to speak to them here. However, all claims in the posts I made on another truly remarkable web-institution, namely the ‘Ocular Tree’ blog, remain true to the best of my knowledge – and I have evidence – and I think they retain relevance.
As to my being a “notorious nutcase”, that seems odd to me on both counts. What Jeffrey may be trying to signal to you is that I do suffer from depression and have done certainly since I was 12 and probably since I was 7. However, I am not delusional, schizophrenic or paranoid – for examples. Likewise, I have never been placed under kind of legal notice / restraining order. In conclusion, I would ask that if you wish to judge me, do try to judge me by my words. Thank you.
Yours faithfully,
Alasdair Richmond
“So all of the “evidence” you’re providing merely serves as one data point representing your particular view of things.”
Please don’t be absurd. You’re trying to cover up the evidence you’ve been shown. I was extremely kind to Coursier for years, and she was in love with me. Those emails show her harassing me and refer to 2011, after she attacked me at the end of 2010. I had saved her ruined life in 2008. At the end of 2010, she managed to lure me into a short relationship, when ended when she attacked me, as is a matter of public record. Now, in 2011, I wanted to have my own life, having sacrificed so much to help her. That is what all the objective evidence proves. Coursier was alive and had a good degree in 2011 because of me, and not anyone else.
And you’re interested in a sort consensual relationship between adults? Just go fuck yourself with that abuse.
Two years later, it was Coursier’s *boyfriend* Benjamin Fardell who dumped her on 10 June 2013, and who ignored her threats, and she committed suicide. That is what happened. Stop covering it up. And I tried to alert others; those alerts were not heeded. Stop blaming the victim. I had nothing whatsoever to do with how Coursier was mistreated by others. Nothing.
I am describing real actual evidence, from multiple eyewitnesses. You are saying they’re wrong. They are not. Let’s go through the evidence, shall we? It’s a matter of public record that she followed me to Oxford. The reason for pointing that out is the outrageous fabrication that the opposite happened. A malicious fabrication that has been repeatedly corrected and even apologised for.
The actual, real evidence comes from multiple disconnected eyewitnesses. People who actually saw with their own eyes what happened: a long-term stalker and harasser who assaulted me at the end of 2010; and who continued harassing me for years afterwards, as those emails quoted above indicate too. It is very clear from the objective evidence who was pursuing me; very clear that she said she was “still hopelessly in love with you” eight months after she had attacked me. Very clear that she said, “you are still the person that saved my life and my degree!” and very clear that she said, “for three years Jeffrey you were my world, I loved you more than I’ve loved anyone. You put so much on the line to help me”. It is also very clear who was threatening me; and it is very clear I told her to “stop sending abuse and threatening emails”.
It is very clear from the objective evidence who the stalker was and who the victim was. The eyewitnesses to her horrendous campaign of violence, stalking, threats, harassment against me include,
– two professors in Edinburgh;
– one flatmate (Matthew), from two years later, after she’d spent two years pursuing me, and lured me into a short relationship (which I regret) and which left when she attacked me;
– my wife, also a victim of stalking; also a victim of being driven out of Oxford *twice*, the second time by a horrific vigilante campaign of intimidation against us, including documented cyber-harassment.
– multiple people in Germany who, in 2011 and 2012, knew I had a stalker in the UK;
– an Oxford post-doc, who eyewitnessed Coursier approach me for a conversation in November 2012 when I had tried to avoid her;
– an Austrian woman in Vienna so concerned about my wife being driven out of town and Coursier’s background that she tried to notify the Philosophy Faculty. I have quoted how she recalled her welfare notification above. This was ignored.
– several graduate students who eyewitnessed Coursier turn up at my club at my college, something she knew I’d set up; she sat one seat away from me and pretended not to know me; this is textbook stalking (she also stalked me the day before, but no one else could see it)
– other academics in Oxford (four at least) who knew Coursier was pursuing me and stalking me;
– the police who realised quickly she was stalking me, who received detailed notification from me of my concerns, who told me to contact them if Coursier contacted me again (she did – on 3 June 2013, stalking me again at the Faculty where a seminar was being held), and whom I tried to contact again on 5 June 2013 two days after, to alert them again.
This is evidence. It is not opinion or “evidence”. It is real evidence. All of the detailed records show I am right. I was the victim of a long-term stalker who assaulted me. And all of the evidence shows that, much later, I tried to alert others of my concerns and the Austrian woman tried too — but we were ignored. This is all evidence, much of it covered up. There is no evidence the other way. Not a single shred of evidence. Just lies from a long-term stalker with a documented history of violence. Calling tens of *eyewitnesses* liars and pretending all of the voluminous amount of *evidence* should be ignored is preposterous and delusional. The eyewitnesses, who saw incidents of stalking and violence from Coursier, told the truth.
What you are doing has a well-known name: victim-blaming. You are defending violence, harassment and stalking. And I am certainly not responsible for anything that happened to her. I did my best by her in 2008 and turned around her ruined life. I received no benefit from it whatsoever. None. And, after years of stalking, I then did my best in 2013 to alert others of my concerns, and this is a matter of public record. Those alerts were ignored and covered up, after her boyfriend dumped her and ignored her suicide threats.
“Calling tens of *eyewitnesses* liars and pretending all of the voluminous amount of *evidence* should be ignored is preposterous and delusional.”
No, I’m saying that your so-called evidence and claims of all this being a matter of public record are unreliable. If this is public record, point us to the public records. It’s not enough that *you* say that so-and-so said P. You need to give demonstrable proof that so-and-so actually said P. It’s not as if we can trust the information about your flatmate who supposedly witnessed the events you speak of. You haven’t even provided his last name! All of these anonymous sources you point to do nothing to actually establish the truth of your claims. As “Wasn’t born yesterday” said, we don’t even have the coroner’s letter that you repeatedly reference as proof of your innocence.
And no, I’m not victim blaming. That’s because Charlotte Coursier, her family, and her friends are the clear victims in the tragedy. I do believe your wife and son are victims as well, but that’s your doing. You, on the other hand, are simply witnessing the consequences of your own improper actions.
“your so-called evidence and claims of all this being a matter of public record are unreliable”
It is not “so-called”. It is other people’s evidence and they are not “unreliable”. Coursier herself was indeed a victim: of negligence by people around her. That is not my fault. I and an Austrian woman raised alerts, but we were ignored. Just get the facts right.
Here is how she recalled to me her March 2013 notification again:
——
“I said she reacted to stress with violence against herself and others and if the rumors I heard were true, she would have scars on her wrists. I recommended that she should have female tutors rather than men and that they should know how to get professional help very quickly if she behaved in any unusual way”.
Ketland refers repeatedly to the Senior Coroner’s letter to him of June 2014. Surely someone who relies so heavily on this text for exoneration should make it public, so that we can see whether it actually says what Ketland take it to say. (My guess is that things were uttered in the court that should not have been uttered, procedurally, and that the Coroner apologised for the fact that this happened, whereas Ketland seeks to claim the Coroner’s authority for the untruth of those utterances, an entirely different matter.)
No words were uttered. Because Fardell was not there. An Assistant Coroner read out some statement Fardell wrote, apparently months before. No one gave him consent to do this; I had been told for months this wouldn’t happen. And no one consulted me or any of the large number of eyewitnesses.
Fardell was not there. Please get the facts right. Words weren’t uttered by him, but by an assistant coroner, reading from some undisclosed statement that Fardell apparently made months earlier and that no one has ever shown me.
How about someone provide *me* a copy of that statement?
How are you not understanding that we’re not talking about Fardell’s statement? We’re talking about the letter that was supposedly sent to you by “Mr Salter (the Senior Coroner).”
How about you provide me with a copy? That’s how it works. You make some anonymous accusation. I then reply to the garbage. Not the other way around. Incidentally, I have replied to much of the garbage. See the harassing email messages listed above through 2011, and my reply, “Please stop sending abusive and threatening emails” (9 July 2011).
What do think “please stop sending abusive and threatening emails” means?
Huh? In the above you keep on saying that the the Senior Coroner said various things that support your claims. Yet when we ask you to actually provide evidence of this, you deflect. How in the world are we supposed to reply to something Mr. Salter supposedly sent to you? That makes zero sense. You’re clearly full of it.
And there you have it, folks. Ketland clearly doesn’t have any ability to verify the putative evidence to which he continually refers. What a pathetic man.
Why on earth do you keep bringing that up? It’s not relevant to this discussion at all. Maybe you don’t understand how threads on a blog work (it certainly seems like it from the discussion below). People start a new thread when they want to talk about a particular point. In this case, the particular point at the start of this thread was about the Coroner’s letter. No one other than you has mentioned anything in this thread about any messages that you may or may not have sent.
No one has said that Fardell was there. No one has said that *he* uttered anything. It’s not clear what you are trying to achieve by pretending people have said things they have never said despite the fact that the posts are directly above for anyone to read.
Yes they did, above: “I would put more weight on testimony given at an inquest versus what Ketland is writing here without fear of consequence. After all, lying at an inquest would be considered perjury and could result in criminal charges.”
Fardell could logically not have “lied at an inquest”. Because he was not there. To “lie at an inquest”, you need to be present and/or you need to think your much earlier statement is going to be used. He was neither there and certainly did *not* want his statement used. This is obvious to anyone with common sense.
That wasn’t the post at the start of this thread that you were responding to though. So while it is true that some other person at some point said that, it’s not relevant to this discussion.The fact that some anonymous person upthread said something does not justify you responding to an entirely different post in a way that makes out that *that particular poster* said something that they clearly didn’t.
Dude, you’re a fucking tool. I don’t know why you just randomly started ranting about this in the first place, but you might want to try to understand the blog’s format before you fill it with your raving.
“Why Ketland, whose actions were clearly improper, doesn’t similarly feel regret for his part in the whole thing is just beyond me.”
It’s this disgusting abusive filth that makes quite a few others angry.
First, Coursier’s life was *saved* by me in 2008. This is clear. That’s why she was alive in 2011. It is proved above. Is that clear? Get the facts right. Do I regret saving her life? Don’t be so demented. Second, welfare alerts were given to protect Coursier’s welfare. By me, as is a matter of public record; and by an Austrian woman in March 2013, but ignored, and I quote this yet again:
—–
“I said she reacted to stress with violence against herself and others and if the rumors I heard were true, she would have scars on her wrists. I recommended that she should have female tutors rather than men and that they should know how to get professional help very quickly if she behaved in any unusual way”
—-
Why would we make *welfare alerts* if we didn’t care about her?
When Coursier committed suicide (after her boyfriend dumped her, ignored her suicide threats, and a couple of months after an unwanted abortion, which she felt has “murdered her child”), we were traumatized when we heard the news. My wife had to be literally sedated.
Jeff, you don’t have to keep replying. It seems increasingly clear that your anonymous questioner is just doing this to get a rise out of you. I know how hard it can be to refrain from responding to slanderous things said on the internet, but you’ve said more than enough to defend yourself, in this thread and elsewhere, and honestly I think you’re reaching the point of diminishing returns.
I’m certainly not replying to get a rise out of him. But he’s the one who slandered Coursier and others. Ketland can say he’s provided evidence above until he’s blue in the face, but he hasn’t actually done so until he links to these public records or correspondences he continually mentions. Ketland is the one who called Coursier a “rapist” on Daily Nous. He didn’t need to inject himself into the Searle conversation. Ketland is the one who’s trying to pin her suicide on her boyfriend. I’ve already said that I don’t think Ketland is a murderer, but to pretend that he’s some innocent victim of the whole situation is equally absurd. He acted improperly and doesn’t want to admit it. It’s despicable.
I was the *victim* of a violent stalker. Coursier sexually assaulted me at the end of November 2010 and I told her to leave. There’s a separate eyewitness who confirmed this, and this is a matter of public record. That is hard evidence. She was, in fact, a rapist, contrary to the denials. It is the truth and there is hard evidence to prove it.
During her campaign of email harassment for the next nine months afterwards in 2011 (some emails listed above), I told her “please stop sending abusive and threatening emails”. That is hard evidence of her stalking me; but others also eyewitnessed her stalking me. It was Coursier who followed me to Oxford, and that is also simply public record. It was me who made welfare notificatons, and that is also a matter of public record and is hard evidence. And the Austrian woman’s welfare notification whose recollection I’ve published is also hard evidence.
This is all evidence. So all this evidence should be ignored? I am the one who has been lied about, slandered, libeled with disgusting lies, cyber-harassed, driven out of my home, publicly vilified — and all based on not a shred of evidence, originating from lies from a violent long-term stalker, and then distributed by Brooke Berndtson, Paula Boddington and Jennifer Saul.
It’s that campaign of vigilantism, harassment and false accusations which is morally despicable.
Referring to a proven case of vicious false accusations — from Brooke Berndtson, and then distributed by Paula Boddington and Jennifer Saul — against the victim of sexual assault and stalking may be instructive.
Particularly for those who still cannot reason correctly and cannot internalize large amounts of evidence and eyewitness evidence proving that their nonsensical black-and-white prejudices are wrong.
In any case, what Coursier said about me — delusional lies, all aimed to try and get sympathy from her boyfriend — was pretty mild. She said I had “stared at her” (a lie); “approached her for a conversation” (a lie: she was directly witnessed approaching me, by an Oxford post-doc), and a few other pieces of nonsensical fabrication. She said I was “schizophrenic”, a laughable gaslighting fabrication. One read her real attitude to me above, from the barrage of emails for nine months through 2011 – she was infatuated with me: “you are still the person that saved my life and my degree” (June 2011) and “I’m still hopelessly in love with you” and “for three years you were my life” (in August 2011). In the middle of this I told her to “stop sending abusive and threatening emails” (July 2011). Two years later, in late May 2013, she, cajoled by others including Berndtson, had a chat with the Faculty Head, who looked into it (but didn’t contact me), and she said she was “happy with the outcome”. Another person she spoke to told her to “delete older correspondence” (this is misconduct). I was never contacted. My welfare worries were completely ignored and covered up, although The Sunday Times report mentions them; and the Austrian woman’s welfare notification given to the Philosophy Faculty in March 2013, that I have published above (“I recommended that she should have female tutors rather than men and that they should know how to get professional help very quickly if she behaved in any unusual way”) was ignored and later covered up. That provides a strong clue about why I was scapegoated and vilified with lies.
This was campaign of outright lies, slander, false accusations, intimidation and vitriol. It didn’t come from my stalker, Charlotte Coursier, who is someone I demonstrably tried to protect in Oxford. And it didn’t come from Fardell either, who obviously had no clue what the facts were, as he was lied to when his girlfriend was repeatedly contacting me, and obviously he was massively hurt by what she did to him. The main lies, slander, false accusations and vitriol came from others, to assuage their own guilt, to cover up the facts and to scapegoat innocent victims.
nah, ketland described being sexually assaulted, harassed, stalked, thwarted in his efforts to try and help someone, mobbed, him and his family driven from their home and scapegoated. no wonder powerful people in the philosophy profession want him silenced at all costs.
I stay away from blogs. and threads normally – I find them unedifying. However, this thread has strayed into territory where I actually possess some relevant knowledge – specifically of Charlotte Coursier, plus Jeffrey and his workings. There may be a follow-up but for now, please try to note the following:
1) Do correct me if I’m wrong but Jeffrey now apparently sees himself as having suffered sexual predation, nay rape, from Charlotte Coursier. Pardon my bluntness but a woman (especially slender, young, fragile) actually raping a man (especially middle-aged, able-bodied, thick-set) seems a difficult proposition in any case and I think I would need rather more than heated assertions on a spiralling thread before I invested overly-much in any such claim. In this case, I’m afraid that, based on my knowledge of Jeffrey and Charlotte, if all else I have to go was this thread I would almost as soon believe that Audrey Hepburn had raped Mike Tyson.
2) Male lecturers taking up with much younger female students and then setting out to destroy the latter’s reputations / careers / lives when found out are (sadly) no new thing. (One sometimes hears bleats like e.g.: “They threw themselves at me, while my marriage is problematic and I’m eminent”. Really?) I stress my heart goes out to Jeffrey’s family as it does to Charlotte’s family. However, although a married man and a father, Jeffrey embarked on a sexual relationship with a young female student to whom he stood ‘in loco parentis’ as her lecturer and whom he surely knew was vulnerable and troubled. Although he was never Charlotte’s Director of Studies and therefore had no official pastoral role with respect to her, Jeffrey insisted he could help because their shared connection with Birmingham gave him an affinity for Charlotte. How strong might that ‘affinity’ have been had Charlotte’s problems manifested themselves instead in e.g. a sixty-year-old male from Solihull, I wonder?
3) I understand that when Charlotte was still an undergraduate at Edinburgh (graduating July 2011), Jeffrey was told imperatively by (e.g.) his line-manager, other colleagues, health professionals and the police to leave her alone for her health’s sake. Did he heed that instruction?
4) Leiter scares not me but I wonder if Jeffrey has seen the Richmond/Leiter correspondence. I’m happy for Professor Leiter to circulate our correspondence publicly – provided he does so without alteration, selection or redaction. (Bet he won’t take me up on that though.) A free gift: my last 2014 e-mail to Professor Leiter – I sent him one more later – said simply “brave”. Succinct but not potty-mouthed. I’ll wager though, Jeffrey, that Professor Leiter has not disclosed his side of our correspondence to you – as you may recall from earlier interactions, I think you may not like all that Professor Leiter had to say.
5) I think I am not alone in being able to say that my working relationship with Jeffrey seemed to go swimmingly as long as I accepted, without reservation, absolutely everything Jeffrey said. However, once I ventured correction, even over mistakes of easily-ascertainable fact, I got publicly called ‘Stalinist’, ‘liar’, etc. Hence I set little store by his denunciations.
Yours, Alasdair Richmond, A.Richmond@ed.ac.uk
(I don’t do anonymity.)
I have just had a Tweet from Jeffey Ketland – lucky me. I advised Jeffrey in reply that anything he says to me will henceforth be made public so in full, said Tweet runs:
“You’re a rape apologist, a vigilante and a lunatic, Richmond.”
I would dispute all of those terms, Jeffrey, but you just keep on posting.
I should perhaps point out that whoever posted the ‘Twitter’ link immediately above, it was not me. Anything I post here will have, and does have, my name attached to it. Thanks.
Hello again,
One more observation: funny thing but the ‘Ocular Tree’ blog. used to have material (I felt quite a lot of it even) on this deeply regrettable business – and now it seemingly doesn’t. (Several recent searches have failed to take me back to the pages I remember at any rate. I stress I don’t know what might have prompted any removal of said material.) So I have a feeling that now this … entity here is the main source of anonymous posts about the best student I ever taught, i.e. Charlotte Coursier. Hence my occasionally checking-in now I’ve found this place. (Took me a while but I flatter myself I’ve better things to do than look at threads and blogs. and anonymous observations, etc.)
One of the ‘advantages’ of anonymity of posting (and one of the reasons I confess that I rather disdain it) is that it can, I gather, allow one person to appear to be several – ‘sock-puppets’ are the term for these fleeting ‘ghost’ presences, I think?
For the record, ‘Tweeting’ me bad names is no, and never will be any, obstacle to my telling the truth – and the truth is what I have told, and will continue to tell. Please understand: a Tweet can be (e.g.) screen-shot and saved by its recipient – as can a blog.post – and thus retained even after deletion by its poster / sender. So please do take care and exercise some care and judgement before posting and/or Tweeting. These things are really not markedly more more secure than e-mail, I strongly suspect. And e-mails seem to be (for all practical purposes) well-nigh immortal nowadays.
Finally, if you should take it upon yourself to try and dispute with me, do please try to come equipped with some data and with some arguments – names and epithets, howsoever grandiose, scare not me.
Thank you,
Alasdair Richmond, A.Richmond@ed.ac.uk
I posted this publicly on Facebook but it may be worth reposting here:
‘Pardon this going out on the ‘Public’ setting but as perhaps some of you already know, I have recently, after nearly three years’ public silence and only after much thought and with great regret, become (re-)involved in the endlessly distressing debate over the life and death of my uniquely gifted former student, Charlotte Coursier (1988-2013).
As I refuse to let Charlotte’s nay-sayers shape this discussion exclusively, please forgive me if I post here the short statement I wrote for her memorial service – inevitably, it cannot do justice to her but it may at least help to sketch some of the affection and respect in which she was, and continues to be, held.
“I was lucky enough to teach Charlotte Coursier throughout her time at Edinburgh and she was simply the best student I’ve ever met. Besides being brilliant, witty and the world’s biggest fan of ‘The Smiths’, Charlotte was courageous, sympathetic and strove to help her fellows. While Charlotte’s studies made amazing progress, her academic brilliance didn’t stop her being an engaging and committed contributor to life in general. She taught a wide range of pupils and students, helped people with dyslexia and Asperger’s Syndrome, and offered the best study-guidance I’ve seen. Charlotte did great things and received lasting gratitude and respect from everyone she helped. She will be very sadly missed but always remembered with affection and thankfulness.”
Let those of us who care about Charlotte at least do what we can to keep her memory clear before our minds.’
Don’t put one of your students on such a pedestal that nobody can even come close. You’re doing your current students a disservice by not believing in them as much.
Excuse me, but that poster seems to be a junior person with progressive political views. Thus, you have violated Justin Weinberg’s rules on bullying the vulnerable. To complete the sacrament of reconciliation you must offer 5 self-excoriating apologies to The Community.
To ‘Anonymous’ of July 30th 2017 at 10.24:
Pardon my asking, but what would you know about me or my students? I believe in my current students fine, ta. I also described Charlotte in exactly those terms when she was still alive. And another set of facts for your delectation: Charlotte was no troll or sock-puppet. Nor was she cowardly. Are you by any chance affiliated to this wonderful thread?
Yours, Alasdair Richmond, A.Richmond@ed.ac.uk
Well, nigh three months on from my last and not one of the bravely vocal (and usually nameless) posters of April has deigned to challenge anything I said above. The take-home message seems to be: there’s nothing quite like a few facts to make the trolls and sock-puppets close their mouths and melt away. This was a very ugly business before the trolls got in about it. I also wonder what sort of reputation this whole blog. is gaining and maintaining.
Yours, Alasdair Richmond, A.Richmond@ed.ac.uk
Like several others in Oxford, I’ve seen the documents describing Coursier’s stalking and harassing behavior towards her victims. Coursier’s behavior was appalling and grotesque, despite the incredible kindness she received from Ketland and his wife for years.
Coursier contacted him hundreds of times over the years, from 2008 to 2013, including on three occasions in 2008, when she dropped out of Edinburgh University. He prevented three suicide attempts, on one occasion taking her to hospital and he notified all the relevant authorities. This has been confirmed in three witness statements and a large amount of correspondence. Ketland’s two line managers wrote detailed statements directly contradicting your false claims above about him. She contacted him constantly for years, as the evidence shows, including thousands of telephone calls. Ketland saved this woman’s life several times in 2008, helped her return to university in 2009, turned her life around. And, as she asked for help with work, he helped her. He was astonishingly kind to this woman and asked nothing in return. For three years, she repeatedly thanked him. After that, she became infatuated with him and pursued him romantically. Her hundreds of emails and thousands of telephone calls eventually broke up his marriage, as he repeatedly prevented her harming herself. Her assault against him in 2010 was eye-witnessed by his flatmate. His flatmate recorded this in a statement, which also describes her harassing and stalking him. Coursier’s earlier detention by the Scottish police in 2010 when she had confronted his wife is also on record. Coursier’s stream of threats and harassing unwelcome messages and emails to him when he was abroad throughout 2011, which he ignored, is on record. Her stalking him to Oxford, and her stalking him on multiple occasions in Oxford, was witnessed: by a post-doctoral student, by three graduate students and an academic, all of whom recorded what they saw Coursier doing to her victim. Her stalking his wife for many months in Oxford is also on record. His notifying others of his serious concerns, which were ignored, is also on record. A notification to Oxford Philosophy Faculty’s Graduate officer, warning them they had a mentally unstable student who may need help, is also on record. This was ignored and then covered up.
Alasdair Richmond, whatever motivates you in this defamation of the person who saved Coursier’s life is difficult to ascertain, but you keep defaming and libeling someone, repeating proven false fabrications, based on no evidence, apparently distributed by Brooke Berndtson and Paula Boddington, who organized a witch hunt against an innocent person and his family. These accusations have been proven to be false. You seem to be a very peculiar person, hunting down an innocent person you’re obsessed with, and relating to a woman that you did not care about, and whose life Ketland saved. You repeat falsehoods about things you know nothing about, have no knowledge of, based on nothing but gossip that has been proven false. Knowing Ketland, I doubt Ketland cares about your stream of libel. But others do, and if he sued you for defamation, you would lose.
It may be wise if you seek some medical help. I say this because you appear to be suffering from a stalkerish obsession with someone who was grossly mistreated.
Anonymous: disregarding the name-calling above as beneath my notice, I am sorry to have to stress to you, with some emphasis be it said, that I will avow to anyone in any context whatsoever, that everything I have said above is true and furthermore, I defy you or Jeffrey Ketland (assuming that you are not one and the same person) to disprove anything I say above. Try your best.
Thank you, Alasdair Richmond
Jeff Ketland weren’t you found guilty of bullying against a fellow philosopher at Pembroke College, Oxford after you were reinstated by the University and you were thus not renewed by the College?
That’s independent evidence of your character. And that’s an undeniable fact!
He was bullied, harassed and chased out of Oxford by a vigilante mob with false accusations. The mob tactics of intimidation, cyber-harassment, slander, lying and social media smearing also terrified his wife and very young son. His wife officially complained about the harassment, bullying and lying. The instigators of this mobbing, harassment and intimidation got away with it, but should have been held to account.
Philosophymetametametablog 
Any word on the Wilde at Oxford?
Smart money says it will be Mike Martin from UCL.
That’s what they should do. I doubt it is likely though. My bet is on someone whose work is more overtly concerned with empirical psychology.
Runners and riders?
What about Ian Phillips? Too young?
Who is Ian Phillips? Also, what about the Ancient Philosophy Chair at Keble? Any idea who will succeed Irwin?
um . . . well if you had googled his name, within about 10 seconds you would have discovered that he is pretty much the only pure philosophy of mind person currently on the Oxford faculty.
Andy Clark? He’s too old, isn’t he?
Where did Gallagher get his PhD from? His CV doesn’t say, and Wikipedia says Bryn Mawr–which doesn’t have a PhD program any more. Did it back in the day?
Ph.D. (Philosophy) Bryn Mawr College 1980
M.A. (Economics) State University of New York (Buffalo) 1987
M.A. (Philosophy) Villanova University 1976
B.A. (Philosophy) St. Columban’s College (Wisconsin) 1971
Click to access CV15aug.pdf
Thanks. Must just be a display problem on my end, since I still can’t see it on the CV. Oh well, no big deal.
The screenshot crew is back: http://rightlyconsidered.org/2017/02/16/farming-for-philosophers/
what happened to KarmaKrazy? Did he get deported?
Ha! I knew you guys missed me. While I’ve been gone, the average Venezuelan has lost 18 pounds.
Karmakrazy, do you really study or teach philosophy or did you just end up here by accident?
This Steve Patterson – Jason Brennan thing is getting scary. SP’s latest YouTube vid is singularly unhinged.
Do I have this right? Patterson spent $1000 to get a political theorist with no record in epistemology to write a review of his epistemology book? Patterson then goes nuts because the review is not favorable and in Patterson’s view doesn’t really engage with the content of the book?
You have it right. Check out his facebook page and watch his videos “responding” to Jason. He’s not right in the head, this guy Patterson.
There seems to be some ambiguity about whether Brennan got his $1000. Personally, and I’m not saying I couldn’t use a grand right about now, I think that’s too low to read an amateur’s refutation of contemporary epistemology. (As a contemporary epistemologist, I thought Brennan, whose political views I really don’t like, did a very good and fair job of trashing the book, which sounds stupid beyond belief.) (WordPress’s spell checker underlines “epistemologist” in red – way to make me feel even more marginal this morning!)
Feel like these two were made for each other. JB is a bit of a dick that needs easy targets to be a dick to. SP is a narcissist who needs someone to abuse him. I wish them all the happiness in the world.
+1
it’s like genealogy ch 1 but for turdbuckets
Anyone see the story in the Chronicle about the fellow who was awarded a PhD in “Communications” for producing a rap album? One suspects he’ll be rewarded with a sinecure at at little Ivy. Meanwhile, the better part of a generation of philosophers (most least marginally talented) will be shut out of academe for want of stable employment options. Draw what conclusions you will.
That rap is a legitimate art form, finally being recognized by the academy? That creative theses are going to be a thing in the arts side of the humanities? That making a work of art is at least as hard as writing a mediocre dissertation? That the world values average music far more than it values average philosophy?
Rap is as legitimate art form as some of the crap BL posts on Saturday nights. Not.
You’ve got a rigorously worked out theory of art that excludes rap, do you?
Didn’t think so.
Bitch, nigger, bling bling, money, hoes, ass, tittays, guns, pussay, beeotch! Oh, I got it bad when i grew up in the projects. See, that is social critique.
…but it’s not a theory of art.
A non-exhaustive list of rap albums that might entitle their authors to a terminal degree: Criminal Minded, Illmatic, Step in the Arena, 36 Chambers, 93 till Infinity, Death Certificate, Nation of Millions, etc.
Now compare: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0EyGdo2hxA
Do you REALLY think this guy has doctoral level flow?
Although I take the point about creative theses, we distinguish the MFA and other terminal arts degrees from the PhD for good reasons. Indeed, I cannot see how a (to be generous) middling rap album–or, for that matter, a middling work of fiction–is supposed to be a contribution to scholarship.
What about Life After Death?
almost as good as ready to die, but not quite.
Just because someting is hard, it doesn’t follow it’s worth the effort. Or deserving of a title like ‘doctoral thesis in communications.’
So many people who make real sacrifices to do good things — teaching in prisons, registering voters, etc. — also turn out to be smug bullies. Discuss.
‘Bullying’ is over-used.
The “legal realist” and Chavist Leiter is suddenly shedding crocodile tears for “democracy” and “habeus [sic] corpus.” If Trump is Hitler, I guess in Leiter’s fevered imagination that would make him Hans Kelsen, right? It’s hard to think what principled reasons the Chavist and “legal realist” would have for opposing the Trumpist dictatorship, just as Kelsen had no reason to object to Hitler’s legal takeover of the German state. But at least Kelsen knew how to spell “habeas corpus.”
“Habeus” is indeed a very embarrasing mistake. Poor fellow was never taught Latin although he clearly likes “per se” and “miscreant”. Aligns perfectly with his constant name dropping.
I know, how embarrassing never to have been taught Latin! Probably went to a state school.
And then, ha ha ha, using expressions like “per se” anyway, pretending that he was taught Latin! What a fraud.
Sorry, where I come from, Latin, Greek and Hebrew are taught at state schools. It is embarrasing when people pretend. Now fuck off.
Ah, of course.
That pretender Brian Leiter went to school in the United States! And he claims to be an educated person! Thank god you exposed him for what he is.
Hm, I wonder if he knows how to spell “douche bag”. Probably not–I bet he was never taught any French at all.
I guess that is an attempt at being humorous. Noted. Now fuck off.
I guess that is an attempt at being a tough guy. Noted. Have a nice day!
I wonder what Kneechee would say about this exchange?
Karmakazy,
The smells of envy and jealousy rise from your post. Brian Leiter is clearly rendering many public services with no hint of gain. What are you doing? Quibbling about spelling errors in Latin?
Nice try attempting to paint Leiter as an enemy of democracy. I guess you missed his excellent post the other day on the Reichstag fire and its relevance for today.
I feel sorry for any young person subjected to your disorganized thoughts in a classroom.
Hi Brian!
Wow, you found typo! You smart boy!
Not a typo, the letter A is not even close to the letter U. It shows that Leiter is not the educated person he constantly paints himself as. He so much wants to be an European intellectual in the hope to be recognised as something special among his America peers, that it is actually quite funny.
What are you talking about, Karmakazy-posting-as-anonymous?
“It shows that Leiter is not the educated person he constantly paints himself as.”
Correction: It shows that Leiter is not the educated person he constantly paints himself *to be*.
“He so much wants to be an European intellectual in the hope to be recognised as something special among his America peers, that it is actually quite funny.”
Correction: He so much wants to be *a* European intellectual in the hope *of being* recognised as something special among his *American* peers, that it is actually quite funny.
Thx, English is not my first language.
Yes, European intellectuals have an untarnished record of serving as role models in recent centuries. What U.S. academic wouldn’t aspire to those heights?
Bad year for Miami, losing Thomasson, Lewis, and Cokelet.
Anyone out there have any other juicy job market gossip?
From the man in Miami (http://www.colinmcginn.net/trump-psychology/):
“People say Trump is a narcissist. I don’t think so: I think Trump hates himself and with good reason. What he loves is his image–that garish, vulgar, money-saturated image. This is why he hates to be criticized and disrespected: it hurts his image. Once you grasp that everything he does is meant to promote his image it begins to make more sense. There is really nothing to him apart from his image.”
You have to admire Dr. McGinn’s commitment to knowing nothing about what he expounds on. Not the psychiatric condition, not the myth, nothing.
That’s amazing. Nice find.
Classic reveal over at the Snooze, as the violence against Murray at Middlebury (which put a woman professor in the ER) is treated to some thinly-veiled special pleading before being used as the occasion for an outside-the-box chin-stroking fest about whether there is ‘a defense of shouting down a speaker at a university’.
You know how you can tell the ethical principles Whinebag actually takes seriously? They’re the ones he doesn’t treat like this. Imagine: ‘Is there a defence of tolerating casual racism?’ Yeah, me neither.
Mike Martin for the Wilde Chair. Ancient and Jurisprudence still undecided.
If true that’s a great appointment for Oxford – MGF Martin is surely the smartest philosopher of mind out there, even if he has published less than is usual these days. Also pleasing, if true, that they didn’t choose someone who does cog-sci dressed up as philosophy.
Who were the runners and riders?
Leiter not only wrote ‘habeus [sic] corpus’; he also wrote, years ago, ‘de riger [sic]’.
The crazed Keith Burgess-Jackson once said that, according to rumor, Leiter doesn’t speak German very well. Shortly afterwards Leiter’s wikipedia entry was updated to include the line: “Leiter is fluent in German.”
News on the Yale junior offer?
Yeah, looks like Yale has gone full SJW.
SJW’s aren’t usually in the habit of writing articles in Jonah Goldberg books: Robin Dembroff’s “The Conservative Gene”
I don’t like the whole ‘talking about a private person publicly online’ thing, but let me just say that, by all accounts, including Dembroff’s, that article does not reflect her current social/political outlook.
Thanks, but Robin is no longer a “her”.
Also, if talking about someone’s social/political outlook as reflected in their published articles is off-limits, you are truly out to lunch!
She includes a preferred pronouns section on her cv. “Her” is appropriate.
I know she doesn’t identify as a ‘her’. I was referring to the question of whether she is a ‘SJW.’
Huh, weird. Glad she snapped out of it.
One copy of her CV has the expected degree date as 2019, but the current version says 2017. That’s three years into her work at Princeton (though I guess she started at ND). That’s still really fast. Wow.
Isn’t it an act of academic misconduct to hide publications from one’s CV?
Well, if I understand Haslangerian ontology correctly, to be is to be the value of a bound variable in a logic that advances bien pensant political objectives. Ergo, the above mentioned article doesn’t exist.
Shrug. It was for a popular audience, it wasn’t an academic piece. So no big deal.
Correct. Disavowing a popular piece is more like deleting an old blog post than covering up scholarship.
Not when you disavow them.
This is a sincere question: why would it be considered ‘misconduct’? Idon’t see why you’d be actually *obliged* to put particular pieces of information on a CV, unless specifically asked for them. Leaving things off isn’t lying. Don’t lots of senior people just list selected publications, rather than a complete list, simply because there are too many? It would seem odd to call this ‘academic misconduct.’ Of course most junior people do list all their publications because it is usually a good idea. But it seems s stretch to call it ‘academic misconduct’ (classifying it with plagiarism or cheating on an exam) to leave things off. Especially when it’s a popular piece – but even if it were a journal article, why would it be ‘misconduct’ rather than just a bit odd not to mention it?
See the appointments page.
Leiter: “I thoroughly disapprove of this bogus and opaque ranking. However, they did ask me to rank things, so I diligently told them who I think the 17th best applied neuro-ethicist in the world is, and the 9th strongest department in french-language poststructuralism. A field of which I also disapprove, but it is important that the rankings, which are wrong and stupid, nonetheless rely on the insights of an expert ranker.”
Welcome back, Karmakrazy!
Nobody’s gonna have better rankings than me. I tell you I have the most reputable guys in the field – give them a hand people, give these tremendous reputable guys a hand, aren’t they tremendous? – and you’re gonna love the rankings they come up with. We’re gonna have all of philosophy ranked, this year. Crooked Carolyn, she wants you to look at placement? Placement? Who ever heard of this, it’s fake news. I tell you I’ve got the best guys, and I tell you, I’ve been ranking my whole life. My first job – Michigan people, remember those days, huh? Who thought I’d be here – well I did, but who? – I was ranking. Nobody ranks better than me. You give me something I tell you where it ranks. Just like that. And I rank it right, and everybody knows this about me, you know this about me. I rank the Chinese, the Russians. They all know I rank the best – they’re worried about being ranked by me, because they know I’ll rank it right. They’re not afraid of Crooked Carolyn. But these rankings I have, they’re the best, from the best guys, and you’re gonna love them. You know who I hate though. Donald Trump.
Funniest thing here in a while!
Sad
If this were a post on Facebook I would resolutely click ‘Like.’ I might even click ‘laughing emoji’. Well done, sir or madam. Well done.
Oh look, protestors? Somebody wants to have their fun, they want to pretend these rankings aren’t the best rankings. It’s not serious! Get them out of here. I tell you, if somebody wants to send them something in the post, hey, I’ll pay the postage. You gotta be tough with these people. They don’t get it, they don’t get that a guy from New York… I’m not here for your feelings. I’m here to give you the best ranking you’ve ever seen. I had Crybaby Carrie coming to me, “oh I was on a scooter…” a scooter? You believe this, she’s so hurt she has a scooter and she’s telling me that my followers, that my language is too aggressive…? All these haters, they just hate that everybody knows I have the highest rankings, me, from New York, and Michigan, and Chicago. I drained that Ivy League swamp, and now these insiders they want to tell you that the rankings were wrong, that he can’t win… But we see what happens every time. The fake Nous media, they’re going to tell you I lost readers. I gained readers, I have Whiny Justin tapping my emails – publishing them! – I have David and Sally – you ever hear of these two, I tell you, I got to respect that they rank high, but they don’t even like the rankings! you show me someone who doesn’t like winning and I show you a loser! You can’t vote for these people. And I have numbers, great numbers, from the best numbers guys – David Wallace, you love this kid, right? – he’s got numbers Crooked Crybaby Carolyn can’t even count to – these numbers, they show you that I’m winning. And the more I’m winning, the more I get the worst people trying to tear me down. But we won’t let that happen, right? We have to make philosophy great again. And we’re gonna have that ranking that everybody’s gonna KNOW that it’s great. And who’s the 6th and 9th greatest.
But people ask me, and they know I rank every minute of every day to make the best ranking for this wissenschaft, but they say what about the places where nobody’s even TRYING to rank? And they know I care about those places too. That’s where half these haters come from! But seriously, some of the best people too, the most tremendous people. But every place that can be saved, we’re going to rank it. And the haters, they even hate that. They hate that great guys like my guy Dan, who’s doing tremendous work for me, that even people I don’t rank they still love my rankings. But we gotta be serious too, there are places we can’t rank, not even me. The haters have taken over these places, they set up no go zones. You heard about Kooky Linda! I tell you, she tries to make a ranking – she’s unrankable! Who would rank her? These are the people… we need a wall: I love continentals, some of the best guys I work with are continental. Nietzche, what a guy! And my guys tell me Karl Marx is doing some great work out there. But then there’s Babette, Simon, Jacques. We can’t let Nietzche in because we have to worry about keeping Barmy Babette out! When I hear continental, you and me we know there are these bad hombres. You hear about the way they massacre, a massacre in Paris, in Verso, in Stony Brook! We got to make philosophy great again, and we can’t do that with these guys running around. We got to keep them in Cairo, unranked ! But if we’re gonna build that wall, we’re going to make them pay for it: it’s not for them, I mean, it’s to keep them out! And if we’re gonna build that wall we need a guy who can rank. Right? You’re with me. And you know that I rank better than anybody, anybody either side of that wall. You are gonna be so impressed with this ranking. You’re gonna start wanting to rank me! I kid, I kid. My department ranks 21st and that’s final.
*P-G-R… P-G-R…. P-G-R…*
Wery good my DC friend. I drink a wodka toast to you topless atop my faworite steed. Well done my good and faithful servant. But I still have the–ah–wideos–so mind your wolgical pees and queues.
Anyone there?
From http://dailynous.com/2017/03/15/gender-gap-philosophy-guest-post-morgan-thompson/
Even if we assume for the sake of the argument that academia is a meritocracy, there is little reason to think this hypothesis can explain the philosophy gender gap. Scientific and mathematical abilities may be important for some philosophical subfields like logic, decision theory, or philosophy of science, but it is less clear that these skills are required for an individual to do excellent work in ethical theories or some topics in the history of philosophy.
Further, the argument for this hypothesis in STEM fields may not be compelling either. Some of the evidence used to support it—the existence of gender differences in distributions of the SAT mathematics section—changes over time (showing a decrease in the variation in distributions) and there is even a reversal of the gender difference in variation in other countries such that women make up the higher end of the distribution. These abilities are malleable, at least in part, by social and environmental factors to the extent that the gender differences can completely reverse.
Given all of the caveats necessary to get to this point, at best the gender difference in abilities hypothesis is woefully insufficient to explain the gender gap in philosophy. (It’s also worth pointing out that women do not earn worse grades in philosophy courses than men, and at Elon University, women earn better grades.)
————————————————————————————————————————
‘…less clear that…’
‘work in ethical theories’ (is this even an expression?)
‘…may not be compelling…’
‘…other countries…’
‘at best … woefully insufficient’???
This is some reeeeeally bad motivated reasoning. How can anyone even pretend to take this as an intellectually serious attempt at anything?
Women are significantly majorities throughout higher education, and throughout the world (OECD, where the average is about 57% women to 43% men), and this has been so for several decades.
In the US, the figure is about 57% women and 43% men. In particular, for medicine, vet , law, biological sciences, psychology, social science and humanities (except philosophy and economics), women are large majorities, as well as for many vocational training course, such as nursing, teacher training and social work, where woman are vast majorities. Men are majorities in mathematics, computer science, physical sciences, philosophy, and economics, and for some vocational training courses.
Nowhere in that Daily Nous post is there any attempt to explain why women are majorities throughout higher education; nowhere is there any attempt to explain why women are majorities in law, medicine, biology, psychology, English literature, history, and so on. In other words, its starting assumption is to reject all the empirical evidence available. Furthermore, the empirical claim “imbalance in proportion is due to discrimination” (or similar claims in that ballpark) is assumed, but without any evidence whatsoever. There is no evidence to support such claims. All the evidence points the other way, showing that women in higher education receive far more preferential treatment than men do. Similarly, the empirical claim “imbalance in proportion is due to biological difference” is rejected with no empirical evidence cited. But if “imbalance in proportion is due to discrimination” is true, then it is men who are discriminated against throughout higher education, because they are small minorities, and they are minorities in law, medicine, biological, psychology, humanities and social sciences, etc. So are men being discriminated against? Why are there so few men in higher education?
It’s political propaganda, riddled with mistakes, fallacies and faulty presuppositions: it excludes all the empirical evidence; it dismisses all the scientific evidence concerning sex differences in humans; it makes political assumptions, for which there is no evidence.
Exactly. The only plausible, empirically well-confirmed explanation is ruled out by these weasel words, and instead we’re offered “Intersecting Identities” as a “major area for future research”.
“…But women have many other identities that make a difference to their experiences as women. Future studies of a large enough size to study students’ experiences at many of the intersections of their identities are necessary to determine whether our interventions on the gender gap target only some women and whether it comes at the expense of women with other intersecting identities. In cases where there are too few women with particular intersecting identities, such as women with particular kinds of disabilities or trans women, to get adequate numbers for quantitative methods, researchers may have to include qualitative methods in their research as the folks at Elon University did.”
what the fuck? are we just playing SJW buzzword bingo?
Measurable imbalances in proportions involving males and females (in any species) are generally biologically caused, by sexual dimorphism. These include physiological, anatomical, behavioral and psychological differences. It’s a pity that a seemingly high proportion of philosophers are scientifically ignorant; don’t understand evidence or scientific reasoning; and promote politically-motivated “social justice” claims, which assume repeatedly discredited and refuted blank slate ideology, which contradict the empirical evidence and which contradict the known science of biological and psychological sex differences. But that’s the situation.
You want to explain this garbage? Start by looking at the incentive structures in contemporary academic philosophy. A research program that uses sloppy social science to address non-existent “problems” often leads to: stable employment, publications, conference invites, and general plaudits from many corners of the discipline. Assuming, of course, that these “problems” speak to concerns of identity politicians.
Euclid for the 21st Century. Proposition: To construct a line through the intersections of more than two identities.
This is hilarious
Panopticum of mediocrity. A philosopher with bad hair. an infatile chick and an anorexic extra for an 80’ies Kung Fu movie.
P.S. The youtube comments are brutally funny!
Not as funny as 3:09 am!
Okay, name one, I’m curious.
As far as I can tell none of them are funny. (For reference, 5:15 am’s comment about Jonathan Ichikawa’s hair is indeed funny.) A few, like the Nietzsche quote, come close enough to be recognizable failures at being funny. But most are just stupid and hateful.
You’re probably the kind of person who thinks Tosh.0 or whatever is funny.
“Ray looks like one of the guys who escaped Jeffrey Dahmer’s apartment.” De gustibus non est disputandum, although the same does not hold for dresses and haircuts.
The Itchy, Scratchy and Retchy Show
So so awkward. Whatever else is the case, it is clear that these people will do anything to get attention
I don’t know these people, but lots of academics give me the same basic vibe. I can’t fully articulate it, but I think it amounts to something like the secondhand embarrassment one feels upon witnessing an adult thinking or acting like an adolescent by virtue of having an impoverished sense of what is edgy/transgressive/etc.
For instance, Itchy has the exact haircut of countless thirteen year olds who are on the road to becoming punks but haven’t heard Discharge or Minor Threat yet. It’s what you end up with when you want a devilock but your mom won’t allow it.
Boy, was she a rebel when she attended those private schools. And whilst at Cambridge, she led the Vegans against garish incest in nature association (VAGINA) to never seen heights. One day she even smoked a cigarette in protest of her philosophy tutor who had argued against smoking and drinking in a previous one-to-one tutorial.
There are supervisions in Cambridge, not tutorials.
Oh, I am slightly more aroused by the squid on the left than that pale imitation of a woman to its left.
They’re not doing themselves any favors by drinking wine in every shot
Nothing against polyamory but this is ridiculous and embarrassing. I sometimes have thought that all the beating up on the CIJ and JJI is just sour grapes, but this really is lame as fuck. I hope they one day cringe at it.
Sorry for confusion, but I’m LOL#2 at 3:27 pm.
They did not mention the Philosophers’ Ethical Non-Monogamy Alliance (PENMA).
Indeed, that is very surprising. I had thought the first rule of PENMA was to loudly and publicly proclaim that you are a member of PENMA, but that you can’t tell anyone about it.
8:43 pm – Hilarious!
Kind of disappointed we didn’t get a scooter shot, either
The last thread had a discussion of the NDPR review of rightness as fairness, including speculation about whether and how Arvan would respond. Now we know: with a meta-discussion.
http://philosopherscocoon.typepad.com/blog/2017/03/should-authors-respond-to-book-reviews.html
Key graph: “Because reviews can be fair or unfair, charitable or uncharitable, etc., it is not hard to imagine philosophical or professional reasons why an author might want to respond to some reviews. And indeed, as a new author, I have given some thought to doing so myself.”
To compress: “I have thought about responding to a review of my recent book for professional reasons. The professional reasons for responding to a review come from the review being unfair or uncharitable.” (It doesn’t seem like a review being fair or charitable would be reasons to respond to it.)
So: “I have been reviewed uncharitably (like this here review of ‘A Theory of Justice” … just to give an example).”
In the end, he decides it’s probably best not to respond, and opens the matter up for discussion, making his overall point “Richard Dees’ review of my book was unfair or uncharitable, but I’m not going to say anything about that.”
I can sympathize. It’s frustrating to work hard on something for years and see someone come along and shit all over (what seems to you, at least) a careless reading of it. Yes, to invite comparison with Rawls, even if unintentionally, is unfortunate. But kudos to Arvan for mostly restraining himself. Has anyone ever caricatured your work on a highly trafficked site? It’s pretty annoying. For a while, you wonder of everyone you meet whether, if they heard about the ‘sick burn’, they saw through the stupidity or just accepted it at face value. This is a problem that will only get worse as every dumbass in philosophy eventually starts a blog and uses it to attack people’s work. The sooner we start developing norms of self-restraint the better.
Why can’t professional philosophers just go back to what they’re good at? Like hunting people out of their jobs?
Hounding?
It wasn’t a blog that criticized his book. It was the NDPR, and the criticisms look pretty reasonable (although I haven’t read Arvan’s book so I can’t say with confidence).
I didn’t say it was a blog, and I didn’t endorse Arvan’s assessment of the criticisms. I said that over the top attacks might become more common as more people enter the blogosphere, and that people should try not to give into the temptation to get in fights on the internet.
Well, the thing to keep in mind is that Arvan’s book (which I’ve looked over, but not read carefully) is terrible; the reviewer was if anything too charitable. His whole idea is to ground morality in broadly formal requirements of diachronic rationality–which he for some reason presents as radically original, even though it’s been pursued with way more depth and finesse by tons of people (Nagel and Korsgaard most famously, probably)–a fact he barely acknowledges. There comes a point at which it’s better for everyone if people drop the pretense and tell you not to quit your day job.
Confession: I only come here because I have a deep conviction that professional philosophers are *the worst* and here I find, on the one hand, confirmation of that conviction, and, on the other hand, people who seem to share that conviction.
They have done shocking things in the last few years, things that no other profession seems to do. They distribute slander about innocent people. They hounded people out of their jobs using public smear campaigns. In some cases, outrageously. David Barnett was hounded out of this job at Colorado, for defending his student from false accusations. Jeffrey Ketland was hounded out his job at Oxford with smears, and his family driven out of town by cyber-harassment, for telling a stalker and sexual harasser with a record of violence, who had stalked him and his wife for years, to stop stalking him at his seminars. They ran a smear campaign and tried to hound Laura Kipnis out of her job at Northwestern, for writing an essay about the climate of sexual paranoia in universities. And those are just the uncontroversial cases. They ran a public smear campaign against Brian Leiter and got him removed from his Philosophy Gourmet Report for merely arguing with someone who publicly attacked him; they falsely accused Peter Ludlow at Northwestern, called him a rapist, and hounded him out of his job.
1. Only someone with well-nigh Trumpian thin skin would interpret “I vow to be nice” as a public attack on himself.
2. Ludlow lost his job because of two sexual harassment complaints, including one involving a 19 year old undergraduate.
1. Carrie Jenkins threatened not to treat BL as a “normal member of the profession” the day after Justice Whineberg and others attacked BL because he cut Crazy Carolyn to pieces.
2. In neither case was Ludlow found guilty of the original charge. Wait to you read the Kipnis book on this!
Haha, she ‘threatened’ him? Sure, whatever you say shit mailer.
1. Boo fuckin hoo. Poor Brian Leiter, was not going to be treated as a “normal member of the profession” by CJ? The dude says that kind of thing about other people on his blog all the time, including whatever “cutting to pieces” you’re talking about.
2. Ummm … He was so found guilty of the trying to get his chubby 50 something year old fingers down the pants of the 19 year old. Matter of public record. But yeah, can’t wait to read the Kipnis book.
You mean the 19 year old Yoona Ha who invited Ludlow out on a date, lied about her age, tried to fuck him, failed, and then lied about him when he rejected her?
Right … because Ludlow’s story was so credible .. all 19 year old’s wanting nothing other than to be DTF with fat old balding men.
Yoona Ha invited him out on a date. The evidence shows this. Ha then lied about her age. The evidence shows Ha tried to initiate a relationship with him, but he rejected her. She then lied about him. But her story contradicts the evidence, including CCTV evidence.
Your epithet “fat old balding men” is sexist. It is also quite revealing. But some women appear to like “fat old balding men”. Examples of women who like “fat old balding men” are Yoona Ha and Lauren Leydon-Hardy.
Anyone with doubts about Lauren Leydon-Hardy’s relationship with Ludlow needs to read their correspondence here: http://95.154.230.253/ip-3/encoded/Oi8vcGFzdGViaW4uY29tL011SFYwM3hm
Nov 23, 2011, 8:38 PM from Peter Ludlow: Nothing is perfect. And elements of our situation suck really hard,
but the wonderful parts swamp that. I want to optimize for happy.
I need u in my life for that.
Nov 23, 2011, 8:40 PM from Lauren Leydon-Hardy: I can promise you that you will always have me in your life.
Nov 23, 2011, 8:40 PM from Lauren Leydon-Hardy: And that I’ll always love you. So much.
Nov 23, 2011, 8:41 PM from Peter Ludlow: I promise back.
Nov 23, 2011, 8:41 PM from Peter Ludlow: So much.
Nov 23, 2011, 8:41 PM from Lauren Leydon-Hardy: Good promises.
Nov 23, 2011, 8:42 PM from Peter Ludlow: The best.
same
(@ 3:51am)
“His whole idea is to ground morality in broadly formal requirements of diachronic rationality”
No, I do not.
Addendum: In the book, I explicitly reject formal approaches to/constraints on diachronic rationality. I instead defend defend a substantive account of diachronic rationality based on actual human motivation that is not at all like Korsgaard’s account or Nagel’s account.
Let the Searle discussion begin now: https://www.buzzfeed.com/katiejmbaker/famous-philosophy-professor-accused-sexual-harassment?utm_term=.gumb3g719#.ysZ6P1ZyL
haha let the buzzfeed discussion begin now
Sanctimonious cunts on display at the snooze
Oh Itchy…
“I am beyond disgusted. That I’m not also surprised speaks terribly of our discipline.
All my best wishes to Joanna Ong, who I am sure would not put herself in this public position frivolousl”
Of course, it is not remotely possible that Ong is trying it on for possibly large sums of money. No best wishes to Searle who may of course be perfectly innocent. I don’t know. Perhaps he is guilty and she has is brave. But how the fuck does Itchy know that? His crappy comment “speaks terribly of our discipline”. Especially in the context of his shitty discussion of epistemology and his implied view that being ‘orthodox’ makes his epistemic assumptions correct
Kate Manne says:
“To those of you defending Searle or anyone else in he said/she said contexts as innocent until proven guilty? Um, no. This is not a criminal matter. And the very structure of it is different than contexts where the accused is prosecuted by the state on behalf of the people. In he said/she said contexts, if he’s innocent until proven guilty, then she’s guilty of lying until proven innocent. And I have personally mentored women who he’s done this to before. Who have since dropped out of philosophy. So I would ask you to please reconsider the common instinct to exonerate powerful men. It’s the flipside of misogyny’s shaming and punishing of less powerful women (or so I’ve been arguing anyway) and it’s massively damaging.
I am on Joanna Ong’s side.
That is all. Please refrain from comments engaging on the substance of this post just this once. I am tired and beaten from this week and need to say my piece for moral reasons, and then disengage for the night for personal ones. Thanks friends.”
The idea that “innocent until proven guilty” implies a presumption that accusers are lying is bizarre. Because in this context “innocent” doesn’t mean “shown to be innocent”; it means something like “not shown to be guilty”. The proper response to a Buzzfeed article and a lawsuit isn’t strong belief that Searle is guilty, or strong belief that Searle is demonstrably innocent, or strong belief that Ong is lying. The proper response is to suspend judgement and wait for more evidence. Manne doesn’t appear to so much as notice that this is an option!
One more point: people allege all sorts of things in lawsuits — Peter Ludlow alleged in a lawsuit that Jennifer Lackey lied about him, for example. So the idea that someone’s saying something in a lawsuit is strong testimonial evidence is clearly not going to cut any ice for FPers.
If by ‘innocent’ you mean ‘did not do the thing he is accused of doing’ that assuming that a person is innocent until proven guilty *does* imply a presumption that the accuser is lying.
If by ‘innocent’ you mean ‘has not been found guilty or held liable in a court of law’ then ‘innocent until proven guilty’ does not imply a presumption that the accuser is lying.
But given context, it is reasonable to assume Manne means the first of these. And it is also unreasonable to assume that she hasn’t even considered the option of suspending judgment – more likely that she just disagrees with you that this is the proper response in this case, given the evidence she already has available to her.
In an explicitly *legal* context (namely, that invoked by legal phrases like ‘innocent until proven guilty’), ‘innocent’ means the latter and not the former. Unless you’re in Scotland.
Even so, assuming someone didn’t do the thing they’re accused of doing doesn’t require assuming that the accuser is *lying*. The accuser could instead be faultlessly mistaken.
True. But in the current context, it seems really unlikely that the accuser is faultlessly mistaken (I mean, maybe there is someone who has been impersonating Searle, and that’s the person who harassed her, but this seems pretty unlikely).
There’s nothing special about this context. If someone really thinks that by presuming X innocent you presume all of X’s accusers guilty of perjury, then that person should think the entire criminal justice system in the English-speaking world presumes millions of prosecutors, witnesses for the prosecution, and victims of crimes are guilty.
That’s not correct. The problem isn’t with the interpretation of ‘innocent’; it’s with the interpretation of ‘presume’.
No-one said anything about perjury. I think you’re getting confused between legal standards about what you can presume and ordinary standards about beliefs and assumptions.
If you mix the two like you are doing, you have a similar problem – if we really think that everyone ought to assume that a person is innocent until proven guilty, then no-one would ever be convicted of anything because the jury would not be allowed to believe that they did it and therefore find them guilty until that same jury had already found them guilty.
All comments (40+ at last count) on the Searle thread at Daily Nous are gone. Wonder if they’ll come back…
After half a century the house of cards is finally going to collapse. I’m sure he harassed plenty of women, but most of Searle’s Girls were consensual, it always looked like. The ones who consented and gained from those arrangements are probably looking at this Buzzfeed thing with apprehension.
I personally think that it is very possible that those alleged events took place, but this is just based on my personal impression of Searle from interviews. Although someone commented on Manne’s post that during her years at Berkeley it was well-known that Searle had a habit of engaging female undergrads.However, given that recent witch hunts in the philosophical community were unjustified and that similar student-professor-arrangements like that of Ludlow and whatshername seemed to involve quid pro quo, I am a bit surprised that someone like Manne is so willing to condemn Searle.
Laura Kipnis’s book, _Unwanted Advances: Sexual Paranoia Comes to Campus_, will be out on April 4. Apparently, it’s full of gossip about the Ludlow case. Stay tuned!
I commented on that thread at The Daily Nous. I described a genuine sexual assault, for which the police were called, in 2010, after which I was threatened and stalked. I’m pretty sure Justin Weinberg deleted it because it described the facts about Charlotte Coursier, my stalker. Jonathan Ichikawa Jenkins said he agreed with Ong, who has made accusations against Searle. So, I described being sexually assaulted by Charlotte Coursier and then being stalked for a further two and half years by her. I was subjected to false accusations and witch hunted, with a horrific and appalling smear campaign. I didn’t keep a copy of them. so I’ll just repeat what I recall.
——
Charlotte Coursier sexually assaulted me on 24 November 2010. There was a separate eyewitness and because she began shouting, the police were called. They gave me a note of the incident and asked me to consult victim support. But I didn’t press charges. But I kept that incident note. Subsequently, she threatened, harassed and stalked me for a further two years. She stalked not only me, but also my wife (on an earlier occasion, Coursier had been detailed by the police for a confrontation with my wife). She followed me and my wife to Oxford. There she stalked my wife and son, with whom she was obsessed. She stalked me at my seminars, so I told her to stop. But she lied about that; and then stalked me again later.
——
Another commenter, “Hey Nanny Moose”, mentioned, “for the record”, two news stories. The first (The Daily Mail) was a fabricated story, about which I was not consulted, making vicious false criminal accusations against me, and for which there’s no evidence. These were lies. The second (The Sunday Times) was based on facts, evidence and witness reports.
I replied, for the record: “Charlotte Coursier was a rapist, a liar and stalker”. Which is true.
Was The Sunday Times report of your affair with this student accurate?
The Sunday Times report of the violence, harassment and long-term stalking by Charlotte Coursier was accurate. As I noted above, Coursier sexually assaulted me on the night of 24 November 2010. Do you approve of sexual assault and stalking?
And did you have a sexual relationship with said student?
As I have said, Charlotte Coursier sexually assaulted me in late 2010, and then stalked me for a further two and a half years.
Do you approve of sexual assault, harassment and stalking? It’s a simple question.
Nobody does, but I also do not approve of lecturers diddling their students. And your answer suggests you did exactly that.
You are promoting sexual assault and stalking? Is that correct?
For a logician your reasoning abilities are quite subpar. Maybe your skills with the ladies are equally developed?
What do you think victims of sexual assault and long-term stalking think? As you know, Charlotte Coursier was a rapist, a liar and a stalker.
Let’s go through some possibilities concerning sexual violence with you:
1. Victims of sexual assault and stalking should be victim-blamed?
2. Victims of sexual assault and stalking should be smeared with false accusations, cyber-harassed, driven out of their homes and have their lives wrecked?
3. Victims of sexual assault and stalking should be silenced?
I’m not the same person (if it is the same one person) you’ve been communicating with so far.
I do not approve of sexual assault. I do not approve of stalking. I do not approve of victim blaming. I do not approve of false accusations or wrecking lives. I do not approve of silencing victims.
I’ll be happy to answer other questions you might want to ask.
Will you answer one question? Is The Sunday Times report that you moved out of your family home and began an affair with the now-deceased student accurate? Maybe it is. Or maybe it isn’t. The fact that The Sunday Times accurately reported on the many aspects of the situation that you have confirmed does not mean that they have accurately reported on this aspect of the situation.
If their reporting of this issue is accurate (or inaccurate) this does not change the fact that their reporting of the aspects you have confirmed is accurate. If you did have an affair with the student this does now show that you were not assaulted, stalked, or violated in other ways — of course not. And if you did have an affair with this student it does not even follow that there was anything improper about this.
Jeff Ketland’s comments are clear evidence that the man has no shame. What a reprehensible human and disgrace to the profession.
I believe you, Jeff. I believe you. I am sorry that philosophers and apparently even some feminists have treated you so poorly. Please know that the “feminists” who refuse to believe or extend empathy to victims of sexual assault are such in name only.
Holy cow, if the rumours on reddit are any indication, Searle is quite the ladies man.
I hope we can practise some American imperialism tonight. Nobody’s against that, for sure.
I like the racist undertone of that comment.
It’s a memorable line, but Searle is no McGinn
This is in answer to 7:23 above.
Coursier and I knew each other for several years starting in November 2008. She received nothing except kindness and care from me. Maybe about a week or two after she first contacted me (asking me to read an essay), she made a serious suicide attempt, which I prevented and I asked her to get help. In February 2009, she took an overdose (a paracetamol & sleeping tablets overdose), but texted me saying no one cared about her. I found her and took her to hospital, Edinburgh Infirmary. I reported this to the department, and requested help from counseling (who refused), and Professor Andy Clark can confirm this. Her life was turned around by me.
She then calmed down in early 2009 and returned to university. She was, however, in love with me. And she was in contact with me on and off for the next couple of years, usually asking about work and things. We knew each other very well.
About two years later (the end of 2010), this, and I omit some other important events, had now led to huge rows with my wife. I moved out and stayed with a friend, Matthew. Coursier asked me if she could visit. There was a brief affair. Three weeks later, she assaulted me, pinning me down; then refused to leave and began shouting. The police were called. Matthew had been outside the flat and heard this happening. Matthew banned her from my flat and later told me he’d seen her hanging around outside. He noted these things down in his (physical) diary. I distanced myself. Just after Christmas that year, she sent me a volley of harassing text messages, which I couldn’t reply to as I was ill (I did write them down later); so I notified her friend Rosa and asked her to help. I then went to work in Germany a few weeks alter, in January 2011.
So you creep did fuck her, despite all your fears that she might be stalking you. I know it’s complicated. People like you are unfit to teach young students. Yeah, the allegations were wrong but you still could not keep it in your pants although it was very clear that nothing good could come out of this. It was more than clear that she was unstable, she was infatuated, obsessed with you. But the gentleman you are, you thought in a highly logical matter that pussy is pussy and one pussy is more than zero pussy. Jeff, you need therapy not a job that puts you near living people.
The interesting thing is that this attitude of yours is partly what led to her death. Had people not thought in the confused way you appear to, and paid attention to welfare notifications given, she’d be alive.
Look in the mirror and see the lethal consequences of your ideology.
To quoque?
It’s clear from your own testimony here that you took advantage of her fragile mental state and used her as a means to your own end of getting your end away.
Coursier took advantage of me; she manipulated me into helping her, which I did at great cost and to zero benefit for me. You can play the feminist narrative all you like. It is a lie. I had no other interest in her, as all the evidence shows. For the next two years, Coursier then pursued me, as a potential boyfriend – in fact, she wanted to marry me. She eventually got what she wanted. Then Coursier sexually assaulted me in November 2010. Then she harassed me; then she stalked me, and also stalked my wife and son – and Coursier did this for years.
What is clear, and a matter of public record, is that Coursier was a long-term stalker with a history of violence. Your comment suggests you want to excuse violence and stalking and blame the victims of that. You may do that, if you please. It makes no difference. Coursier was a violent stalker.
“What a reprehensible human and disgrace to the profession.”
On the contrary, the treatment Coursier received in Oxford is a disgrace to the profession. She was manipulated to her death by feminist activists, who prevented her receiving emergency medical attention; while notifications that I made, and that another person made directly to the Faculty of Philosophy in March 2013, were ignored. In Edinburgh, where she was for six years, I saved her. There is no “disgrace” in that, no matter how much vitriol you emit.
In Oxford, she had a nervous breakdown because her relationship with boyfriend broke down, was neglected and driven to suicide, when her boyfriend did eventually leave her.
Look in the mirror, philosophy profession; and feel the shame you deserve for the monstrous mistreatment of a student about whom welfare notifications were ignored.
It’s exactly this kind of unhinged gaslighting that likely pushed Coursier over the edge. However you attempt to recast the facts, you were psychologically manipulative to a fragile young woman with whom you then engaged in an inappropriately close and, eventually, improper sexual relationship. When she needed a friend, she found a predator. That a psychologically fragile young woman might react badly to such patently inappropriate behavior on the part of a faculty member in a position of power should be obvious to any reasonable person. From your disgusting and shameless comments, however, it is clear you are anything but reasonable.
Your shouting does not reflect well on you and is a fabrication. Coursier was in love with me for many years; and was almost certainly borderline personality disordered. She was not “fragile” — she was a violent stalker, as many others witnessed; a stalker, who assaulted me. You need to stop victim-blaming, despite your reflexive urges. She also stalked my wife and son. You can shout as much as you like, and try to excuse violence, but it reflects poorly on you.
Coursier was also not “pushed” over the edge in 2008, or 2009, up to 2012. Was she? On the contrary, she had her life turned around and an excellent future for her, as she freely said on many occasions.
Coursier was pushed over the edge in 2013 by feminist activists, who prevented her receiving emergency welfare help, despite notifications being given. Try to hide this as much as you like, or ignore it, but it is what happened. Had those notifications been heeded, or had I been told what was happening, she would be alive. Just as she was in 2008, 2009, etc. But they were ignored.
These are the lethal consequences of feminist hysteria.
You are not the victim here and your feeble attempt to portray yourself as such only evidences how immoral and deranged you really are.
Who’s engaging in an internet campaign of intimidation now? The Searle/Ong story has nothing to do with you, so shut the fuck up already. You don’t need to be the centre of attention every time someone mentions ‘harassment’.
What did the feminists do?
Awesome new thread at FP.
Please comment if and only if you agree with us that Ong is a hero and Searle is guilty. There will be plenty of other places to express other opinions. Like Daily Nous… oh, no, wait, sorry. Well, at Leiter’s blog… nope. Yeah, okay, go comment at that cesspool. Three cheers for diversity!
https://feministphilosophers.wordpress.com/2017/03/24/gratitude-for-joanna-ongs-bravery/
“What did the feminists do?”
Is that addressed to me? They cajoled Coursier into making bizarre false complaints; they knew of her background; they knew she was pursuing me; they had been notified of her prior history and they ignored welfare notifications (though the welfare notification to the Faculty of Philosophy from a friend of mine, an Austrian woman, went to another person, involved in organizing graduate teaching). In fact Coursier herself wrote, after one conversation with an American feminist, “when I spoke to her, her reaction suggested that she was more concerned with firing him than with my welfare” (17 March 2013). Another American feminist told her to “delete oldest correspondence from her time as an undergraduate” (15 May 2013). Another American feminist persuaded her to make wild accusations, which she then withdrew. And shortly after this, she stalked me again (which I tried to report to the police). Coursier, by the way, was a conservative, and hated feminism.
Laura Kipnis tells me that she thinks feminist hysteria is dangerous and harmful for female students and I suppose this will be a topic in her book due out in a few weeks. She is right, of course. A student died in Oxford in June 2013, because of feminist hysteria. Not because of me; or because of her boyfriend (he had to flee). But lethal feminist hysteria.
And with that, I bow out.
From wikipedia:
“In March 2017, Searle was the subject of sexual assault allegations. The Los Angeles Times reported that, “A new lawsuit alleges that university officials failed to properly respond to complaints that John Searle, an 84-year-old renowned philosophy professor, sexually assaulted his 24-year-old research associate last July and cut her pay when she rejected his advances.”[9][10] Berkeley’s alleged protection of Searle was seen in some quarters as a recurrence of earlier problems in dealing with similar accusations.[11] The suit, which was filed by the Los Angeles-based law firm Kristensen Weisberg LLP, said Hudin, the director of the John Searle Center for Social Ontology, admitted that Searle “has had sexual relationships with his students and others in the past in exchange for academic, monetary, or other benefits.”
Wow! Makes you think who took part in this quid pro quo. Is he abusing his position? I think so. Why, however, are apparently so many women willing to “participate” I only know about his mind stuff and the people sucking up to him are usually men.
That is an advantage women have over men. I probably would have
What is your first language?
Urdu
Wait, you mean, according to her boyfriend, Coursier committed suicide on the day that he dumped her but the feminists want to blame Ketland? I don’t get it. I thought they believed in justice.
Wait, you mean, according to her boyfriend, Coursier committed suicide on the day that he dumped her but the feminists want to blame Ketland? I don’t get it. I thought they believed in justice.
‘Then Coursier sexually assaulted me in November 2010.’ Teach women not to rape. http://watchdog.org/290234/judge-male-student-expelled-sexual-assault-victim/
So basically the whole Ketland story is one massive Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender by feminist philosophers. No wonder their story about it never fitted the facts.
Well, it was demonstrable sexual harassment from Coursier, who romantically pursued me for two years til the end of 2010 and then stalked me for years afterwards, following me to my new job in a different country, stalking my wife and son with whom she was obsessed and stalking me, repeatedly, as others saw. But they lie about it. I described being pinned down in November 2010, her trying to remove my “pants” (to use feminist terminology) and “get her end away” (to use feminist terminology). She was prevented from “getting her end away” by me and then began shouting. I told her to go home; I hid in the kitchen because her anger was so extreme, and the police were called because of her shouting. The eyewitness, Matthew, heard this happening. He described it later in his diary a few weeks later, saying Coursier “refused not to sit on him”. I didn’t press charge against her, but I could have, had I wanted to. And because there was ample evidence and a separate eyewitness, she would have ended up in prison.
Contradicting the facts, some nut above inverts the evidence and says that a woman sexually assaulting a man — an event for which there is evidence from a separate eyewitness — is the man’s fault. But it’s actually the perpetrator’s fault, not the victim’s. The woman has indeed been described as trying to “get her end away” and the man stops her and tells her to go home; that, apparently, makes the man a “creep”. But the man is not a “creep’; it the female perpetrator of sexual harassment who is a creep. All of this is classic rape culture and gaslighting, from feminists. They’re delusional. They seem to lack the notion of responsibility: a woman sexually assaulting a man is responsible, not the victim. A woman stalking a man and others is responsible, not the multiple victims.
And it’s curious how far down the rabbit hole they go with their delusions. They run public witch hunts against victims of sexual violence and stalking; not just one, but multiple victims. They’re even prepared use cyber-harassment and drive victims (plural, including a 4 year old child) of stalking out their home. This is all a matter of public record. This grotesque misbehaviour is, using a phrase from one of the above liars, a “disgrace to the profession”. They never back down; never apologise, no matter how many times they are proved wrong; and never tell the truth.
So much for bowing out, eh?
I can only imagine Coursier receiving these sorts of utterly deranged emails from Ketland. It’s truly terrifying to witness how an otherwise gifted mind like his can be used to distort reality and twist the facts. The Daily Mail piece (which, by the way, Paula Boddington noted on Leiter’s blog was the most accurate account of the evidence presented at the inquest) details how Coursier was afraid that nobody would believe her and that they would take Ketland’s side. And it’s clear why: Ketland was in a position of immense power compared to her, and he quite evidently has the ability to spin things around. There can be little doubt that this saga of manipulation by Ketland contributed to her frame of mind when she tragically committed suicide. Now we can thank him for demonstrating just the sort of person Coursier was dealing with. It’s downright horrifying and would be enough to derail even a well-adjusted student, much less one with a history of mental illness. And it’s all the more disturbing that Ketland continues to malign the reputation of his victim when she can no longer defend herself against his crazed accusations. Good grief…
I will now bow out if people continue telling lies. And those are lies. There is no evidence whatsoever to support the fabrications published in The Daily Mail. Not a single piece of evidence. I was not consulted. And no witnesses were consulted – not me, not my wife, not people present in Edinburgh; not people who had witnessed her violence and stalking. Later the Coroner wrote to me, “these were things she told her friends”. The Daily Mail even accused me of time travel, inverting the fact that Coursier stalked me to Oxford, as the eyewitnesses know, and then she stalked my wife and son and stalked me. All of the evidence, and all of the witnesses, contradict the lies published there. On the basis of no evidence whatsoever, you make false accusations against me. And you are defending sexual harassment, sexual assault and stalking. Charlotte Coursier was a sexual harasser; she committed sexual assault; and she stalked me and my wife and my son for years. The victims and eyewitnesses are fully aware of her violence, harassment and abuse.
Coursier was driven to suicide by feminists in Oxford, who pushed her into a hole and prevented her getting emergency medical help; and she committed suicide when her boyfriend, who had persuaded her to have an unwanted abortion, dumped her and ignored her suicide threats. Prior to that, I had made welfare notifications (including to the police) and an Austrian woman made a detailed welfare notification to the Faculty in March 2013, after Coursier had stalked my wife out of town. These were ignored. Stop telling lies. Since the lies continue, I now publish that Austrian woman’s own description of the welfare notification she had made to the Faculty in March 2013:
——-
“I said she reacted to stress with violence against herself and others and if the rumors I heard were true, she would have scars on her wrists. I recommended that she should have female tutors rather than men and that they should know how to get professional help very quickly if she behaved in any unusual way”.
——
This was ignored. This is evidence. It was covered up.
[that should say “not bow out”, rather than “now bow out”.]
If I was so “powerful”, then why were the welfare notifications ignored? And why was I disbelieved and automatically treated as a liar, when I was telling the truth?
Look in the mirror, you appalling human beings. And take *responsibility* for your appalling behaviour.
You’re the appalling one here, and you clearly have shit for brains. What the fuck are you doing, inserting yourself into the discussion at every turn? The world doesn’t revolve around you and your petty insecurities, you dumb fuck. Get a haircut and grow the fuck up.
salt bubberubberubber we all think the same thing
salt bubberumberumber we all think the same thing
pontius elpatrication, a dudder rubber loaf philosophical
rending reading, brittle and soggy, reading gone on holdy
eat the edge of a wheat banana! it’s philosophical! P.S. Leiter and metabro en route.
I go through these lies one by one. When you distribute lies about innocent people it wrecks their live. So expect a response. You get a response to appalling lies.
1. “Coursier was afraid that nobody would believe her and that they would take Ketland’s side.”
That is false. Everyone she spoke to took her side, and treated me automatically as a criminal. And that feminist “believe the accuser” mentality led to her death, because she was in fact, lying and stalking me, as others witnessed.
2. “And it’s clear why: Ketland was in a position of immense power compared to her, and he quite evidently has the ability to spin things around.”
That is false. Coursier, being a woman had all the power – she was able to recruit multiple people who automatically believed her delusions – with an appalling outcome. I had no power. No one paid attention to the notifications given. No one. Had they paid attention to us, she would be alive. All the power was in Coursier’s hands: a delusional stalker.
3. “There can be little doubt that this saga of manipulation by Ketland contributed to her frame of mind when she tragically committed suicide.”
Her suicide was caused by her being mistreated by hysterical feminists in Oxford, who ensured she did not receive emergency welfare help and because her boyfriend dumped her. Your accusation is a lie. The evidence shows that she manipulated me into helping her. And much later she sexually assaulted me and began stalking me. And later still, in June 2011, she wrote, “you are still the person that saved my life and my degree”. In August 2011, she wrote, “for three years you were my life”. She was infatuated with me and in love with me for years. All of the evidence contradicts your lies.
4. “Now we can thank him for demonstrating just the sort of person Coursier was dealing with.”
Indeed. Someone who stopped Coursier killing herself in 2008; someone who prevented a suicide attempt in February 2009; someone who notified others of what was happening (Prof Andy Clark); someone who was kind to her and turned her life around for the next three years (“for three years you were my life”, August 2011); and someone who later, in 2013, tried to notify others in Oxford of serious concerns for her welfare. Which were ignored and then covered up.
5. “It’s downright horrifying and would be enough to derail even a well-adjusted student, much less one with a history of mental illness.”
What is horrifying is the mistreatment Coursier was subjected to in Oxford. Those around her knew of her background, but made no effort to protect her welfare. In fact, Coursier herself said this.
6. “And it’s all the more disturbing that Ketland continues to malign the reputation of his victim when she can no longer defend herself against his crazed accusations.”
Coursier died because of the feminist hysteria she was subjected to in Oxford and her breakup with her boyfriend. I am the one who tried to help. I was ignored. An Austrian woman tried to help too. Her notification in March 2013 was ignored. But Coursier was also a rapist, a liar and stalker. We were her *victims*, for years. That does not “malign” her reputation. It is the truth, and our experience of being stalked for years was horrendous. And then it was our lives that were wrecked again, with a shocking vigilante campaign of intimidation, cyber-harassment, lies and false accusations. We were even driven from our home.
Deal with the evidence and the facts. If you don’t want to hear the truth, don’t distribute appalling lies and fabrications against innocent people whose lives were deliberately wrecked by a vigilante witch hunt. I’m quite happy to keep going if the lies and false accusations continue. People like you deliberately wreck and destroy people lives, with lies. Expect to hear a response — the truth, based on evidence — to those lies and false accusations.
Jeff Ketland I’m sorry that you have to deal with this harassment, and all this on top of what you’ve already been through. The double standards at work here are truly appalling.
You write: “The second (The Sunday Times) was based on facts, evidence and witness reports.” Well, The Sunday Times reports that “police gave Ketland a harassment warning on May 22.” Are you denying that you were given this warning? You never answered another poster’s question in regard to this.
Moreover, as an anonymous U.K. philosopher writes on Leiter: “I’m no friend of the British police and I can quite see the potential for them to tar someone’s name without due process here. But anyone overseas who gets the impression that there’s an epidemic of unjust applications of such warnings would be getting the wrong idea. In fact, in cases of which I have knowledge, it was very difficult to prod the police to do anything at all. That’s also consistent with the general reluctance of law enforcement to help women in cases of domestic violence etc.”
It seems then we only have one piece of hard evidence beyond Ketland’s dubious testimony: Ketland, not Coursier, was the only person actually cited for harassment. Let’s allow the facts speak for themselves, not Ketland’s crazed post hoc self-rationalization.
First, this is not my “testimony’. This is hard evidence, from eyewitnesses. My flatmate, who partly witnessed an incident of Coursier sexually assaulting me and also witnessed her stalking me, isn’t a liar; my wife, whom Coursier stalked obsessively, isn’t a liar; the various witnesses are not liars; the woman who gave the welfare notifcation to the Philosophy Faculty is not a liar and I have quoted verbatim what she said. This is hard evidence.
Second, the claim above is speculation. In the UK, the police hand out PINs like confetti. There is no evidence required at all and no consultation of the victim of the accusation by the liar.
Third, I was given a PIN because I told a violent sexual harasser Charlotte Coursier to stop contacting me at my seminars. She stalked me on 6 May 2013, and she stalked me the following day, at a club I organized at my college, sitting one seat away from me, pretending not to know me. There were multiple witnesses. And I reported it immediately to people I knew. This is hard evidence. I told her to stop contacting me and stated, “You may recall that Matthew […] banned you from his flat after you assaulted me, and the police were called when you began screaming abuse at me” (15 May 2013). A few days later, Coursier withdrew her lies anyway. A few weeks after this, she then stalked me again (3 June 2013). I contacted the police to discuss this (5 June 2013). There is hard evidence of this too. None of this is “post- hoc”. It refers directly to events during the campaign of a violent sexual harasser against me. It is what happened at the time and is why I was terrified of this violent sociopathic stalker.
Those are the facts: a record, some of which is already public, of Coursier’s several year campaign of violence, stalking and harassment of me. And they do speak for themselves. Coursier was a rapist, a liar and a stalker.
“in cases of which I have knowledge, it was very difficult to prod the police to do anything at all. That’s also consistent with the general reluctance of law enforcement to help women in cases of domestic violence etc.” Whoever said this is a liar. Nothing is easier than getting the police to take precipitate action against men, however obviously bogus a woman’s accusation is.
Yes, that’s why when I went to the police with clear evidence of a sexual crime committed by a man, he was instantly interrogated and arrested. Oh wait–I remembered that wrong. Nothing happened.
In every case I know of a woman or child going to the police about an adult male’s domestic violence related crimes or sexual crimes, nothing happened to the man. The academic studies on the subject show that it is very difficult to get police to act in these situations. You are an MRA troll.
Everything you said here is a lie. You never did any such thing, you do not know of any such cases, the academic studies show know such thing. You’re a typical feminist. That is to say, you’re a liar.
Hi Jeff.
If I go to the police right now and accuse you of harassing me the UK police will give you a harassment warning. They will do it however obviously bogus my accusation is. They will do it despite my being drunk or raving or a well known liar. They will do it even if I have made 20 accusations in the past that have been proved false. Merely on receipt of an accusation, they have to give you the harassment warning. So you see, you need to understand that harassment warnings were created as a device to allow women to use the police to harass men man without any evidence, proof or anything.
“the general reluctance of law enforcement to help women in cases of domestic violence etc” LOL. You’re just trolling, right?
A major problem with feminist extremists is that they are promoting rape and domestic violence. As is well-known, a man who is raped and abused is automatically disbelieved and often arrested and punished. A woman is automatically believed, no matter how abusive and violent she may be, and how many lies she has told in the past. They just axiomatically defend rape and abuse so long as it is the man who is raped and abused. They’re insane. I’ve experienced:
1. Being sexually assaulted and long-term stalked (by Charlotte Coursier).
2. Being subjected to a vigilante witch hunt of slander, intimidation, fabrications, cyber-harassment, being driven out of home and public abuse.
Of these, the second is worse. The behaviour is pathological. They hunt down victims of sexual violence and stalking; the victims are left terrified.
I have a story about the effect of this horrifying campaign of vigilante harassment on my son, which I might write down later. It’s already in the public record what these vigilantes did in driving us out of our home. But the particular story isn’t.
Ketland’s the troll here. That, or his own mental health is deteriorating. It wasn’t enough that he was legally cleared of responsibility in Coursier’s death. Instead he’s decided that he has to tell the whole metablog that feminism is cancer, because women have hurt his feelings and JFK was abducted by lizard-people who are holding him hostage at the centre of the earth. Boohoo.
No, you’re the troll. A dirty femtroll. Go voice your support for Ong at femphil blog, everyone will agree with you on the femphil blog because dissidents are not allowed to post there. But on here we want critical discussion without personal attacks, not an echo chamber.
Rofl. Right.
Suppose you’re right, 6:13, and Ketland’s mental health is deteriorating. Is yours an appropriate response?
“Ketland’s dubious testimony” Aren’t we supposed to believe victims of domestic violence and sexual assault?
*Ketland, not Coursier, was the only person actually cited for harassment” First, Ketland was not cited for harassment. Harassment warnings are not citations: their factual content is nothing beyond being informed that someone has made an accusation. More importantly, her assault of him is not only recorded by the police but was witnessed. Her stalking of him and his family was testified to by his wife.
A citation is a legal act of an policeman to an accused stating the nature of the charge against them and giving notice to appear in court to answer the charge. A harassment warning is merely a statement that someone has made an accusation. So yes, the point of a harassment warning is to sound like a citation without being anything of the kind. It is purely a device of the state to exert discrimination against men and as such is a constituent part of the institutional oppression of men.
Feminism is cancer and this case is the proof of it. Ketland was evidently subjected to a campaign of harassment and intimidation by a woman with borderline personality disorder. In any just world he would have been protected from her. Instead, and entirely due to the connivance in and promotion of her malice by feminists, his family fled Oxford in fear of a feminist mob and his career has been destroyed.
Hold on. Jeff, you don’t deny having an affair with her, right? Why did you have an affair with her?
Ah, victims of sexual assault and stalking deserve it? Got it. How very 1950s of you.
The logician fails to realize that
A) Person X was a scary stalker toward Person Y, and is morally responsible for that
and
B) Person Y was a creepy lecher toward Person X, and is morally responsible for that
can both be true.
Answer the question…
“That, or his own mental health is deteriorating.”
Being sexually assaulted and stalked does have a bad effect on one’s mental health. This is true. And Charlotte Coursier was a sexual harasser and my stalker. So does being vigilante witch hunted with lies and driven out of one’s home. As far as I am aware, no one anywhere has ever accused me of anything connected to Coursier’s death. It’s a foul false accusation. I believe a pathological liar and cyber-stalker who was involved in Coursier’s death did this; but no one else I’m aware of. It’s simply a disgusting lie.
Back to the actual facts. Coursier’s death was caused by feminist hysteria, neglect of welfare notifications and her boyfriend dumping her on the day she died. Here’s the welfare notification again, given to the Faculty in March 2013 by a friend of mine, that was ignored:
“I said she reacted to stress with violence against herself and others and if the rumors I heard were true, she would have scars on her wrists. I recommended that she should have female tutors rather than men and that they should know how to get professional help very quickly if she behaved in any unusual way”.
Hard evidence. Had our notifications been listened to, Coursier would have gotten emergency attention and be alive.
But the feminist struggle is far more important than mere matters of life and death.
1. Did you have an affair with? Why did you have an affair with her?
2. You think it’s a foul false accusation to accuse you of contributing to Charlotte’s death, but not a foul false accusation to accuse feminists of contributing?
1.I bet you say that to all the women when they have been stalked and sexually assaulted.
2. Obviously its a false accusation to accuse him of contributing since nothing he did had anything to do with it, and that is why it is foul. Equally obviously, its a true that the feminist philosophers contributed because they used her to pursue their agenda against male philosophers. In pursuing that agenda they do not care what the truth is: they only care about promoting the narrative. They used Coursier and Ketland to promote the narrative despite the obvious fact (from the boyfriend’s evidence at the coroner’s court) that Ketland had nothing to do with her death. That is why his accusation is not foul: it is a true accusation that exposes the foulness of the feminist philosophers.
We have been over this. Charlotte Coursier was a rapist and stalker and you seem to want to deflect attention from that to the victim.
Why did the feminists who cajoled Coursier into making false accusations ignore her welfare? Why did they not notify a professional psychiatrist to protect her from her suicidal behaviour? Why did they not, as recommended, “get professional help as quickly as possible if she behaved in any unusual way”?
I’m still not understanding why Ketland was ever held responsible for any of this. The boyfriend whose evidence was given to the coroner’s court is the boyfriend by whom she got pregnant and at whose behest she then had an abortion. The evidence from this very boyfriend was that on the day he dumped her, she threatened to kill herself if he dumped her but he refused to give into her threat. Unable to change his mind, she then returned to Oxford and carried out her threat.
Quite obviously the boyfriend was scared that he was going to be blamed for her death. So why should we believe anything he says when he starts making self-serving accusations in order to deflect the blame onto Ketland?
Is it not enough of an explanation as to why there was a sexual relationship to notice that she was hot? I guess one of the lessons of this utter tragedy is the maxim: don’t stick your dick in crazy. Or perhaps the falsehood thereof as she committed suicide as soon as someone refused to stick his dick in crazy, and we don’t want a cute hot girl to commit suicide, now, do we?
Another lesson is that a sexual harasser is not a bad person; it’s much more nuanced. Have some sympathy for McGinn too, give the guy a job. He won’t do it again.
But the person who sexually harassed me was a bad person: a stalker. Bad enough to be imprisoned for sexual assault, had I pressed charges in late 2010; or for stalking, had my wife done what she wanted to do, and reported Coursier to the police in early 2013 for stalking.
I understand your feelings but I don’t think it’s that black-and-white. Try to forgive her, remember that she was mentally ill, and think of the good moments also. In the end, she was a good loving person trying hard to “stay alive”.
For all I know, Ketland may well have suffered at the hands of someone who was mentally unstable, however:
a) As he voluntarily and unwisely chose to have sex with a student he is partially the author of his own misfortune and b) his claim that the British police give out harrassment warnings like confetti is false.
Ketland has a long history of nutty claims on the internet, going back to a manifesto he wrote praising ultra-right-wing ideologue (later quoted approvingly by mass-murderer Breivik) Melanie Phillips. I don’t regard his testimony on any matter other than logic as reliable.
Wow, you’re cheap. Keep blaming the victim and poisoning the well.
My claim that UK police give out PINs like confetti is true. No evidence of any kind is required and the victim isn’t consulted. The police use them routinely to stop people arguing. Because they are so routinely handed out and victims of accusations have no right to reply to them, there are steps in law to revise that. Bear in mind that the PIN here was part of what prevented Coursier receiving emergency medical help. You need to think more carefully about this. I am not the “author” of being stalked by a sexual harasser: that is victim-blaming. I’m certainly not the author of being witch hunted by a vigilante mob.
I am not very interested in “ladies”, contrary to what the person above said about me. And it was Coursier who pursued me. I am more interested in guitars and politics. So on the politics point, Melanie Phillips is lovely, though a bit bonkers. She’s not “ultra-right wing”. She is a conservative, as was Coursier, who admired Melanie Phillips.
The fact that Coursier was a conservative does not make her wicked somehow. Coursier hated feminists too, whom she called morons. She supported Israel quite ardently, and also opposed abortion. If she came back to life, philosophy’s left-wingers would probably kill her again.
I have not written any such manifesto. Don’t be so absurd. Are you referring to Norman Geras, a (deceased) Marxist academic at Manchester, who wrote a manifesto opposing anti-imperialist extremism? You think Norman Geras is connected to Anders Breivik? Ha.
I think we can take your comments here with a pinch of salt.
Ah Jeff, you have my apologies for misremembering: you didn’t praise Mel P as such, you named her as a “source” (presumably of wisdom) in your “Cretino-Leftism, Political and Epistemological: A Brief Guide”, which I won’t insist on calling a “manifesto” if you object. Anyway, poor judgement, on your part.
The point remains, in any case, that, of your own volition, you had sex with a student. That’s the sort of choice that may turn out fine or may unravel into disaster. In this case it did. Well, I feel sorry for you, but you really shouldn’t be on here shouting about your victimhood.
Presumably you mean this, from way back in 2005:
http://wrongplanet.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=3489
I leave other metametametablog readers to judge whether this counts as a ‘nutty claim on the internet’ and whether we should, in light of it, distrust other (non-logic-related) claims that Ketland makes.
You win the prize for pompous prick of the week.
Hey, if Jeff had been a little more careful with his pompous prick, he wouldn’t be where he is today.
And maybe also if Coursier had been a bit more circumspect with her crazy cunny all this unpleasantness could have been avoided. (Though this Mid-February thread would have been less lively.)
As a counterfactual, that is false. Because she would have stalked me either way; because she was in love with me. As for your speech act, are you going to say that about Benjamin Fardell’s “prick” – he impregnated her with his “prick”.
Maybe you should try to learn to reason and to be reasonable?
Melanie Phillips is fine. Leave her alone. I wrote an essay about far-left stupidity, true. I am right. Just look at the current state of the social justice loons. And order your copy of Laura Kipnis’s book on current state of left-wing delusionality in higher education tomorrow. I cited Norman Geras, Michael Walzer, etc. These people are not connected to Anders Breivik. And neither is Melanie Phillips. I can’t remember how Melanie Phillips is connected: maybe through her book Londonistan. So, what just happened in London, by the way, two days ago? An Islamist murdered a bunch of people.
“That’s the sort of choice that may turn out fine or may unravel into disaster.”
Any sort of choice may turn out fine or unravel into a disaster, so your comment is logically irrelevant. Benjamin Fardell chose of his own free will to have a sexual relationship with Coursier and how do you think he feels? He must still feel traumatized every day. Do you think Fardell should not have had a relationship with her because she might eventually commit suicide? Should Fardell be publicly demonized and chased out of his home? He made a call. Everyone does. That’s life.
What happens in the real world depends on the behaviour and outlook of others. So let’s look at your ideology, which seems to be, “Adults at universities should be forbidden from having relationships, getting married, etc.” But this is crazy. It is imposed nowhere I’m familiar with. Thousands of people meet, have relationships. Are you going to fire thousands of academics? Should gay marriage be banned? What happened to people when gay relationship were banned? Just think about these obvious things. Did they feel paranoid? Did they have to hide them? Were they made to feel ashamed?
But it’s much worse than that. The disaster inflicted on Coursier was caused by people with this ideology. It creates paranoia; fear; hysteria and panic. Coursier came into contact with American feminists with this ideology and within three months she was dead. Do you think she wanted to reveal she was in love with the person she was badmouthing? Of course not. They terrified her to death. She wanted one thing: to re-engage contact with me, because her *boyfriend* was going to dump her. This was made impossible by them, because of their mad ideology. They were pushing her, manipulating her and cajoling her. But she was even trying to contact me again, after these nutcases got their knives stuck into me. This puritanical ideology you are promoting is not good. It is bad. It has been tried exactly once in the United Kingdom, by American feminists in Oxford and … bang! It *killed* someone. It’s lethal.
As for being a victim. That is simply true. Charlotte Coursier sexually harassed me, stalked me and lied about me. You are just victim-blaming, repeatedly.
Joanna Ong’s Bravery
I know nothing at all about the facts of underlying Joanna Ong’s lawsuit but I admire her bravery for filing it and asking for large damages against various parties. Whatever the merits of the allegations, she has done a brave thing. So brave, in fact, that the bravery alone warrants a guilty finding against all parties and an award of damages – triple damages in fact, though even that does not adequately respond to the courage displayed in the lawsuit. In the unlikely event that the facts, which I still know nothing about, do not completely support the allegations, John Searle should still pay damages because he has not been brave.
Why did Justice Whineberg delete them? Too much truth?
Ketland showed up.
Jeff Ketland’s primary mistake was that he got involved with someone whom he knew to be quite unstable. It’s not just that this kind of thing *could* end badly: this kind of thing *typically* ends badly. The fact that she was a student at his institution made matters worse, not morally, but prudentially: it gave various parties ammunition against him, something that was also predictable. Bottom line: getting involved with a mentally unstable student at your own institution who is 20-some years your junior has a very high probability of ending either badly or very badly. If he had never gotten intimately involved with her, then he might have suffered stalking, harassment, assault, etc., but nobody would have had any ammunition against him.
I almost did something similar. She was a grad student at a different institution. We were at a conference together, and ended up hanging out all the time, sharing personal stories, etc. She was very sexy and very flirtatious and very troubled. Anyway, towards the end of the conference, there we were in her room, talking and drinking late into the night, she making it clear she wanted action. Then, in a flash, I came to my senses and took my leave. Boy was she pissed off the next day! Though I have my regrets, I think that I dodged a bullet. Even while in her room, laughing and drinking and flirting, I kept imagining life-destroying possibilities in the aftermath: late-night phone calls, emails to my fiancée, stalking, complaints around the profession (I didn’t have tenure yet), etc. Anyway, that was over 20 years ago and I’ve avoided such situations ever since. It’s just too imprudent.
This story suggests some useful advice, and the kind that philosophers seem to be in need of!
Professor Ketland, may I ask: did you resign from Oxford some time recently? And if so, why? I mean, where I work, you can pretty much avoid your colleagues if things get toxic. And at least you get paid.
“Even while in her room, laughing and drinking and flirting, I kept imagining life-destroying possibilities in the aftermath: late-night phone calls, emails to my fiancée, stalking, complaints around the profession (I didn’t have tenure yet), etc. Anyway, that was over 20 years ago and I’ve avoided such situations ever since. It’s just too imprudent.”
And this, my friends, is precisely what Rightness as Fairness argues moral judgment and motivation involve (with ample empirical backing to boot). This fellow encountered what I call “the problem of possible future selves” when he began worrying about the possibilities. His worries led him to see fairness to himself–and by extension fairness to a disturbed person–to require leaving the room and avoiding situations like it again.
Sort of ironic to see the truth of a theory that has been much-maligned here illustrated *on* the very blog where it has been maligned. And notice–just to clarify–that it had nothing to do with “formal constraints” on diachronic reasoning of the sort defended by Korsgaard or Nagel. It came instead from nothing more than a very precise and isolated *fact* of human motivation: the fact that, sometimes, when we are tempted to act impulsively, we worry about the possibilities–which is exactly what I argue in my book.
Isn’t this quite obvious, though? Do you want credit too for saying that people sometimes weigh the pros and cons of a decision before they make it?
This defensive posture is not a good look for you, Marcus, especially when you post under your own name. Go back to posting here anonymously.
Awesome! Professor Arvan reappears, just as we’re beginning to forget his previous contributions upthread, to bring the metametameta-discussion back round to good old 1st-order philosophy – and in defence of his own book to boot! Great Segue.
Now I’m really hoping ex-Professor McGinn might pop up here and chime in with some comments that both defend his own critically disparaged recent books and discuss the risks and rewards of tupping one’s own students.
I never tupped her! I just sent her some sexy sexy emails about prehension and what I’d like to do with my hand – which led me to repeatedly prehend myself and do a special sexy wee-wee in my pants. Anyway, I much prefer being unemployed as it allows me to really concentrate on my work.
Concerning the critical reaction to my books: did I ever mention that Steven Pinker said that I “think like a laser and write like a dream”?
“Isn’t this quite obvious, though? Do you want credit too for saying that people sometimes weigh the pros and cons of a decision before they make it?”
That is not what the book says either. It does not hold that morality is just an ordinary process of weighing pros and cons. The book argues that morality is a very specific *way* weighing pros and cons that (A) psychopaths lack capacities to do, (B) children and adolescents have underdeveloped capacities to do, (C) normal adult subjects sometime do, but also (D) we do not always do very well (which my theory aims to explicate and show why we should do it better).
If you want a better idea of what the book actually says, and how it speaks directly to the case I responded to above, see here: http://philosopherscocoon.typepad.com/blog/2017/03/ndpr-rightness-as-fairness.html
And if you want some idea of how emerging empirical evidence strongly coheres with the specific account I give, see here: http://philosopherscocoon.typepad.com/blog/2017/02/empirical-underpinnings-of-moral-judgment-and-motivation.html
Cool. Meanwhile, the cocoon is an excellent thing – long may it continue.
I said above I’d tell a story about what happened when we got driven out of our home in Oxford by these crazed loonies.
For months before this Inquest (26 Feb 2014), I’d been told by the assistant there that I wasn’t going to be mentioned, as Mr Salter (the Senior Coroner) thought I was irrelevant. And the police, whom I’d asked to tell me what happened, had told me I was irrelevant too. But a lawyer I’d asked for help found out that a “lecturer form Hertford College” had been making allegations against me to the Coroner, and was pressuring them. Then, a few days before it occurred (22 Feb 2014), we got anonymously cyber-harrassed by someone calling me a “murderer”. My wife was terrified and I reported this to the police and to my college. And just before that (19 Feb 2014), the same lawyer emailed me saying the University was had just now contacted the Coroner. So they were now pressurizing the Coroner. But the assistant there still replied that I wasn’t going to be mentioned, which is what I had been assured of for about five months. But with this happening, everyone said, you need to get away for your safety. So, that morning, we fled and drove to Scotland. We were scared shitless. Petrified.
Half way there, maybe around Liverpool or Lancaster, we began to get phone calls about plans by the press to publish appalling lies about us. These calls came originally from my college. I stopped the car and took a couple of these calls. One said The Times was going to publish some attack on me, My wife was crying. We were discussing what was happening, what disgusting and insane claims were going to be made, etc.
Suddenly, my 4 year old son, Sammy, who was in the back of the car, said, “I want to kill myself”.
My wife stopped crying and started talking to him about going swimming. We got to Edinburgh about midnight, and my wife found the disgusting fabricated filth had been published online about me in The Daily Mail.
The people who did this, including the “lecturer from Hertford College”, will never be forgiven for what they did.
Do you know who the ‘lecturer from Hertford College’ is?
As I found out later, it was Boddington — someone I’d never heard of then, and who certainly didn’t know Coursier, and who now seemed to be libeling me all over the place online.
Catarina Dutilh Novaes asked me who Boddington was. I said I had no clue. I’ve never seen her or met her. But she had been slandering me for months without my knowing. I looked her up and there she was: some kind of lecturer at Hertford College. Boddington said the fabrications in The Daily Mail were “accurate”. Dutilh Novaes told Boddington on Twitter they had inverted the chronology – it was Coursier who followed me to Oxford.
(In fact, when I discovered in March 2012 that Coursier was following me to Oxford, I became seriously ill, as I was so scared of Coursier. I wasn’t able to walk for two months and had to leave Germany and needed medical treatment in the UK for stress-related illness. Plenty of people know about this.)
Boddington wouldn’t back down, even though her claims were literally insane.
Interesting – thanks for the information.
Here is Boddington, back in 2014, writing in to Leiter to assure him that the report in the Daily Mail is ‘the most accurate’:
http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2014/02/oxford-philosopher-accused-of-harassing-behavior.html
One more question: if what you say is true (and I have no reason to doubt you), have you considered legal action action against either the Daily Mail or Boddington?
Defamation time limit expires after 12 months, very strictly. There’s nothing I can do about Boddington’s defamation of me. Or others really. They can just call me a murderer, or whatever, and I’m stuck with it.
I complained to The Daily Mail via the Press Complaints Commission, PCC, in April 2014, I think. They ignored it. The PCC was wound up anyway a few weeks later, because of the scandals involving the UK press intrusions into privacy and The Leveson Inquiry, which aims to protect individuals from massive intrusion into their private life. Obviously no one consulted me about the lies they published and no one gave me a right to reply. PCC was replaced by a body called IPSO. I complained to them in mid 2015. They were sympathetic but insisted their time limit forbade any action.
I complained again against The Daily Mail through a lawyer in Jan 2015. After a fight for a few weeks, they agreed to remove Boddington’s time-travel fantasies, but refused to change anything else, citing “legal privilege”. My lawyer said it would cost me around half a million pounds to challenge them further, and they can win on legal privilege anyway. He advised me to give up.
I know Paula Boddington slightly, and she’s always struck me as calm, rational and level-headed, and certainly not a malicious or ideologically-driven person. She is a feminist, and Ketland doesn’t seem to like them very much.
Really? Explain how inverting the order of events in time — it was Coursier who demonstrably followed me to Oxford — thereby accusing someone of some kind of time travel, “rational”, pray tell?
It’s insane libel, by the most elementary standard of rationality.
The Oxfordshire Senior Coroner, Darren Salter, apologised about Boddington’s crazy false accusation in a letter to me in June 2014 and even The Daily Mail removed Boddington’s false accusation in January 2015.
See Alasdair Richmond’s comments below, if you can be bothered.
Well, if you know Boddington slightly and she seemed calm to you, that’s good enough to me! CASE CLOSED #BoddingtonDidNothingWrong
On 5 September 2013, I was anonymously cyber-harassed by being sent a message calling me a “murderer”. I showed a couple of people a screenshot of it and asked them what they thought, “wtf is this?”. The answer: “Sure, it’s some insider calling you a murderer”. So, I reported it to the Thames Valley Police and to the college and to the university. Police officer did nothing about it, as it was anonymous. A few days later, the person i reported it to contacted me and told me a “woman involved in the Coursier business” had been in contact with the police, and the police then called me. I missed the call and walked to the police station. They wouldn’t tell me what happened. As it turned out, the person I reported it to had leaked my report to this “woman involved in the Coursier business”, and she then went to the police and called me a liar. For accurately reporting being cyber-harassed! I asked him who she was but he refused to tell me. That was September 2013. (And connected to this, on the very same day, 5 September, 2013, an American graduate student called me a murderer on Twitter, but I didn’t see this until April 2014 when someone found it and showed it to me.) In March 2014, after being driven from home by these witch hunting loons, I returned to Oxford and asked the person I’d reported it to again who this person was. He revealed that it was Boddington.
So summarizng the level of craziness here:
1. This “woman involved in the Coursier business” — Boddington — basically went to the UK police in Sept 2013 and called me a liar, to cover up me being cyber-harassed which I’d reported to the police (it was very scary). And this was all kept secret from me.
2. It turns out that Boddington was the “lecturer from Hertford College” who was making “wild accusations” against me to the Coroner (in October 2013, I think), which my lawyer said the Coroner did not take seriously.
3. And she seemed to have been involved somehow in The Daily Mail story filled with grotesque false accusations in February 2014.
5. Boddington followed up this by publicly libellng me all over the place.
6. Boddginton’s insane false accusation that I “followed” someone to Oxford (the exact reverse is demonstrably true) was corrected by Catarina Dutilh Novaes on Twitter, but Boddington ignored the facts. Even so, Boddington’s bizarre false accusation was apologised for by the Senior Coroner in a letter to me in June 2014. And it was even removed by The Daily Mail in January 2015.
I’ve never once set eyes on this person and know nothing about her, except that she is a tornado of libel, who went behind a colleague’s back to smear and ruin that colleague’s and his family’s lives with false accusations. What kind of person behaves like this?
You do. Demonstrably, in your utterly vile, evidence-free, libellous Critica blog, on an almost daily basis, Ketland.
Hi Drongo
Anybody who can seriously conclude that PB is saying the whole Daily Mail article is ‘accurate’ needs to take a lesson in logic. Read it!! What she says is “As someone – one of the few – who attended the inquest into the death of CC, I can tell you that the most accurate report of the evidence presented at the inquest is actually to be found in the Daily Mail although of course any report is only a part of all the evidence presented.”
She doesn’t at any point state what Ketland or ‘Anonymous’ (ha, ironic ha) claims, that the whole article in the Daily Mail is the most accurate, she says that the Daily Mail write up of the inquest is the most accurate. As a professor of logic I’d have thought JK could have spotted the difference, but no. Never let the actual truth get in the way of a good excuse to pin the blame on someone eh, and most people are too lazy or disinterested to investigate.
I can’t really believe Ketland is stupid enough not to realise the difference between actual reality and what he claims, so one must suspect his motives are disingenuous.
Read it, Mr. Anon, or Drongo, or Ketland, or whoever you are, and then you will discover that you are telling massive porky-pie lies. For that is NOT what she said. As anyone with an IQ over 80 will understand.
That is all.
Maybe I did make a mistake by defending it here. I despise this forum and have generally stayed away from it, have never done anything to promote this place, and have done my best to contribute positively to the profession. I am sorry if I failed on this occasion. I am only human.
We can promote ethically sound student schtupping, whilst he promotes his (allegedly shitty?) leaflet. Sounds like a good deal to me.
I humbly ask for forgiveness, but also charity. It has been difficult to see years of hard work misrepresented. This was the first and only time I have ever posted here, and now it will be the last.
I absolve you… I absolve you!
One of us! One of us! One of us!
“an American graduate student called me a murderer on Twitter”. Who was this? Do you have the tweet?
That person is Brooke Berndtson, Coursier’s housemate. The 5 Sept 2013 Twitter accusation from Berndtson is still there. Here’s the quote and link,
“Fun facts about #Oxford. You can bully a student into suicide and still be on the lecture list to teach the upcoming term”
5 Sept 2013 is also the same day I was cyber-harassed with an anonymous message “jeffrey ketland – murderer”, which I reported it to Thames Valley Police and the University. I was pretty scared of this. But my report was leaked to a woman “involved in the Coursier business”, who contacted the police and called me a liar. Many months later (March or April 2014), this turned out to be Paula Boddington, the “lecturer from Hertford College”, whom my lawyer earlier had told me had made wild accusations against me to Oxfordshire’s Coroner’s office; and who also seems to have successfully pressurized Oxfordshire’s Assistant Coroner to make these wild accusations against me in February 2014.
I was anonymously cyber-harased the same way on 22 February 2014 as well, calling me a “murderer”. My wife actually saw it, as she had my phone with her and she started crying; we reported it to the police immediately. It was extremely creepy, like something from a horror movie. That’s when we were advised to leave for our safety.
Anyway, it then transpired that Paula Boddingtion was Brooke Berndtson’s BPhil supervisor. Berndtson apparently had great control over Coursier during Coursier’s final few weeks alive; she then spent months slandering me as a “murderer”. Apparently, according to others present, she did this at Coursier’s funeral, upsetting the mourners.
So having read everything on this thread about the Ketland affair, here is my attempt to draw some fair and impartial conclusions:
One may not accept that all of Ketland’s claims are totally accurate. Indeed it would be pretty unwise to do so simply on the basis of his posts on this blog. And one may well still think that he is not absolved from responsibility or moral blame etc for sleeping with the student Coursier.
But I think it is pretty clear by now that he is not a ‘sexual predator’; it is pretty clear that he did not pursue Coursier, nor did he ‘bully’ her (it seems rather to have been the other way around); it is pretty clear that he has been the victim of some nasty ‘cyber-bullying’ and false, perhaps slanderous allegations from the Daily Mail.
There is hard evidence that Paula Boddington was actively promoting the Daily Mail’s false version of events at Leiter’s blog. And there is hard evidence of her student, Brooke Berndston, falsely accusing Ketland of ‘bullying’ Coursier to death on Twitter. In light of this, Ketland’s story about Boddington also making allegations to the coroner seems highly plausible.
I would suggest that this is already enough to raise very serious questions about professional misconduct by Boddington and by Berndtson. If there are any metametametablog readers at Oxford (other than Jeff Ketland!), I suggest that it would be entirely reasonable to raise these concerns at the faculty level. Moreover, I would suggest that any philosophers who are considering inviting Boddington or Berndtson to speak at conferences or workshops should give serious thought to whether it is appropriate to invite people who appear to have engaged in this kind of professional misconduct towards a colleague at their own department.
There is currently a pretty ridiculous debate at the Feminist Philosophers blog as to whether one should even teach Searle’s work, given the (as yet unproven) allegations against him. However, a less ridiculous question is whether it is appropriate to, say, invite Searle to be a keynote speaker. I would certainly have 2nd thoughts about inviting Pogge to speak at a conference. Given the evidence we have publicly available, I suggest that the same might well apply to Boddington and perhaps also to Berndtson.
I would be genuinely interested – i.e. that is honestly not meant in a snarky or sarcastic way – as to whether the bloggers at Feminist Philosophers, or anyone else for that matter, would agree that Boddington and Berndston have a very serious case to answer and that it is therefore right to think twice about inviting them to academic events? And would it be reasonable for students to be concerned, given the available evidence, at the prospect of being taught by Boddington or Berndston?
If Ketland’s comments on here had any merit, he would have taken official action. He had plenty of time to press charges against Coursier, bring a libel suit against his accusers, or to file harassment complaints against Boddington et al. He could have done a lot of things. Instead he’s taken to the slum of the internet to post an entirely one-sided account of the whole affair. Bear in mind that we haven’t seen *any* actual evidence from him. And none of this is official testimony. Heck, we don’t even know if it’s actually Ketland on here or just some troll.
Here are a few facts that we do have:
– Ketland engaged in a sexual relationship with an already emotionally disturbed student who was many, many years his junior.
– Ketland was given a harassment warning by the police.
– Ketland was reinstated and was never brought up on criminal charges.
Minimally he showed a complete lack of judgment. Morally, I think, he did indeed do a great wrong by Coursier when he engaged with her in an intense platonic, and later overtly sexual, relationship. Does that make him a murderer? Of course not. Does it make him a bad person? That’s something each person can decide on their own. But if he’s a victim at all, he’s one of his own doing.
One thing is clear to me: Ketland’s trying to push the blame onto others in this way is really beyond the pale. And calling Coursier a “rapist” demonstrates a unique form of shamelessness.
So why in the world would you give Ketland the benefit of the doubt and not Boddington and Berndston? At most his comments on here should lead one to suspend judgment about the case altogether for want of better information.
“He had plenty of time to press charges against Coursier, bring a libel suit against his accusers… Instead he’s taken to the slum of the internet to post an entirely one-sided account of the whole affair.”
Yeah, and Rachelle Bascara could have sued Thomas Pogge but instead took the story to the slum of the internet… plug in any name for an accuser and accused, and you’ve given a recipe for doubting accusers. Is that the intended effect?
I don’t think you are being as fair as impartial as you think you are.
(1)”it is pretty clear that he did not pursue Coursier, nor did he ‘bully’ her”
On what grounds did you reach this conclusion? There are people who say that he did. Ketland says that he didn’t. So what happened is not clear at all.
(2)”There is hard evidence that Paula Boddington was actively promoting the Daily Mail’s false version of events at Leiter’s blog. ”
In that post you refer to, Boddington is careful to point out, several times, that the report is a report about the evidence that was presented at the inquest. Why would she go out of her way to point out that the evidence is not tested, and is merely a report of what was presented, and should not to taken as an attempt to provide a full picture, etc if she was intent on ‘actively promoting’ the false version of events? If this was the goal, it would be better not to respond at all.
(3) And there is hard evidence of her student, Brooke Berndston, falsely accusing Ketland of ‘bullying’ Coursier to death on Twitter.
There is hard evidence of the accusation. There is not hard evidence that it was false – only Ketland’s say so. Note that she also does not refer to Ketland by name in that post.
The fact of the matter is, there is very little actual evidence other than what Ketland himself is saying. And of course given the nature of this blog there is a possibility that the poster is not even Ketland.
On Boddington, here’s yet another example of her pointing out that the assertions made at the inquest were not necessarily correct – here she points out that it was not the coroner who described Ketland’s email as crazy and rambling, but that he was just reporting the opinion of a witness.
https://feministphilosophers.wordpress.com/2014/03/05/more-on-the-oxford-letter/
This doesn’t fit the narrative Ketland is pushing above.
Ketland did take official action. He complained to Oxford University about being harassed and stalked and also to the police. The police were called when Coursier assaulted him and there is a witness to that assault. On the libel issue, first, you need money to sue people for libel; second, because the libels were made as claims in the Coroner’s court they were made under privilege and the papers can get away with re-iterating such libels so long as they report it as statements made to the court. If you look at the reports you will see they all were very careful to assert those claims under that protection. So what happened was the boyfriend who dumped her on the day she killed herself made a load of self-serving claims in an attempt to blame Ketland and the newspapers reported them under the privilege of court reporting. Only the wealthiest can sue that kind of libel.
‘what happened was”….
Simply asserting ‘what happened was’ doesn’t make it true that that is in fact what happened.
I would put more weight on testimony given at an inquest versus what Ketland is writing here without fear of consequence. After all, lying at an inquest would be considered perjury and could result in criminal charges. Besides, the boyfriend’s comments don’t look all that self-serving to me. They seem to express a lot of personal regret.
This is the boyfriend to whom Coursier had made the threat of killing herself if he dumped her, which boyfriend then dumped her, and in response to which Coursier killed herself a few hours later? Perhaps you didn’t notice the bit where he’s trying get people to blame Ketland rather than himself? You know, just almost everything he said.
As another poster says below, the fact that Ketland was reappointed by Oxford IS strong independent evidence that he did not ‘bully’ anyone. It is therefore also strong evidence that Berndston’s tweet was false.
And whilst it is of course a possibility that the person posting here under the name “Jeff Ketland” is not actually Jeff Ketland, I think you know perfectly well, as does anyone else who has read all the posts on here, that it *is* indeed the real Ketland.
Thank you.
I think there is a further fact the speaks very strongly in Ketland’s favor. No one gets fired by a university and then re-instated. Yet that is exactly what happened to him: first Oxford fired him and then they completely back-tracked on that and re-instated him. Something must have been massively wrong about that firing for them to have reversed it.
This is a really good point. If you can *get your job back* (as opposed to, *keeping your job*) even after the kind of shitstorm that Ketland faced, this speaks loudly on your behalf.
Right, because big bureaucracies like universities and churches never protect serial abusers.
You have entirely missed the point of the previous post. Whilst it is common enough for big organizations to cover up scandals committed by their employees, it is *not* at all common for big organizations to reappoint employees that they have already fired. It is reasonable to infer that they would only do so if there is *strong* evidence that the employee (or ex-employee) was innocent of the alleged scandal after all.
Oh ok, so all of those Catholic priests who were forced into laicization for fiddling children but still get their pensions must actually be innocent. Gotchya.
Still getting a pension after being removed from your job is not at all the same thing as being re-appointed to your job. Obviously.
Your attempt at a sarcastic, cynical comment does not alter the fact that Ketland’s reappointment is clearly considerable evidence in his favor – though hardly conclusive, of course.
It’s really time to stop teaching Jennifer Saul. Oh, wait.
Read Ketland’s twitter feed. Shorter: the feminazis are out to get innocent men.
Yes, that proves he knows at least one fact.
“Boddington is careful to point out, several times, that the report is a report about the evidence that was presented at the inquest.” This is an instance of her dishonesty. The self-serving lies of the boyfriend who dumped her on the day she killed herself are not evidence of anything except his willingness to try to divert blame from himself. And you can now see why he did that: if he hadn’t, the feminist mob would have been after him.
How on earth is it an instance of her dishonesty? What you are saying does not make any sense. How exactly is it dishonest to point out, as she does, that “It should be carefully noted that the newspaper reports are reports of what was presented as evidence at the inquest, and should not be read as attempts to provide a ‘full picture’ of circumstances around Charlotte’s tragic death.” and “These reports should also be read very carefully, noting that they are reports of the evidence presented at inquest, as indicated by the use of quotation marks, and of phrases such as ‘the inquest heard’.” and that “An inquest is not adversarial, so evidence presented is not tested in the same way as it would be in a criminal or civil case”
it might help if you actually read the post: http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2014/02/oxford-philosopher-accused-of-harassing-behavior.html
Apparently you are unable to recognize that her judicious self-presentation is humbug, humbug she is using to cover up the essential point. It is dishonest to pretend that the self-serving evasions of the boyfriend count as evidence of anything related to Ketland when that boyfriend is the boyfriend to whom Coursier had made the threat of killing herself if he dumped her, which boyfriend then dumped her, and in response to which Coursier killed herself a few hours later. In those circumstances the suggestion that Ketland had anything to do with her death is disgraceful. Boddington knows it, the coroner knows it, and the senior coroner knows it, which is why he repudiated the irresponsible conduct of his subordinate coroner (the conduct of allowing the boyfriend to promulgate his self-serving evasions).
(1) Boddington does not refer specifically to any particular evidence (2) Boddington repeatedly states that the reports are reports of things that were presented as evidence, and that the evidence was not tested. (3) she does not express any opinion whatsoever about whether any of the things said were true.
What is dishonest is blurring the distinction, as you quite deliberately are doing, between some claim counting as evidence for a conclusion, and something being presented ‘as evidence’ in an official proceeding. You seem to be saying that the fact that Boddington states the latter is somehow some sneaky way of covering up the fact that she is really pretending the former. But there is no reason whatsoever to believed this.
Since it is obvious that Boddington is exploiting the blurring of that distinction, it is now equally obvious that your judicious self-presentation is humbug too.
No she isn’t. She is explicitly pointing out that the reports are reports of the ‘evidence presented’ and that the ‘evidence presented is not tested’. There is no way to read that as a blurring of the distinction, even if you were intent on being deeply uncharitable.
“Coursier had made the threat of killing herself if he dumped her”
And where was this? The closest you get to it is in the Daily Mail article, where the boyfriend’s testimony was reported: “She was crying and told me ‘I don’t want to live without you’.” That’s not exactly the ultimatum “Dump me and I’ll kill myself.”
“the conduct of allowing the boyfriend to promulgate his self-serving evasions”
How in the world do you get “self-serving evasions” out of testimony like the following: “I can’t help but feel my breaking up with her was the tipping point but I understand I am not responsible for her death[…]I deeply regret not picking up the phone when she called. I wish she would have waited for me, I would have come to Oxford.”
All I see there is heartbreak and regret. Why Ketland, whose actions were clearly improper, doesn’t similarly feel regret for his part in the whole thing is just beyond me.
Great to see such intellectual dishonesty on display from you. Yes, let’s just pretend that he didn’t tell lies about Ketland in order to deflect blame from himself.
Doesn’t strike me as “intellectually dishonest” in the least to put more stock in a genuine expression of regret that was given under penalty of perjury than in Ketland’s one-sided account of events. What is intellectually dishonest is to belief the drivel Ketland is talking without a shred of actual evidence.
“without a shred of actual evidence.”
There is plenty of detailed evidence already listed above.
Evidence from a flatmate who eyewitnessed an assault against me and eyewitnessed Coursier stalking me. Evidence from my wife who was also one of Coursier’s victims, a victim of Coursier’s years of stalking us. Evidence from an Austrian woman I quoted above, who notified the Faculty in March 2013 of our concerns, that Coursier might need “professional help quickly if she behaved in any unusual way”. Evidence that Coursier herself thought the person she spoke to didn’t care about “my welfare”. Evidence that she was told to “delete older correspondence”. Being told to delete correspondence is serious misconduct by the way.
Fardell, who certainly did dump her and ignore her suicide threats, was not present at that inquest – one that I was not invited to, or asked even to reply to and that had been told I wouldn’t be mentioned. That outrageous event occurred solely because of direct pressure from others, including Paula Boddington, as the actual evidence listed above shows. So there was no threat of any kind. It is merely a statement which an assistant read out, for which not a shred of evidence exists. None. He was not there, obviously, and has no idea what the facts were. These are things “she told her friends”, as the Senior Coroner Mr Salter put it to me in a June 2014 letter, when apologising for what happened and correcting the absurd fabrications that Boddington distributed. That is more real actual evidence.
Charlotte Coursier was a liar and a stalker, who assaulted me, pursued and stalked me for years, as all the evidence shows and all the eyewitnesses testify to. This includes further eyewitnesses in Edinburgh and multiple eyewitnesses in Oxford who witnessed Coursier stalking me. Coursier stalked my wife and son, with whom she was obsessed. We were petrified of this long-term stalker, and many others knew about this before June 2013. When she revealed to me, in March 2012, that she was following me to Oxford, I became seriously ill, as is a mater of public record, as as many others know and witnessed. She was a stalker and we were terrified. And there is not one single piece of evidence otherwise.
If you want more evidence of this stalker’s behaviour, ok fine. Here is some more actual evidence. From the deranged emails to me from my stalker, Charlotte Coursier, through eight months in 2011, when she continued harassing me after she’d attacked me at the end of 2010 – as is a matter of public record. And during Coursier’s campaign of harassment against me during 2011, I replied to her, “I have no idea what you’re referring to. Please stop sending abusive and threatening emails.” (9 July 2011) She was harassing me. This is clear. I had no ill will against her, irrespective of her violence towards me. I simply didn’t want to be harassed and threatened by her.
Evidence
——-
2 January 2011 19:23:16 GMT: “… It’s sad that it always had to end like this. … I’ll always love you.”
4 January 2011 20:41:57 GMT: “I know you don’t want to hear from me but this is the last chance I’ll have to say goodbye.”
25 March 2011 18:52:33 GMT: “I just want to make things better. Can you just explain why you’re ignoring me please?”
3 June 2011 18:30:50 BST: “I just wanted to say sorry for anything I did to hurt you. … after all you are still the person that saved my life and my degree! … I’ll always love you and be wishing you well.”
15 June 2011 14:20:40 BST: “Would you like to talk on the phone at some point Jeffrey? I’d really like to know how you’ve been.”
9 August 2011 00:54:17 BST: “I haven’t been completely honest … I’m still so obviously in love with you. … I split up with my boyfriend because I’m still not over you: … I pushed myself through the rest of my degree for you. I will continue to push myself.”
14 August 2011 21:01:00 BST: “I’m terrified Jeffrey. I don’t know what to do. I really need help. Please tell me what I should do and that’s what I’ll do”.
14 August 2011 22:15:29 BST: “I need someone, anyone to help me. I can’t do it. I’m begging the world for another option. Please, I don’t want to hurt anyone. I never have. I just want it to stop. How do I make it stop? I want it to stop.”
16 August 2011 00:18:32 BST: “No one will help me. Why? I can’t answer. They don’t care, in which case I shouldn’t be concerned, although I still am.”
16 August 2011 00:37:59 BST: “I’ve made it very clear that I still care about you and I don’t want you to be hurt. SO, remember that ok. Goodbye my old best friend. … But I wouldn’t change any of it, to love someone so completely is the only real way of living.”
16 August 2011 19:36:52 BST: “I’ve been trying my hardest to carry on Jeffrey. … Like I said before, I carried on with everything for you, but I see no end to all this pain. … I don’t want to hurt anyone Jeffrey. I’m not being threatening or manipulative”
18 August 2011 14:46:01 BST: ”I’’m honestly not going to message you anymore Jeffrey: you’ve made yourself perfectly clear by ignoring me. … for three years Jeffrey you were my world, I loved you more than I’ve loved anyone. You put so much on the line to help me … I genuinely did push myself through the rest of my degree for you, whatever that’s worth.”
You really don’t understand how things like discovery work in a trial, do you Jeff? I’m not saying that you are on trial here (you’re not), but your insistence that you are innocent of any wrongdoing or lack of judgment forces the issue. Evidence isn’t usually filtered through the very person suspected of wrongdoing. So all of the “evidence” you’re providing merely serves as one data point representing your particular view of things. And while that’s an important view for any objective person to consider, there are other data points too — ones that I personally find more reliable. (Bear in mind that even a written statement at an inquest would still be subject to perjury charges if information in it were falsified.)
Moreover, *even if* everything you’re saying were true, there remains the fact that you engaged in a sexual relationship with this student who was clearly troubled — and you did so well after becoming aware of how deeply troubled she was. How can you not see the error in your judgment? The putative texts you’ve pasted above are only further evidence of all this. They seem to show the immense pain of someone who was emotionally fragile and (quite predictably) reacted very badly to the ending of an improper and emotionally-charged relationship that never should have been available to her in the first place.
Also can we stop it with this “she was following me to Oxford” nonsense? It’s not like Oxford is some random university in the middle of nowhere that would be easily avoidable. Oxford is arguably the center of philosophy in the UK. It’s just absurd to assume that who signed up for the BPhil was drawn to study there for any reason other than the academics.
You acted imprudently. You’re not a murderer, but let’s not pretend that you’re a good guy either. Grow up and take some damned responsibility for yourself. The more you fight this and call Coursier a “rapist,” the worse you look.
What makes the repeated insistence that she ‘followed him to Oxford’ worse is that Ketland is well aware that she had decided to apply to Oxford well before he had applied for and gotten a job there, as this comment thread shows:
https://undertheoculartree.wordpress.com/2014/05/15/the-time-travelling-philosopher/
“Ketland is well aware that she had decided to apply to Oxford well before he had applied for and gotten a job there, as this comment thread shows:”
It shows exactly the reverse. This lie has been repeatedly proven false and is proven false there. *Coursier* knew I was going to Oxford because I told her. Please stop lying about this. I applied in 2011 (this is demonstrable) and I told her on Skype. She knew this. She told me then that her plan was to be a school teacher. Coursier then applied the following year, in 2012. This is also demonstrable. She did so deliberately to follow me. This was revealed to me by her in March 2012. This is also demonstrable. And when she revealed it, I was so shocked at what she’d done, I became ill. This is also demonstrable.
This is all a matter of public record. She harassed me through 2011 with abusive emails that I’ve quoted above and which I ignored. Eventually, after months of this harassment, I told her, “Please stop sending abusive and threatening emails” (9 July 2011). This is demonstrable. And then she followed me to Oxford in 2012. Please stop repeatedly telling lies which have been prove false.
What do you think “”Please stop sending abusive and threatening emails” means?
The following was posted on that same page by Alasdair Richmond (https://undertheoculartree.wordpress.com/2014/05/15/the-time-travelling-philosopher/#comments). I will let other Metabloggers be the judge of whose account seems more accurate, Richmond’s or Ketland’s:
“Hello once again,
Sorry for the length of this post but try to remember this is not about some matter of academic tittle-tattle, but about (as Christie rightly emphasises above) the tragic suicide of a uniquely talented student. I cannot any longer sit back and watch the memory of the most gifted student I ever knew be made into a subject of gossip and speculation by commentators who often seem to me at best poorly informed, if not actively malicious. However, sometimes you just have to try and get the facts out somehow. Anyway:
A) I don’t know what Jeffrey thinks may have been clarified but I notice from posts he seems to have made elsewhere that as of May this year, he has amended several earlier attributions of remarks to Mr. Fardell. (E.g. scoring through mentions of Mr. Fardell’s name and substituting mentions of the Daily Mail at several points.) See for example the link here:
http://m-phi.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/mr-benjamin-fardell-and-chronology.html
(Last accessed 07.55 GMT, Wednesday August 27th 2014).
These emendations suggest to me that Jeffrey has had second thoughts. However I think the need for further clarification remains and perhaps Mr. Fardell is owed an apology from several individuals.
Again, on a technical point of reportage, if any of you are at all unclear as to the difference between direct statement of views by one party (or parties) and the reporting of those views by another party (or parties), please remember to approach the re-statement of either with the utmost caution. Likewise, reporting a statement and reporting a fact are not the same.
B) I hope you can forgive some re-posted material but in case anybody missed my post to this thread of August 22nd therein I said the following:
‘My reference for Charlotte was dated January 5th 2012. However, Charlotte had decided to apply to Oxford by the end of July 2011. (The other referee for her Oxford application confirms this.) To the best of my knowledge, she did not formally apply elsewhere because she was assured of a PhD. place at Edinburgh had Oxford said ‘No’.
One odd point is that on December 8th 2011, an e-mail posted to all the Edinburgh philosophy academic staff (and into which Jeff’s new Munich address was CC’ed) informed us that (and I quote) “Jeff Ketland will be leaving Edinburgh shortly to take up a post at the LMU in Munich”.’
Further oddities have come to light since I made that posting. Please correct me if I’m wrong, Jeffrey, but my understanding was that the Munich post you were offered was for no less than six years, (or so at least you seemed to be claiming via e-mail on August 29th 2010). Even if it had had immediate effect, a six-year appointment would have taken you to, at the earliest, late August 2016 – a time which is still roughly two years in the future as I write this. Why then were you telling Charlotte in November 2011 that you were moving to Oxford, and this merely a few days before an announcement was made to Philosophy staff at Edinburgh that you were going to take up a post at Munich?
C) On a semantic point, I would emphasise that the words “reinstatement” and “exoneration” are not generally regarded as synonyms, or even as co-extensional in reference.
Again, my utmost sympathy and condolences to anyone who genuinely cared for Charlotte and who genuinely cares about her memory.
Yours sincerely,
Alasdair Richmond”
Alasdair Richmond is a notorious nutcase. In fact, on the exact day Coursier attacked me (24 November 2010), Richmond had spent five minutes screaming at a colleague of mine (Inna Kupreeva), making wild accusations against various people, in a meeting. I had to calm both down, and prevent my friend Inna making a complaint to Andy Clark against Richmond. His public tantrum was witnessed by several others. He’s a bad-tempered nutcase, who seems to feel very free with his groundless accusations.
In March 2014, Richmond — who knows absolutely nothing whatsoever of these matters and is blowing smoke — sent an ” increasingly bizarre set of gratuitously insulting e-mails
bizarre emails to Brian Leiter”. Brian reported them here.
http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2014/04/alasdair-richmond.html
Goodness me – what an extraordinary set of comments. (And what a remarkably edifying thread to stumble upon.)
I’m afraid that I simply cannot recognise the events that Jeffrey is trying to describe above from his reconstruction so I’m afraid I am unable to speak to them here. However, all claims in the posts I made on another truly remarkable web-institution, namely the ‘Ocular Tree’ blog, remain true to the best of my knowledge – and I have evidence – and I think they retain relevance.
As to my being a “notorious nutcase”, that seems odd to me on both counts. What Jeffrey may be trying to signal to you is that I do suffer from depression and have done certainly since I was 12 and probably since I was 7. However, I am not delusional, schizophrenic or paranoid – for examples. Likewise, I have never been placed under kind of legal notice / restraining order. In conclusion, I would ask that if you wish to judge me, do try to judge me by my words. Thank you.
Yours faithfully,
Alasdair Richmond
“So all of the “evidence” you’re providing merely serves as one data point representing your particular view of things.”
Please don’t be absurd. You’re trying to cover up the evidence you’ve been shown. I was extremely kind to Coursier for years, and she was in love with me. Those emails show her harassing me and refer to 2011, after she attacked me at the end of 2010. I had saved her ruined life in 2008. At the end of 2010, she managed to lure me into a short relationship, when ended when she attacked me, as is a matter of public record. Now, in 2011, I wanted to have my own life, having sacrificed so much to help her. That is what all the objective evidence proves. Coursier was alive and had a good degree in 2011 because of me, and not anyone else.
And you’re interested in a sort consensual relationship between adults? Just go fuck yourself with that abuse.
Two years later, it was Coursier’s *boyfriend* Benjamin Fardell who dumped her on 10 June 2013, and who ignored her threats, and she committed suicide. That is what happened. Stop covering it up. And I tried to alert others; those alerts were not heeded. Stop blaming the victim. I had nothing whatsoever to do with how Coursier was mistreated by others. Nothing.
I am describing real actual evidence, from multiple eyewitnesses. You are saying they’re wrong. They are not. Let’s go through the evidence, shall we? It’s a matter of public record that she followed me to Oxford. The reason for pointing that out is the outrageous fabrication that the opposite happened. A malicious fabrication that has been repeatedly corrected and even apologised for.
The actual, real evidence comes from multiple disconnected eyewitnesses. People who actually saw with their own eyes what happened: a long-term stalker and harasser who assaulted me at the end of 2010; and who continued harassing me for years afterwards, as those emails quoted above indicate too. It is very clear from the objective evidence who was pursuing me; very clear that she said she was “still hopelessly in love with you” eight months after she had attacked me. Very clear that she said, “you are still the person that saved my life and my degree!” and very clear that she said, “for three years Jeffrey you were my world, I loved you more than I’ve loved anyone. You put so much on the line to help me”. It is also very clear who was threatening me; and it is very clear I told her to “stop sending abuse and threatening emails”.
It is very clear from the objective evidence who the stalker was and who the victim was. The eyewitnesses to her horrendous campaign of violence, stalking, threats, harassment against me include,
– two professors in Edinburgh;
– one flatmate (Matthew), from two years later, after she’d spent two years pursuing me, and lured me into a short relationship (which I regret) and which left when she attacked me;
– my wife, also a victim of stalking; also a victim of being driven out of Oxford *twice*, the second time by a horrific vigilante campaign of intimidation against us, including documented cyber-harassment.
– multiple people in Germany who, in 2011 and 2012, knew I had a stalker in the UK;
– an Oxford post-doc, who eyewitnessed Coursier approach me for a conversation in November 2012 when I had tried to avoid her;
– an Austrian woman in Vienna so concerned about my wife being driven out of town and Coursier’s background that she tried to notify the Philosophy Faculty. I have quoted how she recalled her welfare notification above. This was ignored.
– several graduate students who eyewitnessed Coursier turn up at my club at my college, something she knew I’d set up; she sat one seat away from me and pretended not to know me; this is textbook stalking (she also stalked me the day before, but no one else could see it)
– other academics in Oxford (four at least) who knew Coursier was pursuing me and stalking me;
– the police who realised quickly she was stalking me, who received detailed notification from me of my concerns, who told me to contact them if Coursier contacted me again (she did – on 3 June 2013, stalking me again at the Faculty where a seminar was being held), and whom I tried to contact again on 5 June 2013 two days after, to alert them again.
This is evidence. It is not opinion or “evidence”. It is real evidence. All of the detailed records show I am right. I was the victim of a long-term stalker who assaulted me. And all of the evidence shows that, much later, I tried to alert others of my concerns and the Austrian woman tried too — but we were ignored. This is all evidence, much of it covered up. There is no evidence the other way. Not a single shred of evidence. Just lies from a long-term stalker with a documented history of violence. Calling tens of *eyewitnesses* liars and pretending all of the voluminous amount of *evidence* should be ignored is preposterous and delusional. The eyewitnesses, who saw incidents of stalking and violence from Coursier, told the truth.
What you are doing has a well-known name: victim-blaming. You are defending violence, harassment and stalking. And I am certainly not responsible for anything that happened to her. I did my best by her in 2008 and turned around her ruined life. I received no benefit from it whatsoever. None. And, after years of stalking, I then did my best in 2013 to alert others of my concerns, and this is a matter of public record. Those alerts were ignored and covered up, after her boyfriend dumped her and ignored her suicide threats.
“Calling tens of *eyewitnesses* liars and pretending all of the voluminous amount of *evidence* should be ignored is preposterous and delusional.”
No, I’m saying that your so-called evidence and claims of all this being a matter of public record are unreliable. If this is public record, point us to the public records. It’s not enough that *you* say that so-and-so said P. You need to give demonstrable proof that so-and-so actually said P. It’s not as if we can trust the information about your flatmate who supposedly witnessed the events you speak of. You haven’t even provided his last name! All of these anonymous sources you point to do nothing to actually establish the truth of your claims. As “Wasn’t born yesterday” said, we don’t even have the coroner’s letter that you repeatedly reference as proof of your innocence.
And no, I’m not victim blaming. That’s because Charlotte Coursier, her family, and her friends are the clear victims in the tragedy. I do believe your wife and son are victims as well, but that’s your doing. You, on the other hand, are simply witnessing the consequences of your own improper actions.
“your so-called evidence and claims of all this being a matter of public record are unreliable”
It is not “so-called”. It is other people’s evidence and they are not “unreliable”. Coursier herself was indeed a victim: of negligence by people around her. That is not my fault. I and an Austrian woman raised alerts, but we were ignored. Just get the facts right.
Here is how she recalled to me her March 2013 notification again:
——
“I said she reacted to stress with violence against herself and others and if the rumors I heard were true, she would have scars on her wrists. I recommended that she should have female tutors rather than men and that they should know how to get professional help very quickly if she behaved in any unusual way”.
Ketland refers repeatedly to the Senior Coroner’s letter to him of June 2014. Surely someone who relies so heavily on this text for exoneration should make it public, so that we can see whether it actually says what Ketland take it to say. (My guess is that things were uttered in the court that should not have been uttered, procedurally, and that the Coroner apologised for the fact that this happened, whereas Ketland seeks to claim the Coroner’s authority for the untruth of those utterances, an entirely different matter.)
No words were uttered. Because Fardell was not there. An Assistant Coroner read out some statement Fardell wrote, apparently months before. No one gave him consent to do this; I had been told for months this wouldn’t happen. And no one consulted me or any of the large number of eyewitnesses.
Get the facts right.
Your reply here makes no sense. As “Wasn’t born yesterday” points out, you should provide the Senior Coroner’s letter that supposedly exonerates you.
Right – the first few sentences are contradictory. (“No words were uttered…the Assistant Coroner read out some statement”)
Fardell was not there. Please get the facts right. Words weren’t uttered by him, but by an assistant coroner, reading from some undisclosed statement that Fardell apparently made months earlier and that no one has ever shown me.
How about someone provide *me* a copy of that statement?
How are you not understanding that we’re not talking about Fardell’s statement? We’re talking about the letter that was supposedly sent to you by “Mr Salter (the Senior Coroner).”
How about you provide me with a copy? That’s how it works. You make some anonymous accusation. I then reply to the garbage. Not the other way around. Incidentally, I have replied to much of the garbage. See the harassing email messages listed above through 2011, and my reply, “Please stop sending abusive and threatening emails” (9 July 2011).
What do think “please stop sending abusive and threatening emails” means?
Huh? In the above you keep on saying that the the Senior Coroner said various things that support your claims. Yet when we ask you to actually provide evidence of this, you deflect. How in the world are we supposed to reply to something Mr. Salter supposedly sent to you? That makes zero sense. You’re clearly full of it.
What do think “please stop sending abusive and threatening emails” means?
And there you have it, folks. Ketland clearly doesn’t have any ability to verify the putative evidence to which he continually refers. What a pathetic man.
Why on earth do you keep bringing that up? It’s not relevant to this discussion at all. Maybe you don’t understand how threads on a blog work (it certainly seems like it from the discussion below). People start a new thread when they want to talk about a particular point. In this case, the particular point at the start of this thread was about the Coroner’s letter. No one other than you has mentioned anything in this thread about any messages that you may or may not have sent.
No one has said that Fardell was there. No one has said that *he* uttered anything. It’s not clear what you are trying to achieve by pretending people have said things they have never said despite the fact that the posts are directly above for anyone to read.
“No one has said that Fardell was there.”
Yes they did, above: “I would put more weight on testimony given at an inquest versus what Ketland is writing here without fear of consequence. After all, lying at an inquest would be considered perjury and could result in criminal charges.”
Fardell could logically not have “lied at an inquest”. Because he was not there. To “lie at an inquest”, you need to be present and/or you need to think your much earlier statement is going to be used. He was neither there and certainly did *not* want his statement used. This is obvious to anyone with common sense.
That wasn’t the post at the start of this thread that you were responding to though. So while it is true that some other person at some point said that, it’s not relevant to this discussion.The fact that some anonymous person upthread said something does not justify you responding to an entirely different post in a way that makes out that *that particular poster* said something that they clearly didn’t.
Please learn to think rationally and logically.
Dude, you’re a fucking tool. I don’t know why you just randomly started ranting about this in the first place, but you might want to try to understand the blog’s format before you fill it with your raving.
“Why Ketland, whose actions were clearly improper, doesn’t similarly feel regret for his part in the whole thing is just beyond me.”
It’s this disgusting abusive filth that makes quite a few others angry.
First, Coursier’s life was *saved* by me in 2008. This is clear. That’s why she was alive in 2011. It is proved above. Is that clear? Get the facts right. Do I regret saving her life? Don’t be so demented. Second, welfare alerts were given to protect Coursier’s welfare. By me, as is a matter of public record; and by an Austrian woman in March 2013, but ignored, and I quote this yet again:
—–
“I said she reacted to stress with violence against herself and others and if the rumors I heard were true, she would have scars on her wrists. I recommended that she should have female tutors rather than men and that they should know how to get professional help very quickly if she behaved in any unusual way”
—-
Why would we make *welfare alerts* if we didn’t care about her?
When Coursier committed suicide (after her boyfriend dumped her, ignored her suicide threats, and a couple of months after an unwanted abortion, which she felt has “murdered her child”), we were traumatized when we heard the news. My wife had to be literally sedated.
So back down with this vicious abuse.
Jeff, you don’t have to keep replying. It seems increasingly clear that your anonymous questioner is just doing this to get a rise out of you. I know how hard it can be to refrain from responding to slanderous things said on the internet, but you’ve said more than enough to defend yourself, in this thread and elsewhere, and honestly I think you’re reaching the point of diminishing returns.
I’m certainly not replying to get a rise out of him. But he’s the one who slandered Coursier and others. Ketland can say he’s provided evidence above until he’s blue in the face, but he hasn’t actually done so until he links to these public records or correspondences he continually mentions. Ketland is the one who called Coursier a “rapist” on Daily Nous. He didn’t need to inject himself into the Searle conversation. Ketland is the one who’s trying to pin her suicide on her boyfriend. I’ve already said that I don’t think Ketland is a murderer, but to pretend that he’s some innocent victim of the whole situation is equally absurd. He acted improperly and doesn’t want to admit it. It’s despicable.
I was the *victim* of a violent stalker. Coursier sexually assaulted me at the end of November 2010 and I told her to leave. There’s a separate eyewitness who confirmed this, and this is a matter of public record. That is hard evidence. She was, in fact, a rapist, contrary to the denials. It is the truth and there is hard evidence to prove it.
During her campaign of email harassment for the next nine months afterwards in 2011 (some emails listed above), I told her “please stop sending abusive and threatening emails”. That is hard evidence of her stalking me; but others also eyewitnessed her stalking me. It was Coursier who followed me to Oxford, and that is also simply public record. It was me who made welfare notificatons, and that is also a matter of public record and is hard evidence. And the Austrian woman’s welfare notification whose recollection I’ve published is also hard evidence.
This is all evidence. So all this evidence should be ignored? I am the one who has been lied about, slandered, libeled with disgusting lies, cyber-harassed, driven out of my home, publicly vilified — and all based on not a shred of evidence, originating from lies from a violent long-term stalker, and then distributed by Brooke Berndtson, Paula Boddington and Jennifer Saul.
It’s that campaign of vigilantism, harassment and false accusations which is morally despicable.
Utterly bizarre that, on this page (as I now type), there are 27 mentions of Searle, and 136 of Ketland.
Not bizarre at all. And for good measure, let’s make it 137, which is approximately the reciprocal of the fine structure constant.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fine-structure_constant
Referring to a proven case of vicious false accusations — from Brooke Berndtson, and then distributed by Paula Boddington and Jennifer Saul — against the victim of sexual assault and stalking may be instructive.
Particularly for those who still cannot reason correctly and cannot internalize large amounts of evidence and eyewitness evidence proving that their nonsensical black-and-white prejudices are wrong.
In any case, what Coursier said about me — delusional lies, all aimed to try and get sympathy from her boyfriend — was pretty mild. She said I had “stared at her” (a lie); “approached her for a conversation” (a lie: she was directly witnessed approaching me, by an Oxford post-doc), and a few other pieces of nonsensical fabrication. She said I was “schizophrenic”, a laughable gaslighting fabrication. One read her real attitude to me above, from the barrage of emails for nine months through 2011 – she was infatuated with me: “you are still the person that saved my life and my degree” (June 2011) and “I’m still hopelessly in love with you” and “for three years you were my life” (in August 2011). In the middle of this I told her to “stop sending abusive and threatening emails” (July 2011). Two years later, in late May 2013, she, cajoled by others including Berndtson, had a chat with the Faculty Head, who looked into it (but didn’t contact me), and she said she was “happy with the outcome”. Another person she spoke to told her to “delete older correspondence” (this is misconduct). I was never contacted. My welfare worries were completely ignored and covered up, although The Sunday Times report mentions them; and the Austrian woman’s welfare notification given to the Philosophy Faculty in March 2013, that I have published above (“I recommended that she should have female tutors rather than men and that they should know how to get professional help very quickly if she behaved in any unusual way”) was ignored and later covered up. That provides a strong clue about why I was scapegoated and vilified with lies.
This was campaign of outright lies, slander, false accusations, intimidation and vitriol. It didn’t come from my stalker, Charlotte Coursier, who is someone I demonstrably tried to protect in Oxford. And it didn’t come from Fardell either, who obviously had no clue what the facts were, as he was lied to when his girlfriend was repeatedly contacting me, and obviously he was massively hurt by what she did to him. The main lies, slander, false accusations and vitriol came from others, to assuage their own guilt, to cover up the facts and to scapegoat innocent victims.
Why don’t you just post your manifesto on this sordid affair and spare us all the back and forth?
From the Daily Snooze: If and How to respond to a Review of Your Book http://dailynous.com/2017/03/29/respond-review-book/
Two observations. First, don’t. Second, if you must, don’t do it on the metablog…
Helen Dale on ‘offendotrons’ and the tyranny of the flash mob
http://quillette.com/2017/01/16/attack-of-the-offendotrons-tyranny-of-the-flash-mob/
New thread please.
We need to hear more from Jeff Ketland. He hasn’t said enough just yet.
nah, ketland described being sexually assaulted, harassed, stalked, thwarted in his efforts to try and help someone, mobbed, him and his family driven from their home and scapegoated. no wonder powerful people in the philosophy profession want him silenced at all costs.
Yes — It’s important we hear these things from Ketland at least 10 more times.
I stay away from blogs. and threads normally – I find them unedifying. However, this thread has strayed into territory where I actually possess some relevant knowledge – specifically of Charlotte Coursier, plus Jeffrey and his workings. There may be a follow-up but for now, please try to note the following:
1) Do correct me if I’m wrong but Jeffrey now apparently sees himself as having suffered sexual predation, nay rape, from Charlotte Coursier. Pardon my bluntness but a woman (especially slender, young, fragile) actually raping a man (especially middle-aged, able-bodied, thick-set) seems a difficult proposition in any case and I think I would need rather more than heated assertions on a spiralling thread before I invested overly-much in any such claim. In this case, I’m afraid that, based on my knowledge of Jeffrey and Charlotte, if all else I have to go was this thread I would almost as soon believe that Audrey Hepburn had raped Mike Tyson.
2) Male lecturers taking up with much younger female students and then setting out to destroy the latter’s reputations / careers / lives when found out are (sadly) no new thing. (One sometimes hears bleats like e.g.: “They threw themselves at me, while my marriage is problematic and I’m eminent”. Really?) I stress my heart goes out to Jeffrey’s family as it does to Charlotte’s family. However, although a married man and a father, Jeffrey embarked on a sexual relationship with a young female student to whom he stood ‘in loco parentis’ as her lecturer and whom he surely knew was vulnerable and troubled. Although he was never Charlotte’s Director of Studies and therefore had no official pastoral role with respect to her, Jeffrey insisted he could help because their shared connection with Birmingham gave him an affinity for Charlotte. How strong might that ‘affinity’ have been had Charlotte’s problems manifested themselves instead in e.g. a sixty-year-old male from Solihull, I wonder?
3) I understand that when Charlotte was still an undergraduate at Edinburgh (graduating July 2011), Jeffrey was told imperatively by (e.g.) his line-manager, other colleagues, health professionals and the police to leave her alone for her health’s sake. Did he heed that instruction?
4) Leiter scares not me but I wonder if Jeffrey has seen the Richmond/Leiter correspondence. I’m happy for Professor Leiter to circulate our correspondence publicly – provided he does so without alteration, selection or redaction. (Bet he won’t take me up on that though.) A free gift: my last 2014 e-mail to Professor Leiter – I sent him one more later – said simply “brave”. Succinct but not potty-mouthed. I’ll wager though, Jeffrey, that Professor Leiter has not disclosed his side of our correspondence to you – as you may recall from earlier interactions, I think you may not like all that Professor Leiter had to say.
5) I think I am not alone in being able to say that my working relationship with Jeffrey seemed to go swimmingly as long as I accepted, without reservation, absolutely everything Jeffrey said. However, once I ventured correction, even over mistakes of easily-ascertainable fact, I got publicly called ‘Stalinist’, ‘liar’, etc. Hence I set little store by his denunciations.
Yours, Alasdair Richmond, A.Richmond@ed.ac.uk
(I don’t do anonymity.)
I have just had a Tweet from Jeffey Ketland – lucky me. I advised Jeffrey in reply that anything he says to me will henceforth be made public so in full, said Tweet runs:
“You’re a rape apologist, a vigilante and a lunatic, Richmond.”
I would dispute all of those terms, Jeffrey, but you just keep on posting.
Link for reference: https://twitter.com/jeffreyketland/status/890880862883123201
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/10663972/Student-hanged-herself-after-lecturer-stalked-her.html
I should perhaps point out that whoever posted the ‘Twitter’ link immediately above, it was not me. Anything I post here will have, and does have, my name attached to it. Thanks.
Hello again,
One more observation: funny thing but the ‘Ocular Tree’ blog. used to have material (I felt quite a lot of it even) on this deeply regrettable business – and now it seemingly doesn’t. (Several recent searches have failed to take me back to the pages I remember at any rate. I stress I don’t know what might have prompted any removal of said material.) So I have a feeling that now this … entity here is the main source of anonymous posts about the best student I ever taught, i.e. Charlotte Coursier. Hence my occasionally checking-in now I’ve found this place. (Took me a while but I flatter myself I’ve better things to do than look at threads and blogs. and anonymous observations, etc.)
One of the ‘advantages’ of anonymity of posting (and one of the reasons I confess that I rather disdain it) is that it can, I gather, allow one person to appear to be several – ‘sock-puppets’ are the term for these fleeting ‘ghost’ presences, I think?
For the record, ‘Tweeting’ me bad names is no, and never will be any, obstacle to my telling the truth – and the truth is what I have told, and will continue to tell. Please understand: a Tweet can be (e.g.) screen-shot and saved by its recipient – as can a blog.post – and thus retained even after deletion by its poster / sender. So please do take care and exercise some care and judgement before posting and/or Tweeting. These things are really not markedly more more secure than e-mail, I strongly suspect. And e-mails seem to be (for all practical purposes) well-nigh immortal nowadays.
Finally, if you should take it upon yourself to try and dispute with me, do please try to come equipped with some data and with some arguments – names and epithets, howsoever grandiose, scare not me.
Thank you,
Alasdair Richmond, A.Richmond@ed.ac.uk
I posted this publicly on Facebook but it may be worth reposting here:
‘Pardon this going out on the ‘Public’ setting but as perhaps some of you already know, I have recently, after nearly three years’ public silence and only after much thought and with great regret, become (re-)involved in the endlessly distressing debate over the life and death of my uniquely gifted former student, Charlotte Coursier (1988-2013).
As I refuse to let Charlotte’s nay-sayers shape this discussion exclusively, please forgive me if I post here the short statement I wrote for her memorial service – inevitably, it cannot do justice to her but it may at least help to sketch some of the affection and respect in which she was, and continues to be, held.
“I was lucky enough to teach Charlotte Coursier throughout her time at Edinburgh and she was simply the best student I’ve ever met. Besides being brilliant, witty and the world’s biggest fan of ‘The Smiths’, Charlotte was courageous, sympathetic and strove to help her fellows. While Charlotte’s studies made amazing progress, her academic brilliance didn’t stop her being an engaging and committed contributor to life in general. She taught a wide range of pupils and students, helped people with dyslexia and Asperger’s Syndrome, and offered the best study-guidance I’ve seen. Charlotte did great things and received lasting gratitude and respect from everyone she helped. She will be very sadly missed but always remembered with affection and thankfulness.”
Let those of us who care about Charlotte at least do what we can to keep her memory clear before our minds.’
Don’t put one of your students on such a pedestal that nobody can even come close. You’re doing your current students a disservice by not believing in them as much.
Some good news, this person is leaving the profession:
https://feministphilosophers.wordpress.com/2017/03/28/how-to-discuss-searle-etc/#comment-153291
Excuse me, but that poster seems to be a junior person with progressive political views. Thus, you have violated Justin Weinberg’s rules on bullying the vulnerable. To complete the sacrament of reconciliation you must offer 5 self-excoriating apologies to The Community.
To ‘Anonymous’ of July 30th 2017 at 10.24:
Pardon my asking, but what would you know about me or my students? I believe in my current students fine, ta. I also described Charlotte in exactly those terms when she was still alive. And another set of facts for your delectation: Charlotte was no troll or sock-puppet. Nor was she cowardly. Are you by any chance affiliated to this wonderful thread?
Yours, Alasdair Richmond, A.Richmond@ed.ac.uk
Well, nigh three months on from my last and not one of the bravely vocal (and usually nameless) posters of April has deigned to challenge anything I said above. The take-home message seems to be: there’s nothing quite like a few facts to make the trolls and sock-puppets close their mouths and melt away. This was a very ugly business before the trolls got in about it. I also wonder what sort of reputation this whole blog. is gaining and maintaining.
Yours, Alasdair Richmond, A.Richmond@ed.ac.uk
Like several others in Oxford, I’ve seen the documents describing Coursier’s stalking and harassing behavior towards her victims. Coursier’s behavior was appalling and grotesque, despite the incredible kindness she received from Ketland and his wife for years.
Coursier contacted him hundreds of times over the years, from 2008 to 2013, including on three occasions in 2008, when she dropped out of Edinburgh University. He prevented three suicide attempts, on one occasion taking her to hospital and he notified all the relevant authorities. This has been confirmed in three witness statements and a large amount of correspondence. Ketland’s two line managers wrote detailed statements directly contradicting your false claims above about him. She contacted him constantly for years, as the evidence shows, including thousands of telephone calls. Ketland saved this woman’s life several times in 2008, helped her return to university in 2009, turned her life around. And, as she asked for help with work, he helped her. He was astonishingly kind to this woman and asked nothing in return. For three years, she repeatedly thanked him. After that, she became infatuated with him and pursued him romantically. Her hundreds of emails and thousands of telephone calls eventually broke up his marriage, as he repeatedly prevented her harming herself. Her assault against him in 2010 was eye-witnessed by his flatmate. His flatmate recorded this in a statement, which also describes her harassing and stalking him. Coursier’s earlier detention by the Scottish police in 2010 when she had confronted his wife is also on record. Coursier’s stream of threats and harassing unwelcome messages and emails to him when he was abroad throughout 2011, which he ignored, is on record. Her stalking him to Oxford, and her stalking him on multiple occasions in Oxford, was witnessed: by a post-doctoral student, by three graduate students and an academic, all of whom recorded what they saw Coursier doing to her victim. Her stalking his wife for many months in Oxford is also on record. His notifying others of his serious concerns, which were ignored, is also on record. A notification to Oxford Philosophy Faculty’s Graduate officer, warning them they had a mentally unstable student who may need help, is also on record. This was ignored and then covered up.
Alasdair Richmond, whatever motivates you in this defamation of the person who saved Coursier’s life is difficult to ascertain, but you keep defaming and libeling someone, repeating proven false fabrications, based on no evidence, apparently distributed by Brooke Berndtson and Paula Boddington, who organized a witch hunt against an innocent person and his family. These accusations have been proven to be false. You seem to be a very peculiar person, hunting down an innocent person you’re obsessed with, and relating to a woman that you did not care about, and whose life Ketland saved. You repeat falsehoods about things you know nothing about, have no knowledge of, based on nothing but gossip that has been proven false. Knowing Ketland, I doubt Ketland cares about your stream of libel. But others do, and if he sued you for defamation, you would lose.
It may be wise if you seek some medical help. I say this because you appear to be suffering from a stalkerish obsession with someone who was grossly mistreated.
Anonymous: disregarding the name-calling above as beneath my notice, I am sorry to have to stress to you, with some emphasis be it said, that I will avow to anyone in any context whatsoever, that everything I have said above is true and furthermore, I defy you or Jeffrey Ketland (assuming that you are not one and the same person) to disprove anything I say above. Try your best.
Thank you, Alasdair Richmond
“For two and half years, from the end of 2010 until mid 2013, I was stalked by a violent mentally disturbed stalker, Charlotte Coursier.”
https://stalkingtimeline.blogspot.co.uk
Jeff Ketland weren’t you found guilty of bullying against a fellow philosopher at Pembroke College, Oxford after you were reinstated by the University and you were thus not renewed by the College?
That’s independent evidence of your character. And that’s an undeniable fact!
Are you perhaps referring to Dr Peter King? Here’s some striking evidence of his character.
“Oxford academic Peter J King jailed for child abuse images”
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-51961969
I heard he was sexually assaulted and threatened by a stalker, who’d once been arrested by the police for harassing his wife.
He was bullied, harassed and chased out of Oxford by a vigilante mob with false accusations. The mob tactics of intimidation, cyber-harassment, slander, lying and social media smearing also terrified his wife and very young son. His wife officially complained about the harassment, bullying and lying. The instigators of this mobbing, harassment and intimidation got away with it, but should have been held to account.