I confess I'm with Brad DeLong: Richard Heck is very strange, and he gets stranger as time goes on. I was perplexed initially when the guy who claimed--after the fact, of course (Richard is the master of post-hoc revisionism)--that he simply wanted to "initiate a discussion" then failed to discuss almost all my detailed responses to his arguments.
Now Richard is miffed because I don't permit comments on my blog, and for a simple reason: I have a real job and a real life, and don't want to spend all my time blogging.
In response to my question, "Whatever Happened to the Heckling Campaign?",
Richard has offered his own answer, which is, obviously a reply to mine. I have hereby linked to it, which is the best I can do. If you need to remedy your insomnia, I offer my own reply to his reply (and I promise I'll say nothing more--after this round, we'll just have to settle it after school in the playground!):
Round 1
Heck: "what Leiter, in a stunning display of wit and maturity, continues to call the 'Heckling campaign.'"
Leiter: Almost everyone who corresponds with me calls it the "Heckling campaign." It isn't meant to be funny, it's just the "name" that seems to have attached to the event: just like the PGR gets called "the Leiter Report" and the parody (to which I contributed) is called "the Lighter Report." Richard: leiten up!
Round 2
Heck: "the answer to Leiter's question what happened to the 'campaign' is that there isn't one now because there never was one."
Leiter: It wasn't my question, it's a question I get asked by others, who--Heck's denial notwithstanding--seem to have thought, for some reason, that there was one.
Perhaps this is what misled them: Richard sent out a letter on December 10, 2001 to several dozen philosophers calling for signatures to "an open letter that calls upon [Leiter] to cease publication of the Report until [Heck's] concerns can be addressed." The letter stated that, "Since misuse of the Report is predictable, and long established, we can only regard its publication in its current form as irresponsible...." Most philosophers wouldn't sign this piece of lunacy, so the campaign shifted gears to its current form, which stops calling me irresponsible, stops calling for the PGR to disappear, and just accuses me of "harming" students. That letter was then sent to thousands and thousands of philosophers, on multiple continents, of whom 280 or so signed. In light of that actual history, I must say that I can appreciate the "misunderstanding" that led my correspondents to think there had been a campaign.
Round 3
Heck: "One major reason no significant number of additional signatures have been gathered in recent months is because efforts to gather signatures ceased shortly after the Open Letter was sent to Leiter on 29 January 2002, over eighteen months ago."
Leiter: That may be the "major" reason. The "minor" reason is that the e-mail solicitation reached, it appears, every philosopher with a computer in the English-speaking world, and most chose not to sign. In other words, the campaign is moribund (didn't I read that somewhere?).
Round 4
Heck: "It seems to me that Leiter would actually do better to let the 'campaign' fade quietly away, rather than to make it clear to all how angry he remains."
Leiter: I thought I had let it fade away, having not said anything at all about it in since the summer of 2002, when I got e-mails asking what my response was to Alan Richardson, whose comments were posted that summer. Once or twice a month, I get an e-mail asking me, "So what happened to that Heckling campaign?" I thought if I posted a reply, I'd save myself time. (Will I ever learn? It appears not...) When I am reminded of Heck's smear campaign, of course I'm angry, since it accuses me of "harming" students. This is a lie worthy of the Discovery [sic] Institute. But aside from that, let me say, for the record, that some of my new best friends are signatories of the Heck letter.
Round 5
Heck: "It doesn't seem to me that his publicly calling those who signed the letter 'self-serving', 'sanctimonious jerks', and 'control freaks', to choose a few recent epithets, reflects very well on him, either."
Leiter: Jeez, I guess it's good they don't hear what I say privately! But seriously, I have a confession to make: I used to be a litigator in New York City, and perhaps as a consequence, I have rather too limited a tolerance for sanctimonious or self-serving bullshit. (And in my repertoire of epithets, these are the mild ones--I am reminded of the former marine turned senior litigator at one firm who referred, even in casual conversation, to his clients as the "assholes" and whoever was suing his clients as the "fucking scumbags.") I know some of the signatories to the Heck letter, and they are exactly as I described them (shall we name names?). But they're the minority, as I thought I made clear. Most signatories, based on my correspondence, endorsed either Lynne Rudder Baker's objection or what I called the "democratic objection." Very few endorsed Richard's actual arguments, since the actual arguments were not, shall we say, robust.
Round 6
Heck: "Leiter's comments on the 'campaign' display a complete misunderstanding of its true goals. The true goals, I should quickly say, are and always were different from its stated goals, as is the case with most political action. It would have been terribly naive of those who signed the letter opposing Pres. Bush's decision to invade Iraq, for example, to expect that the letter would actually convince Bush not to go to war. But the effort makes perfect sense despite that fact. Similarly, neither I nor, I would expect, any of the signatories ever expected the Open Letter to lead to changes in PGR."
Leiter: I must confess to having laughed out loud upon reading this bit of feigned worldliness: everyone (except Richard, it appears) who particiated in efforts to stop this illegal and morally depraved invasion wanted to stop this illegal and morally depraved invasion. That was the stated goal and the true goal. Given Richard's repeatedly "stated" goals (about which more, below), I can see why he would like this distinction to be in place. But more on that momentarily.
Round 7
Heck: "And the methodology used to create the specialty rankings, although it has changed a little bit, still makes it far too likely that they will reflect particular idiosyncratic views about what problems are worth pursuing, if they are not manipulated outright."
Leiter: I shall alert the Advisory Board to Professor Heck's high opinion of their work.
Round 8
Heck: "Which has the better graduate program, Wisconsin or Illinois-Chicago?"
Leiter: Prior to Elliott Sober's departure, clearly Wisconsin--though not so much better, of course, that a student interested in, e.g., early modern philosophy or history of analytic philosophy shouldn't go to UIC--indeed, clearly ought to go to UIC for the latter.
Round 9
Heck: "My goal was never primarily to effect changes in PGR."
Leiter: Richard is having a Discovery [sic] Institute moment. His e-mail soliciting signatures began: "I [Richard Heck] expressed my concerns [about the PGR] privately to Professor Leiter...as long as three years ago and have seen no changes in the Report that address them. I have concluded that only a loud public outcry is likely to have an effect." Gee, that seems pretty clear: the point of the letter was to produce the changes that didn't result from Heck e-mailing me. I tracked down those old e-mails, and the arguments there were the same stupid ones that made it on to the website. And still no changes have been made to address those "concerns." Sorry.
Round 10
Heck: "let me add that the common refrain, that I began this effort to protect the Harvard name, is laughably absurd, as anyone who knows me (including several members of PGR's advisory board) will be happy to confirm. I am about as far from a "Harvard man" as one can get."
Leiter: I'm pleased to see Richard recognizes this is a "common" refrain: it is, and for obvious reasons. I don't doubt that Richard doesn't consciously believe that he was moved by "self-serving" objectives. But I fear I read too much Nietzsche and Freud to assign much probative value to how Richard understands himself and his actions, given all the objective evidence to the contrary.
I know some PGR fans (even those who agree with the diagnosis) think I should not remark on the "motives" of those who signed the Heck letter. But there is a simple reason, clear to lawyers, why the motives should be discussed: students need to be aware that some philosophers who affirm, on a public web site, that the PGR has "harmed" students and the profession may make that affirmation for reasons that have nothing to do with the truth of the claims or even their belief in their truth.
Post-Game Wrap-Up
This alternately exhausting, alternately amusing, dispute has gone through other permutations in Cyberspace. (One of my favorites is Richard's new claim that he was defending the honor not of Harvard, but of MIT, his alma mater. Oddly, only one current MIT faculty member thought the "honor" of his department needed defending and so signed the letter.)
But I am resigned to "the Conscience of Philosophy"--if I may borrow the coinage of a colleague elsewhere, who has had the pleasure of being duly lectured for his own infractions--never being satisfied.
If, in fact, Richard Heck's smear campaign has had the effect of getting some students to take more seriously the admonitions about how to use the rankings that have long been in the PGR, then that is a good result. I can't thank Richard for that, however, because I believe he could have achieved the same good result without defaming me.
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