What really happened three years ago (fall 2014), a recap

The 2014 campaign to take down the Philosophical Gourmet Report (hereafter "the Report") was, as I've had occasion to note before, a fraud, but with a new Report about to appear, perhaps it's worth recapping yet again what actually happened before a new round of misrepresentations begin:

1. Noelle McAfee, a professor at Emory with a long history of attacking the Report and me personally, was caught vandalizing the Wikipedia entry about me in February 2014. I sent her several sharply worded private e-mails demanding that she cease and desist her campaign of misinformation and defamation; at the same time, the Wikipedia editors stopped her vandalism.
2. In July 2014, in the course of a raging dispute in philosophy-related social media about my criticisms of some misleading and inaccurate data about academic job placement, Carrie Jenkins, a professor at British Columbia, took to social media to denounce my criticisms as “unethical” and threatened not to treat me as a "normal or representative member[] of" the profession. Jenkins had a history with me on social media of such sanctimonious outbursts, and on this occasion, I sent her, privately, a single derisive e-mail wondering what precisely she was going to do to make good on her threat.
3. Throughout 2014, I repeatedly disagreed in public fora with feminist activist and philosopher Sally Haslanger of MIT about issues related to the profession, freedom of expression and due process. Haslanger has also been a longtime opponent of the Report.
4. In September 2014, just a few days before surveys for the philosophy Report were set to begin (that fact was public), Haslanger and David Velleman of NYU, another longtime opponent of the Report, released portions of the private e-mails from February and July, without asking me for permission or about any of the relevant context, which they omitted.  They did so in order to mobilize opposition to me and to the Report. 
5. Haslanger coordinated the selective release of the e-mails with a petition organized by Jenkins and her appalling colleague Alan Richardson calling on philosophers to “boycott” the surveys for the Report unless I stepped down as editor. The petition alleged--falsely we now know--that the single e-mail from me to Jenkins had caused serious harm to her “health” and her ability to contribute to the profession.   In fact, Jenkins gave multiple professional talks to departments in Canada, the U.S., and New Zealand in the months immediately following the e-mail.  Even half her own colleagues would not sign the petition.  When my Canadian counsel challenged the petition statements as defamatory, Jenkins’s lawyer, tellingly, did not defend them as true, but said they were nonetheless lawful.   Under Canadian law, it was obvious why he had to frame the "defense" this way:  defending false statements as "true" would have aggravated my damages against Jenkins.
6. The boycott petition was sent to somewhere between 10,000 and 15,000 philosophers throughout the English-speaking world, of whom about 600 signed. Ironically, 90% of the signatories were not even nominated evaluators for the Report’s surveys (they were “boycotting” an event to which they were not invited); of the 550 nominated evaluators, only about 10% signed the petition.
7. I did not step down as editor of the 2014 philosophy Report.  I had told friends and colleagues for some time that 2014—the 25^th anniversary edition of the Report—would be the last I was going to produce, and since I had been preparing for three years for the 2014 Report and did not want that work to go to waste due to a fake controversy, I agreed to turn over the work for subsequent rankings to the co-editor of the 2014 ranking and another co-editor that we would agree upon as suitable (that became Christopher Pynes).

My "behavior" that was used as a pretext for trying to derail the Report consisted of private e-mails sent to individuals who had, in fact, engaged in bad behavior.  I stand by my response to them as appropriate and wholly warranted, the "politeness police" notwithstanding (I greatly value politeness and civility with my colleagues and of course students, but that consideration does not extend to malevolent jerks who are not my colleagues or even acquaintances--indeed, I've continued to send such e-mails when appropriate, though the escalation of harassment of me marked by 2014 means that far more often, the malevolent actors hear from my lawyer, not from me).  I'm still in disbelief at the feigned outrage from so many who were being purely opportunistic:  they saw it as their chance to try to stop the Report.  I'm delighted they failed.   (There were a minority, by contrast, who felt that given the important professional role of the Report, the editor, namely me, should not be such an outspoken and opinionated figure in the field.  I agreed with that consideration, and still do, but as far as I can tell, most signatories did not share it.  There were also many who signed just because they got swept up in the social media mob; they are absolved for their unfortunate decision!)

As I've noted previously, my agreement to turn over the Report to other editors (#7, above) has no legal or moral force, since it was obtained through coercive and dishonest means.   Even if it had not been, it is pure fantasy on the part of the Report's opponents that the agreement precluded the new editors from utilizing this blog to publicize the report, share draft faculty lists, and post some preliminary results (as will happen in the coming weeks).  Indeed, in the midst of the fake controversy, I was quite explicit that I would be using the blog to help the editors going forward, and I will continue to do so.

I am grateful to Professors Brogaard and Pynes for their successful completion of the 2017 surveys, and am looking forward to the results, of which there will be some previews here in the coming weeks.