Engaging with Kelsky pretty clearly violates Shaw’s dictum “never wrestle with a pig” but there needs to be a brief public record of her outrageous misconduct if only for the benefit of people who might be thinking of paying her for "professional" (!) advice.
Kelsky found an obscure blog post on-line vilifying me for things that didn’t happen (what else is new?). Kelsky put a link up on her Facebook page (with 60K followers), along with a call for "philosophers to start making my professional life intolerable" and asking "What can I do here to encourage this?" Put aside that this threat and incitement was predicated on no actual information: no normal professional person posts this kind of threat and incitement even if they disapprove of the other person's actual conduct . This is crazy behavior.
I probably would never have known about this except philosopher Christopher Pynes (Western Illinois) heard about it from a colleague who follows Kelsky, and texted me. I forwarded her threat and incitement to my lawyer, who contacted her, and she, prudently, removed it (of course, she then threw another tantrum and even called me a "baby" [!]).
Several commenters tried to bring Kelsky to her senses, to no avail. Professor Pynes had the following exchange with Kelsky on her FB incitement to harassment:
Professor Pynes was polite to a fault, and yet the response from the unhinged Kelsky was "oh shut up. I know about leiter's apologist and thugs." ("Thugs"?) But it gets better (click to enlarge):
Kelsky is, indeed, "rude and not a particularly clever interlocutor," and I thank Ms. Deas for her apt observation that I am "delightfully egalitarian--both in his respect and ire."
Kelsky's response to Deas is even more juvenile and absurd:
As it happens, I am married to a lawyer, but she deals with adults, not whack jobs like Kelsky.
Before Kelsky deleted her entire post, philosopher John Schwenkler (Florida State) observed, correctly, that "the individuals being 'targeted' [by Leiter] have behaved shamefully in public in an attempt to have some of our colleagues run out of the the profession over their arguments and advocacy, and Brian is one of the few who has had the courage and good sense to call this behavior out." If there was a response to this correct observation by nutty Kelsky, I did not see it.
The "Professor" may be "in," but she's not all there. Caveat emptor.
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