Emil O W Kirkegaard

Am not familiar with Noah Carl's work, but what I find "creepy" is the very long list of tenured academics writing a letter maligning a postdoc for wrongthink, as opposed to engaging with his work in a scholarly manner.https://twitter.com/davidgraeber/status/1070766617305452544 …

I’m curious on what grounds we are to ignore that the letter states that the co-signed have undertaken “[a] careful consideration of Carl’s published work and public stance on various issues” but we are to take Noah Carl and his claims of scholarship at face value.

Noah Carl has a PHD from Oxford, which gives him at least a prima facie claim to scholarship. The signatories are mostly in unrelated fields, and, given the lack of any substantive evidence of his poor scholarship and racism, careful consideration isn't in evidence.

I can follow the logic of giving Noah Carl a minimum of respect as a scholar, even without reviewing his CV.

What I’m saying is that surely there is at least one of the signatories who can also be afforded this charity. That they are painted with such a broad brush while Carl is defended without any evidence that his defenders have themselves read his work, is the nut of my issue.

What kind of researcher accuses a fellow researcher of such behavior without citing any actual specific misdeeds or any evidence in support? What does your posterior say about their standards of rational discourse?