maklelan wrote:why me wrote:I certainly hope that this is genuine kindness coming from the posters on this thread. I think that daniel is regarded within his own circle and I do believe that he has given lectures and presentations on islam to academic audiences but I could be wrong on this.
Daniel seems to be a gifted individual who has been badly mistreated by the countermo critics who seem to have the knowledge of bar stool only because of their personal attacks against his character. And I include RFM in this circle of bar stools.
I don't know if you remember, but a long time ago on the MADB someone was prodding Dr. Peterson about name-dropping. to be facetious and to shut the other person up he produced the following pleonastic list:
You want more name-dropping? (Of course you do.) Here's a partial list, off the top of my head: I've lectured at Islamic schools, mosques, and universities in Australia, New Zealand, North Carolina, Egypt, Jordan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, and Syria. I've taken active part in small gatherings for interreligious dialogue in Idaho, Utah, California, Kansas, New York City, Austria, Israel, and Malta. I've met with senior cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church in Australia and in Vatican City. I've met, as part of an interreligious delegation, with the president of Israel, in his home. I've met with the head of the "Uniting Church" (the main Protestant denomination in Australia) in his home. I've met with senior Shi‘ite clerics in Iran. I've lunched with the Saudi consul general in Hong Kong and the Malaysian consul in Perth, Western Australia. I've hosted the soon-to-be president of Indonesia (and his eventual foreign minister) at BYU. At one point, at the United Nations building in New York, I addressed a group of forty-eight mostly Muslim ambassadors at an evening banquet. And so on and so forth.
As I hope is at least partially evident, he is very involved in their community and has earned the respect that is payed him. As much as he is criticized for not appreciating being misrepresented and misquoted, he's a responsible and respected scholar.
You may in fact be right. And I give DCP props for being smart, knowledgeable, engaging (at times), a clever writer, etc. What respect he has among his peers, I do not know.
I can only say what I do know, and that is in academics, the currency of respect and prestige is peer-reviewed publications. From what I’ve seen of DCP’s CV, he has not a single article published in a mainline peer-reviewed scholarly journal. And that is after decades of experience in academics. Apologetic publications count less than zero in the academic world outside of BYU. In the real world of publish or perish, DCP’s publication record would not even get him considered for a position at the large majority (if not all) of main line research universities, let alone hired.
I am not saying this because I enjoy taking DCP down a notch, but because I think it is worthwhile to put into context to his “aw shucks, they love me, they really love me” comments, so as to give others an objective perspective. I say nothing different about DCP than what I’d say about any other academic with a similar record.
And to Wade, I am in a position to speak about his, as I spent 14 years in academics and was a tenured (continuing status) professor at the Marriott School at BYU. I went through the grind of publish or perish, and unlike DCP, managed to publish in peer-reviewed journals, quite of number of them to be exact.
What I find interesting is that it is not really that hard to get published, if one gives it a good effort. At the very least, there are a plethora of B journals out there in which it is much easier to get articles accepted. Could not DCP have even tried this? I find his lack of peer-reviewed publications to be puzzling given his obvious erudition. He may be a wonderful colleague, a great administrator, a super teacher, a caring mentor, but in academics (or at least at research universities), these are all subordinate (and far subordinate) criteria to peer-reviewed publications.
God . . . "who mouths morals to other people and has none himself; who frowns upon crimes, yet commits them all; who created man without invitation, . . . and finally, with altogether divine obtuseness, invites this poor, abused slave to worship him ..."