Has John Gee Been "Booted" from the Maxwell Institute?

[_Shulem]

Despite his competency, you have to wonder how employable he is outside of Provo.

Well, that certainly would be a problem. His Book of Abraham apologetics is not a plus on his personal resume. However, suppose he were to leave the church? If so, Gee could relocate anywhere in the world and accept employment with an organization that is willing to forgive his previous apologetic discrepancies while working for the Mormon church.

People in general love to forgive and forget. People like Cinderella stories. Who knows? Anything is possible.

[_Symmachus]

Even one frequently cited article is something, I grant. Not everyone has that.

But isn't "competent" rather faint praise for somebody in a named research chair? I'm not expecting Gee to be an idiot or a loon but I'm wondering how much he's really contributed to Egyptology post-PhD. How likely is it that the MI regards him as dead wood?

Yes. On the other hand, having a chair does not necessarily correlate with influence or impact. I don't know about your field, I have seen professors with endowed chairs at prestigious schools because...well, from the perspective of scholarship, it's not really clear why in many cases. The view is clearer from the backside an academic administrator, however. It also helps to be really popular and on TV or publishing columns in certain magazines and newspapers ("public scholarship," they now call it). Having really rich friends who give bigger than small sums of money to the school is also a good way to get an endowed chair. You can meet some of those rich people on the alumni cruises.

It's probably worse at an academically incestuous place like BYU—it's the only Mormon university there is, so what else can they do?

Despite his competency, you have to wonder how employable he is outside of Provo.

Probably not very employable, although most academics aren't employable even within their own fields, no matter how competent, which is why his position is (was?) such a nice one. Most departments don't give a flying “F” that the majority of their PhD students don't have academic jobs or are living in poverty and surviving on government assistance while teaching as adjuncts and "lecturers," even as they take in more students every year without really disclosing to them their chances of employment (they just don't think about it, really). So on this one I don't fault BYU for making a home for their own. Unless there is some distinguished Mormon Egyptologist out there who deserves Gee's position more than Gee on the strength of her record, I think it's too bad that Gee might be pushed out. 99% of scholarship in antiquity published these days is as worthless as any Mormon apologetics. On the other hand, Gee teaches courses in Coptic and Egyptian to very eager undergraduates who wouldn't otherwise get those courses (Muehlestein is not in Gee's league, in my opinion, and I doubt could offer what Gee does, or at least used to).

[_Chap]

I do not think Ritner would at all like being cited as having any association with Gee.

As has been discussed on this board at length, he asked to be removed from Gee's Ph.D. panel at Yale,* and has since published criticisms of Gee's work.

They don't like each other. Gee's Book of Abraham apologetics is offensive to virtually every Egyptologist on the planet. But it's a far cry from suggesting that Ritner thinks Gee is incompetent within his discipline when it comes to conventional Egyptology that has nothing to do with apologetics. Granted, no Egyptologist is perfect or walks on water but Gee is most certainly, assuredly, competent. Period.

I did not say he wasn't: I am sure that he can accurately read and construe Egyptian of a variety of periods, written in a variety of forms. People can be competent without possessing other, more important, scholarly qualities. It was Gee's lack of those that led Ritner to ask to be relieved of responsibility for him.

[_Doctor Scratch]

"Sic et Non" is reporting that the move is "good news":

Many of us have hoped for quite a few years now that Dr. Gee would be able to exit the Maxwell Institute, which has been officially uninterested since the Purge of 2012 in the kinds of work that he was hired to do, and to find a more congenial working environment.

Peterson elaborates further:

Dr. Gee remains a member of the faculty of Brigham Young University. He retains the rank of full professor, remains the occupant of the William (Bill) Gay Chair, and continues to bear the title of “William (Bill) Gay Research Professor.”

The requirement of the Gay chair continues to be that its occupant will do “scholarship in fields of study directly related to ancient scripture study, such as Egyptology and other relevant ancient languages and disciplines and to contribute in a significant way to further knowledge, understanding and appreciation of the scriptural heritage of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.” That has not been altered in any way. Neither Dr. Gee’s research focus nor his agenda have changed.

This is significant, since Dr. Gee’s research focus, approach, and agenda were out of sync with the interests of the post-2012 Maxwell Institute and were the cause of some discomfort and tension there. However, the BYU administration has plainly signaled that, in its view, the kind of research and writing pursued by Dr. Gee merits continuation.

This is all very interesting: I wonder how much of this squares with the views of the people at the Maxwell Institute. I notice that Peterson does not address the question of Gee's job security: one source told me that Gee's new position is not eligible for "Continuing Status" (and it's unclear if Gee was ever eligible for that kind of protection).

One thing is certain: the "new" Maxwell Institute is now completely free of Mopologetics. I wonder if there will be any developments (or consequences?) that come from this?

[_Everybody Wang Chung]

One thing is certain: the "new" Maxwell Institute is now completely free of Mopologetics.

[_Shinster]

I'm guessing I'm not the first person to look at this, but I didn't see this posted or commented about:

https://web.archive.org/web/20181202221 ... s/gee-john

[_Shinster]

I also looked at Bill Hamblin's page and the same change was made since late last year. Maybe they changed everyone's page using the the past tense of "was":

Bill Hamblin now: https://rsc.byu.edu/authors/hamblin-william-j

Bill Hamblin Nov. 2018: https://web.archive.org/web/20181107061 ... -william-j

[_Doctor Scratch]

That's very interesting, Shinster. And I can't help but note that the first line of Hamblin's bio identifies him as "a Mormon apologist." Is there anyone else who participates in LDS apologetics, and who also is/was a BYU professor, who has been assigned that label? I'm going to go out on a limb and assert that this was either the result of (a) Hamblin's own bumbling (i.e., he wrote the entry himself), or (b) it was leveled at him deliberately, as an insult.

Regardless, I think there is more to all of this than meets the eye. One of DCP's main points in his "Sic et Non" entry was that Gee would get to retain his title as the Gay Research Chair. What do you want to bet that this was one of the main sticking points? "Sic et Non" indicates (rightly, in my view) that there were unpleasant tensions between Gee and the MI going clear back to the "ouster" of 2012 (and perhaps beyond). So why did it take them 7 years to part ways? I would be willing to bet that the "new" Maxwell Institute wanted to hang on to the William "Bill" Gay Research Chair, and the funding that is connected to it; they probably wanted to hire somebody new who would do "real" scholarship, and not the kind of, uh, "problematic" "scholarship" that has defined Gee's tenure as the key Book of Abraham apologist. I bet there was a long, drawn-out fight over this, with the MI wanting to keep the Chair and the funding, and the Mopologists deploying their usual rotten guerrilla tactics behind the scenes. You may wonder: How is it that the Mopologists would have any say/power in the matter? To which I would reply: take a look at this:

Born in Salt Lake City, Utah, he was a student at University of California, Los Angeles when he was hired by Hughes. He was responsible for the creation of Hughes Dynamics, a short-lived computer services subsidiary of Hughes Tool in the early 1960s.[1][2] A member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Gay put together the so-called "Mormon Mafia" that comprised Hughes's inner circle in his later life.

How about that? The founder of the "Mormon Mafia" supplied the funds for a "Research Chair" specifically devoted to Mopologetics! Could it be that strings were pulled, such that the Mopologists tapped the Gay family and pressured them to remove the Gay Research Chair from the Maxwell Institute? Is this a case of "honoring the donors' wishes"? Impossible to say, but, as always, speculation is irresistible.

[_Doctor Scratch]

I'm sorry guys but I don't by this at all.

Didn't Elder Holland just recently give a thorough mud-hole stomping to the New MI for not being faithful disciple scholars? Wasn't the SeN comment section alive with speculation about a reversal of power even? In particular, Midgley seemed very confident the end was near for the new MI.

Yes, it's very interesting to think about that in light of these new developments. Was Midgley privy to behind-the-scenes information? Did he know this move with Gee was coming? (Maybe Elder Holland was summoned to the MI precisely to help tamp down tensions between the "new" MI and the Mopologists?) Maybe Midgley saw Holland's talk as a "rebuke" in the sense that it meant that the Mopologists would get to keep the Gay Research Chair, which, per DCP, was the real "trophy" in all of this. I guess what I'm asking is this: what is the bigger "spanking"--that Holland would give this talk? Or that the MI would not get to retain the Gay Research Chair?

[_sunstoned]

DCP goes out of his way to state that Gee is retaining his rank as full professor. I feel it is odd that he felt the need to state this. It makes me wonder if Gee is/was in jeopardy of loosing his faculty position.

I am not familiar with the internal workings of BYU, but the school where I teach it would be very difficult to remove a tenured professor. It would take something in the neighborhood of gross negligence or serious dishonesty to even begin the removal process. There seems to be some question of his continuing status. Doesn't full professor come with tenure at BYU?