Brian Leiter, Professor of Law, Philosophy, and Human Values, has recently indicated that he does not enjoy my posts and comments, on JD Underground and elsewhere. He falsely characterizes my writing as "bullying, insulting and defaming," "libel," [and] "harassment." (well, I suppose I may have to plead to "insulting" as to a handful of pompous law professors). As usual, the accusations that Brian Leiter hurls are actually a fair description of his own alarming behavior.
The Professor of Human Values & So Much Else has clearly changed his mind about the value of my writing. When he emailed me in the guise of "Peter Aduren" (at an email address I rarely use, but did use to post pseudonymous comments to Faculty Lounge and Prawfs), he stated: "I enjoy your posts, thanks." But I suppose that critics can be fickle, unlike "the seasons" in the hysterically atrocious poetry that the Professor routinely publishes under the name "Maurice Leiter."
http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/poems_by_maurice_leiter/
Leiter references, vaguely, what he calls "dybbuk’s most egregious piece of libel and harassment (not of me)" and "his worst bit of libel," which "has been removed from the web." Leiter is talking about an article I posted in November, 2011 on JD Underground about his protégé Michael Sevel, a philosophy Ph.d./JD, who was a student of Leiter’s at the University of Texas, and whom Leiter promoted for a law professorship. When I published the article, Sevel was not a student, but was a VAP at the University of Miami School of Law. In the article, I argued that Sevel was unqualified for a law professorship as he had essentially zero practice experience and had never produced any scholarship that could possibly be of any use to a legal practitioner.
My article on Sevel was up for a year and four months and generated about 65 comments, including comments from "aduren." A few days ago, the admin. of JD Underground took down the piece, perhaps thinking that it was overly harsh towards a person who, however unqualified to be a Professor of Law, had never spoken or posted on law school scam issues, pro or con. I took the view, rightly or wrongly, that professionally Sevel was basically an extension of Leiter, given that Sevel’s prospects in legal academia were entirely dependent on the sponsorship of that pompous ubermunchkin and man of many screen names. But I was fine with the JD Underground deletion, until Leiter went and bragged about it.
However, Leiter is not quite right that the article has been removed from the web. It still exists in yahoo cache. Here it is, and granted some of my characterizations are extremely sarcastic and unkind. At the time, I was furious about Leiter’s ridicule of and haughty contempt for Paul Campos and the posters at Inside the Law School Scam, people who were morally troubled or in severe pain as a result of the law school catastrophe. However, readers can evaluate whether the article is libelous, harassing, and the rest of it. Oh, and readers can also scroll down the comment thread, and read the very cordial exchange I had with "aduren."
http://72.30.186.176/search/srpcache?ei=UTF-8&p=sevel+leiter+aduren+dybbuk&fr=yfp-t-900&u=http://cc.bingj.com/cache.aspx?q=sevel+leiter+aduren+dybbuk&d=4743229608563280&mkt=en-US&setlang=en-US&w=rhf3qxPIbQVs-NTy3yjax767P-EyMPXI&icp=1&.intl=us&sig=etqaaM7Eu7aMK7RbRiOEvg--
Or here:
https://docs.google.com/file/d/1YpTcaCoOaDimglltMkDN7JYWrRV7j9HeTzQAsbrZU8GJi7pSJDZOniU4mZl3/edit
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