Who is Torquil Duthie?

He is yet another Associate (Assistant?) professor with a PhD from Columbia, in this case on the faculty at UCLA, along with Bialock (see previous posts).

http://www.international.ucla.edu/japan/about/person.asp?Facultystaff_ID=655

He posted some rather uncivil and untoward remarks in response to my less than favorable review of Lurie's book on Amazon.com. He also posted a glowing review of Lurie's book, and then challenged me to submit a review to a journal and reveal my real name.

He followed that up with outright hostility by illegally disclosing my personal information, but has since deleted his offending responses. Nonetheless, the culprit is a colleague of Lurie's, and for all intents and purposes they seem to be working together in a sort of network of semi-competent Associate professors trying to artificially promote each other's work, perhaps with the ultimate objective of becoming a network of semi-competent tenured full professors. 

Is academia a team sport these days?

This is not a trivial matter, because tenure is at the heart of our model of open society in the modern world, in the same manner that the judiciary underpins democracy by seeing to it that the current administration is adhering to the laws that have been established though the democratic process through the ages. 



Here's a link to the conference he mentioned in his response to my Amazon review. Both he an Mr. Lurie are presenters at this conference.

http://www.international.ucla.edu/japan/events/showevent.asp?eventid=9140




Tenure in academia allows intellectuals to speak truth to power, without the threat of losing their livelihoods, for one thing. For another, it serves to ensure that institutions of higher educations remain bastions of progress in society by facilitating the free and open exchange of ideas, propelling knowledge in each respective field forward. 


My comments can be accessed on the Amazon page, so I'm just going to post those that have been deleted by Mr. Duthie. He doesn't respond in kind to any of the points I raise, just mounts a sort of personal attack in a somewhat menacing manner by implying that I'm hiding behind an anonymous ID. 

And while actually exposing my name, he condescendingly points out that I have only a mere BA in Interdisciplinary Studies in Social Sciences, as if that were a disqualification of my commentary, which he derides as mere "opinion". He inhabits the lofty ivory tower, but neither he nor his cohorts from the Faure kabal have any business being in academia, basically. 

But that's just my OPINION.

I think his behavior represents a prima facie example of the "not what you know but who you know" ethos of nepotistic secret society sociopaths.

Moreover, these Ivy Leaguers are quite resourceful! I wonder how he figured out--in a relatively short period of time--who I am, where I studied, what I studied, and so on. Not very suitable behavior for an aspiring professor, I would submit.

On this page:
http://www.amazon.com/review/R277O2SM1ZL95U/ref=cm_cd_notf_message?ie=UTF8&cdForum=Fx1NKSFHERYSNG4&cdPage=1&cdThread=Tx26P67BJNB7AQV#Mx1G64JO1CTZQR1

Initial post: Sep 27, 2012 10:34:44 PM PDT

Sep 27, 2012 10:34:44 PM PDT

TD says:

Harvard had this book peer-reviewed, as it does with all its publications. Many other scholars also read the manuscript before publication, including myself. I have yet to meet a scholar in the field who does not think Realms of Literacy is an extraordinarily impressive achievement. If you want to critique the book, you should write a proper review in a journal and sign your real name to it.

[Deleted by the author 10 hours ago] 

On this page:
http://www.amazon.com/review/R277O2SM1ZL95U/ref=cm_cd_notf_message?ie=UTF8&cdForum=Fx1NKSFHERYSNG4&cdPage=1&cdThread=Tx26P67BJNB7AQV#MxUEOVJ250L6EY

He posted the following post: 
In reply to your post on Oct 2, 2012 12:04:29 PM PDT

TD says:

Dear Mr. ***** (aka Kyoto918)Peer review is confidential, so we don't know who the reviewers were, but it is quite possible that Whitman was one of the reviewers, and I can assure you that Whitman has a high opinion of Lurie's book. He may, of course, object to some of the arguments, but as I said, I know of no scholar who doesn't think Lurie's book is very impressive achievement. I was at a small conference recently in which Lurie presented some of the arguments in his book, and the reaction from the audience, which included Whitman, and Jorgensen, was extremely positive. I think your problem is simply that you don't understand Lurie's book. You are of course entitled to your opinion as a freelance translator living in Kyoto with a BA in Interdisciplinary Studies in Social...


On this page:
http://www.amazon.com/review/R2H4D5IIJW0MMD/ref=cm_cd_notf_message?ie=UTF8&cdForum=Fx1GHMY2EB01MA4&cdPage=1&cdThread=Tx3EJHCI0GZAGJY#Mx2OZPUUD5XFSBF

He posted the following post:

TD says:

Now you are just trolling. I'm sure Harvard is terrified of your forthcoming critique. Good bye.

He deleted both of those posts about 12 hours after posting them, but this is simply another indicator of the conspiratorial activity of the nepotistic (probably Freemasons) networks that these pseudo-scholars operate in and by which they are colonizing Academia in the USA.