Below is the letter sent to me today by the people in Denmark. I was an invited speaker at their conference on counterterrorism (and math and computer science) and the final speaker, a Robert Steele who claimed to be a former CIA employee, attacked Lincoln and defended the Confederacy. Above their email to me is my response. Attached is the letter I faxed them last week Monday.
The relevance is how opposing the neo-Confederates can harm your job prospects. During the conference, both Wiil and Memon had been quite enthusiastic about the prospects of hiring me at their university./JDF
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From:
Jonathan Farley <lattice.theory@gmail.com>
Date: 2009/11/10
Subject: Steele's racist remarks and barrage of profanity
To: "Wiil, Uffe Kock" <
ukwiil@mmmi.sdu.dk>
Cc: Nasrullah Memon <
memon@mmmi.sdu.dk>
Uffe,
Your remark is very surprising. I did not behave unprofessionally in the least. I responded in a restrained way to racist remarks with an incredibly vicious, and indeed violent, history.
If you do not comprehend the nature or historical background of Steele's racist remarks, then simply concede that, or do your own research. You could start with the link I provided in my fax.
It is shocking that you could consider Steele's non-stop barrage of profanity to be, in any way, shape or form, equivalent to my statements, responding to his racist historical remarks. Steele's statements about my job situation (which were false, incidentally) were unbelievably unprofessional.
Steele may have apologized to you. He did not apologize to me, so it does not constitute a genuine apology.
Incidentally, the moment Steele started his barrage of profanity, you, as the moderator, should have stopped him. Instead, you turned to me to tell me to stop and did not make any attempt to stop him.
And, as I told the other gentleman who turned to me---who apologized to me, incidentally---sometimes you do have to take sides. Steele would not have dared to treat a white colleague in a similar fashion. If you doubt that, you can simply ask him if he has ever behaved that way anywhere else.
I will never apologize for standing up for the dignity of my race and standing up against racists, not even for a job. While I am not pleased that such an issue could arise at a scientific conference, I enjoyed several discussions at the meeting, specifically, with Christopher Rhodes, Arno Reuser and his Dutch colleague, and Solazzo Domenico, and I remain interested in the research of the Counterterrorism Research Lab master's student who is studying the work of Roy Lindelauf.
---Jonathan Farley
2009/11/10 Uffe Kock Wiil
<ukwiil@mmmi.sdu.dk>
Dear Jonathan
CC: Nasrullah
We have received your fax regarding the incident at the last session at the International
Workshop on Counterterrorism and Open Source Intelligence in Odense.
Nasrullah and I have discussed this and have the following response:
We do not wish to take any side in the dispute between Robert and you. We observed two
invited speakers that both behaved very unprofessionally at our event. Robert has appologized
to us for his part in this. It would make sense that you do the same.
Cheers
Uffe Wiil
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Professor Uffe Kock Wiil
Counterterrorism Research Lab
The Maersk Mc-Kinney Moller Institute
University of Southern Denmark
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