Erik Loomis is a dishonest person.

So in the past I've pointed out that standard operating procedure at Lawyers Guns and Money has been to tiptoe up to saying nasty things that the bloggers know they can't get away with, aware that the rabid Obots in their comments will be sure to say it for them. I have, as in the past, become the target of that tactic recently.

Today, Erik Loomis wanted to call me a proponent of race science, because Andrew Sullivan quoted me in a post talking about race and IQ. Unfortunately for Loomis, he has an evidence deficit on that position. See, since I've been writing about politics publicly, I've been arguing against The Bell Curve and the purported scientific case for racial inferiority. If Loomis was confused about this, he might have read when I said yesterday "I believe that the case for scientific racial inferiority is wrong." But he wasn't confused. There can be no doubt, given the many times I've written against these ideas at considerable length, that I am opposed to the idea that black people are inherently less intelligent than white people.

Rather, Loomis doesn't like me, because I believe that Muslims should not be murdered via drone strikes, and that my antipathy to murder of Muslims via drone strikes was enough to compel me not to vote for Obama (after voting for him in 2008), and further that I often praise Glenn Greenwald. And so Loomis goes for pure guilt by association. And of course, his commenters take the bait, and engage in one of the Two Minute Hates that seems to be the only way they have of interacting with the world at all.

Loomis is someone who, when his academic freedom was disgracefully challenged by his institution, the University of Rhode Island, made a point of standing up for himself, as well he should have. At the time, I signed the petition insisting on Loomis's academic and intellectual freedom. I was proud and happy to do so, in no small part because I am an alum of URI and someone who was deeply embarrassed by its conduct. Today, despite his loud stand for his own academic freedom, he threatens my own.

Please understand: as a graduate student, I am very vulnerable to the opinions of tenure-track professors like Loomis. When I hit the job market, a professor attempting to associate my name with an argument for the legitimacy of racism could easily render me incapable of getting a job, even though I've repeatedly and explicitly objected to that argument. Loomis knows that. He knows what he's doing. Make no mistake: that post is a threat. In the incredibly competitive world of the academic job market, it's very easy for vague innuendo to ruin a career. Loomis is aware of that.

Now, were Loomis an honest person and Lawyers Guns and Money an honest forum, he would post again, this time pointing out my actual views on the subject through which he is making me guilty of association. But he won't, because he is not an honest person, because his commitment to academic and intellectual freedom extends precisely as far as it concerns his own employment, and because of the cause of his personal resentment, which is that people of prominence actually link to and interact with a grad student like me.

He's says it himself: "I obviously didn’t read the linked post because why would anyone read something DeBoer writes?" Pretty much all you need to know. Remember that, next time he makes a martyr of himself for academic freedom.

Update: "I obviously didn’t read the linked post because why would anyone read something DeBoer writes?"

Update II: "I obviously didn’t read the linked post because why would anyone read something"

Update III: "I obviously didn’t read the linked post"

Update IV: "I obviously didn’t read"