I've only been on here a couple of months...and between the decisively anti-academic postings of J. Stinehart, the rampant apologetics from those like K. Randolph - who recently suggested that the linguistic (late) dating of the Hebrew Bible is ideologically motivated, based on (a belief in) the "religion" of evolution, in combination with "anti-Semitism" - and now this nugget of anti-intellectualism from Mr. Fried, I'm pretty disillusioned, as well, Mr. Hurwitz.
For a while now, I've considered creating an academic space for the discussion of Semitic languages. Conformity to the basic scholarly consensus about fundamental tenets of Semitic linguistics - e.g. the existence of Akkadian and Ugaritic - would be strictly enforced. Posts violating this would be deleted; and those who _repeatedly_ violated would be banned. I've actually just gone ahead right now and created a place on the site Reddit: www.reddit.com/r/Semitic. For those unfamiliar with the site, it hosts many of the largest forums on the Internet. For some months now, I've run a specific forum there for academic Biblical studies, that's become quite successful (www.reddit.com/r/AcademicBiblical). Hope this doesn't come across as advertising - I'm certainly not making any money for this or anything. I just legitimately think there should be a very active place on the Internet where all aspects of Semitic linguistics can be discussed in an academic context. Stewart Felker University of Memphis, Bornblum Judaic Studies Department
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