Offprint distribution.

After I self-learned Coptic and got interested in some linguistic issues that turned out to be fundamental to learning the language - to the point where everyone who knows standard Coptic should now re-learn their ABCs and pronunciation, b/c of what I've uncovered - I contacted a prof at my new institution to see if I could join his dialects class, and he brushed me off.

Then, after another prof from the same dept. encouraged me to re-contact him, I wrote him saying what she said, and this is what he wrote back (replying all so the other prof saw, since I had CCed her on the email):

Dear [my first name],



As I said to you in our meeting, my class is explicitly restricted to those who have taken the basic Coptic classes offered by our department. As I told you at that time, the issue is not knowledge of another stage of Egyptian, but a sound knowledge of Coptic that cannot be gained from self-teaching by reading Lambdin or any otehr grammar. All the students in the class will hae learned not only basic grammar, but idioms, lexical history and aspects of textual genres. There can be no opportunity to reteach these in the advanced course designed specifically for the needs of upper-level Egyptology PhD students. You would certainly be welcome in a future class after you have had the obligatory 2 Quarter sequence.




Sincerely,
[his first and last names]

That was back in 2006, and when I later looked at some stuff the guy had written, I realized that even though he knows every stage of Egyptian, he doesn't know basic historical linguistics (?!?).

Even more than that, he wrote an intro linguistic article on Coptic in a well-known collected volume that's a starting point for many linguists beginning to work on another language - and that article that he wrote contains many massive errors when he discusses linguistics, showing that he doesn't even command the basic analytical categories.

So, in my article that came out in January, I footnoted him a lot, teasing out every single error and trying to state it as crisply and neutrally as I could.

Yesterday, I dropped off an offprint to his academic mailbox, along with a note paperclipped onto it that said:

Dear Prof. [his last name],

Thanks for your advice to shore up my knowledge of Coptic by taking the [departmental] sequence.  Although I unfortunately haven't had a chance to work with you, I appreciate the opportunity to dialogue with you as a colleague through scholarship.

--[my first name]

I wonder if he'll even read my article, and find the 3-4 pages in a middle where I hold him up as a punching bag.