Not a crisis in world history, but: Chris Bertram closed a comment thread on crookedtimber.com, saying:

I’ve only just noticed the extensive discussion of the Kathleen Stock affair on this thread. I do not want a situation where commenters expose CT to an action for defamation. I note that Kiwanda has attributed to me various positions on the basis of misinterpreting tweets of mine and making inferences from the fact that I have not signed various open letters, all such inferences are unsafe. I have deleted all tweets mentioning Stock.

I made no inferences or attributions of positions to Chris Bertram, I merely noted (and linked), in response to another commenter’s question, that in a public tweet, Chris Bertram said:

And also that in another public tweet, Chris Bertram said:

I also noted that Chris Bertram signed a public letter criticizing a British government award to Kathleen Stock, and did not sign another public letter in support of academic freedom, and Stock, at Sussex University, where Stock was formerly employed. These letters were signed by academic philosophers, which apparently was Bertram’s old job.

I also mentioned the treatment of Kathleen Stock and Donald McNeil by their unions. Chris Bertram deleted those posts as well, although they had nothing to do with him.

After all further comments I made were cleansed from the site, as I tried to elicit under what rules I might be allowed to comment, Bertram then permanently blocked me from commenting at crookedtimber.org, where I had done for a decade. This incident is trivial, but revealing: Bertram deleted my comments, gave an implausible motivation for doing do, mischaracterized what I had said, and then suppressed any further response from me.

Again, not a big deal, but annoying.

As a further example of his views, given shortly after Kathleen Stock quit her academic position, partly due to lack of support from her colleagues (notably her union), Bertram gave the following remarkable opinion on academic freedom.

Maybe, applying Bertram’s very general comment to the particular case of Stock, she just wasn’t a “team player”, and didn’t do her “marking conscientiously”, and that explains her former colleagues weak support for her academic freedom.

About the letter he signed, a curious admission: