Dave was troubled. He wrote a follow-up piece titled “The Gatekeeper’s Fangs: Sarah Jeffcott’s Peer-Review Problem.” In it, he argued that Jeffcott’s behavior revealed a deeper flaw: . “What does Dave think about Professor Jeffcott now? I think she’s brilliant but brittle. She can dish out criticism about corporate power structures, but she can’t take a single footnote questioning her own framework without reaching for a scalpel. That’s not rigor. That’s ego.” The article went viral within academic Twitter (now X). Jeffcott did not respond publicly, but several of her allies defended her, noting that peer review is confidential and that Dave had no business seeing the emails.
The remaining 30% think Dave is obsessed. One popular comment reads: “Dave, you dropped out six years ago. Jeffcott has tenure. She doesn’t think about you at all. Move on.” What Does Dave Think About Professor Jeffcott
, PhD, is a tenured full professor at a mid-sized liberal arts college in the Northeast. Her specialty is applied ethics, with a focus on digital privacy and professional codes of conduct. She has published two well-received books and numerous peer-reviewed articles. By all external metrics, she is a successful, thoughtful academic. She is also known for her sharp tongue in faculty meetings and her notoriously difficult “Ethics in the Professions” seminar. Dave was troubled
For roughly eight months, Dave was a fan. The shift began subtly. Dave, who still maintained unofficial contacts inside several universities, heard a rumor about Jeffcott’s conduct during a blind peer review process. According to a leaked email chain (which Dave later verified through two independent sources), Jeffcott had been asked to review a manuscript by a junior scholar—someone not unlike Dave’s former self. The manuscript critiqued her earlier work on NDAs. I think she’s brilliant but brittle
On the surface, it sounds like a throwaway line from a sitcom or a question asked during a dorm room bull session at 2 a.m. But for those who have followed the subtle back-and-forth between Dave—a pseudonymous but increasingly influential online commentator on higher education—and the enigmatic Professor Jeffcott, a mid-career scholar of ethics and public policy, the answer is layered, critical, and surprisingly revealing about the state of modern academia.
As Dave himself writes in his bio: “I don’t have a PhD. I just have eyes.”
What did Dave think about Professor Jeffcott at this moment? . But not a simple one. He acknowledged her genuine contributions while arguing that her personal conduct undermined her public philosophy. Phase Four: Reconciliation? The Nuanced Current View Today, the relationship remains tense but productive—at least from Dave’s perspective. In his most recent update (published just last month), Dave wrote a piece titled “What I Still Think About Professor Jeffcott (Three Years Later).”