Talk:Liam Kelley

Controversies

Note that Lê Minh Khải is quite a controversial figure in the field of Vietnamese history, so I tried to balance it out by presenting both his side and the side of his (ideological) opponents as strong as possible. Personally I find a lot of the criticisms directed towards him weak but decided to present them as strong as possible. I also deliberately didn't use his blog in this article as he has a lot more views that diverge from the current nationalist historiography such as the overemphasis on revolutionaries and the ignoring of the Nguyễn Dynasty mandarins in the current mainstream historiography of the early 20th (twentieth) century, also in a lot of cases people presented criticisms towards him which he actually debunked but I didn't add them here because I prefer not to use writings by him about himself or his positions leading to a lot of his well-built positions appearing a lot weaker in this article. --Donald Trung (talk) 10:59, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

Notice of edits requested by the subject of this biographical article

These edits were all made to some extend on request by Lê Minh Khải himself, some information that was outdated was corrected, also he didn't directly criticise the Communist Party of Vietnam and allowing that to stand might have some bad effects on him so I corrected it, furthermore, he asked to completely delete the passage on Ben Kiernan being able to speak Vietnamese specifically stating "I would delete this part: “based on the premise that Kiernan wasn't able to understand Vietnamese and Classical Chinese (despite Kiernan being able to speak the former)” First, I also criticize Kiernan for relying heavily on outdated scholarship. Second, we have no evidence that Kiernan “speaks Vietnamese.” I learned from the Vietnamese instructor at Yale that Kiernan took “one year of Vietnamese classes.” That doesn’t mean that he can “speak” the language. Also, that was communicated to me in a private email, so that information can’t be used. At the same time, however, I don’t think we have any evidence that we can cite of Kiernan’s ability to “speak Vietnamese” either. So, I would delete that information.". However, I decided not to delete the part as Kiernan in his criticisms of Lê Minh Khải claimed that he did speak some Vietnamese so I decided to amend it rather than delete it. Also Lê Minh Khải asked me to remove the part calling envoy poetry "porcelain poetry", but as the BBC News article uses this name I simply noted that it was an uncommon term rather than removing it. A total of 8 (eight) corrections were requested, mostly related to factual inaccuracies such as him no longer being a lecturer at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa which the earlier version still claimed that he was. Also he wanted me to note that "For a long time, I had a post on my blog that explained that my main purpose was to counter nationalist scholarship. I had that there precisely to explain to people what my purpose is: https://web.archive.org/web/20140313172600/http://leminhkhai.wordpress.com/2012/09/12/is-there-a-purpose-to-this-blog/" which is very specifically about Vietnamese nationalist historiography and not Marxist historiography as was also in the earlier version of this page. --Donald Trung (talk) 13:48, 18 September 2021 (UTC)

• Comment: Just to be clear, Lê Minh Khải never requested me to remove any negative information or criticism of his scholarship as he claimed that it's a good thing if people attack your scholarship (stating that his old professor said that when he studied historiography as a graduate student). He simply stated that some information was outdated and needed to be updated (namely that he lectured at a different university and works at a different journal) and I haven't removed any criticism, only added a note from a work he authored that directly addressed criticism that he claimed was "weak" because it was directly addressed in the intro of the work. As I don't have much experience with writing BLP articles I note all these things here in case they can be perceived as "malicious COI editing" if not noted. --Donald Trung (talk) 14:24, 18 September 2021 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:

• Lê Minh Khải (黎明凱) seal (chopmark).png

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 19:08, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

On "kẻ/người đốt đền" = "temple-burner"

When characterizing Kelley's methodology as that of a "temple-burner", it was very likely Lê Việt Anh was alluding to the arsonist Herostratus, who reportedly sought and achieved negative "publicity" (i.e. notoriety) by burning down the temple of Artemis in Ephesus; similarly to how, in Lê's opinion, Kelley was reputed for his controversial works & articles. I thought of that when 1st reading Lê's article & before mentioning it to Donald Trung, one contributor to this wikipedia on Kelley. Still I have no positive proof that Lê in fact compared Kelley to Herostratus. So I'll leave my speculation here in the talk-page. Erminwin (talk) 02:59, 17 February 2022 (UTC)