Posted March 23, 2021
There is a grain of truth in Eric Rowland's suggestion that it is (also!) a "personal attack". While I completely stand by my defense of Berlinski, and disagreement of Shallit's hypocritical attack (and redicule) of the latter, in the interest of full disclosure, I am appending here two email messags, from ten years ago sent to me by Professor Shallit.
I was most offended when he described my nice, lively, talk, at the Wilf 80th birthday as a "talk", and quoting anonymous colleagues that I am getting "stranger and stranger"
From shallit@cs.uwaterloo.ca Tue Jul 26 02:30:49 2011
Dear Prof. Zeilberg [sic]:
Your behavior is becoming increasingly strange, and colleagues of mine have frequently remarked on it - for example, following your bizarre "talk" at the Wilf conference.
Please do not write me again, and please do not submit any papers for any journal where I am an editor.
Sincerely - Jeffrey Shallit
From shallit@cs.uwaterloo.ca Thu Jul 28 11:09:57 2011
Please stop sending me mail. I have already asked you once not to, but you persist.
I am now adding you to my spam filter, so all further messages will be discarded.
Jeffrey Shallit