  While his students and research assistants found him supportive and kind, Sylvan’s style sometimes offended his peers. He could be very blunt in his assessment of other’s arguments and his shy demeanour and lack of small talk did little to counteract feelings of rude-dismissal—friend and colleague Bob Meyer commenting that he “was a difficult man; not only did he fail to suffer fools gladly, but he often disdained suffering them at all” (Meyer 1996). Sylvan himself also commented, for example, that his “Critique of Deep Ecology” (Sylvan 1985) would “risk offending many friends in the deeper ecology movement” (i) and, while he remained good friends with chief target Arne Naess, some were, no doubt, offended. It earned him the title ‘the bad boy of deep ecology’ (Orton 2005, Other Internet Resources)—still considered a “deep ecologist” despite the substance of his criticism concluding in his rejecting deep ecology in favour of what he termed “deep green theory”. Some who took offense on reading his response to their work would later go on to befriend and work with Sylvan, having gotten past his blunt exterior. But with opposing-authority there was rarely any rapprochement; his anti-authoritarianism was deep-rooted and his anarchist tendencies manifest—in both academic work and in his behaviour.