In 2016, I was the victim of a stalker who tried to frame me for a crime; I sought help from the police and spent time and money on lawyers and forensic investigators trying to identify the perpetrator, without success. Anyone paying attention at the time realized that I was also a victim, but, unfortunately, plenty of folks on social media still recklessly defame me for the stalker's crimes. Some of them, happily, recant when confronted with the evidence. Hopefully, by putting the evidence in one place (below), others will be more careful.
In 2014, I was involved in a dispute with several other philosophy professors about my well-known philosophy rankings; the details of the dispute do not matter, but they are here for anyone curious.
Nearly two years after this dispute, some maniac decided to send excrement in the mail to several of those involved in the 2014 dispute with me. (The best news account came from the CBC.) One of the envelopes had a return address of my law school; it was mailed on June 23, 2016 from the very large Chicago zip code that includes O'Hare airport. Put aside that criminals usually don't volunteer their work address. It was a matter of public record that I was speaking at a conference in Germany on June 24, so the person stalking me obviously thought it would further help frame me to post it the day before. What the stalker didn't know was that I had left for Germany on June 22, so was not even in the country on June 23.
To those without malice towards me, it was obvious I had nothing to do with this vile stunt. The philosopher David Velleman (then at NYU), who had the misfortune to get such a package, was the first to alert me to it in an August 27, 2016 e-mail:
A few people have received packages of excrement from someone using your law-school address.... I assume it can't be you -- which means that someone is trying to embarrass you. I don't know if there's anything you can do about it, but I thought you would want to know. Some of the recipients have reported the packages to the police.
The philosopher David Wallace (Pittsburgh), responding to reckless anonymous accusations against me on another blog, wrote:
Are people seriously supposing either that, (a) Leiter himself is sending offensive and illegal packages to his adversaries and including his own return address; or that (b) overly radical allies of Leiter, inspired by and in agreement with his views but thinking that he’s being too moderate in his actions, decide to act on his behalf *and to frame him for the action*?
I don’t really see any plausible way of interpreting this as anything other than third-party malice....
A law blogger at the Washington Post, noting the same facts as Wallace, agreed that someone was "trying to frame or embarrass" me, since "whoever sent the packages was quite ham-handed in their efforts to connect them to Leiter."
Several recipients, correctly, reported these packages to the police. The police never contacted me about this, since I was never a suspect. My lawyers also retained a forensic handwriting expert who confirmed from media photos of two different envelopes that the handwriting was the same. Further investigation led us to try to secure handwriting samples from three individuals. Only one complied: philosopher David Barnett, formerly of the University of Colorado. Barnett had admitted to others (and subsequently to me) that he had sent excrement in the mail in the past (seriously!). His handwriting was not, however, a match to that on the envelopes. Another person my lawyers contacted was an alleged recipient of one of the envelopes, who never responded. A final person, someone connected to both law and philosophy (and Chicago), first lied to my lawyers about his history of cyber-stalking me, then, subsequently, refused to provide a handwriting sample as well. For additional details, see the last update here. My lawyers advised me that we did not yet have enough to proceed against anyone.
Falsely accusing someone of a crime is defamation. It's also unethical and malicious, adding insult to injury. I hope it stops.
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