Shitstorm In Academia As Professors Receive Packets Of Poop [Buzzfeed News] Junk mail took on a new meaning when three philosophy professors received envelopes of feces last summer. Now, the hunt is on for the 'poopetrator'.
"In July, Carrie Ichikawa Jenkins, a philosophy professor at the University of British Columbia, emailed Haslanger, who's a friend, to say she had received feces in the mail — creatively described by the mystery sender as "foam sculptures," according to the attached customs declaration. The same month, J. David Velleman, a philosophy professor at New York University, stuck his hand into an envelope of shit delivered to his office door. After this story was published, a fourth philosophy professor, Carolyn Jennings, at the University of California, Merced, emailed BuzzFeed News photos of the unmarked package of feces she received in July. All four philosophy professors were embroiled in a 2014 academic brawl over what they perceived as an abuse of power within their field. Now, they say someone is sending them shit in an attempt to shut them up. The question is, who? And why now?"Someone Mailed Feces to Four Philosophers: A Disquisition [The New York Times]
"While the sender of the packages remains unknown, speculation quickly centered on Brian Leiter, a legal philosopher at the University of Chicago Law School and a famously hard-charging voice in the field, whose return address was on one of the packages. All four philosophers who received the packages have tangled with him over the boundary between intellectual combat and bullying, as well as his own influence. A few hours before the BuzzFeed article appeared, he posted on his blog, denying that he was involved and noting that he had been aware of some mailings since August, but had declined to write about them, since "publicity tends to encourage lunatics.""There is no pleasure for me in knowing there is someone out there so obsessed with me and so deranged that they would pull a vile stunt like this," he added in an email."[Previously.]