A Statement Regarding Commenters At The Faculty Lounge

So you are saying Campos is wrong?

I appreciate this posting. Tens of thousands of people are beginning law school, attending lawschool, and attempting to enter the legal market every year. Many young attorneys have over a hundred thousand dollars in debt and a monthly payment of over $1,500.00. IBR is not the answer, as interest compounds at over 7%. One must either pay off the debt or live thirty years of life with a massive and growing debt burden.

The legal field has seen a severe structural change. Some stakeholders in the law school business and law school preparation business refuse to concede this point and aggressively criticize anybody who disagrees with them, even while Northwestern University Law School is cutting its class of 2013 by 10%.

I personally have been unable to muster the courage to communicate my thoughts on the issue because of the aggressive cyber-bullying and vindictiveness of some of the stakeholders in the law school business. Communicating anything that harms the economic interest of those in the law school business would jeopardize my chances of securing employment and beginning a career, and would thus imperil my ability to begin a family and plan for retirement.

Some people are willing to engage in scorch earthed tactics as we have seen with a recent posting on JDU outing a poster who had strong, yet reasonable criticisms of the law school business and the future of the legal field.

Yes, but what about the allegations by Professor Chad Marzen (FSU Business) that popular culture of the time, in responding to the Kansas-Nebraska Act legislation, contributed to an increased polarization between North and South ahead of the start of the Civil War?

Ganger,

Dan Filler indicated that he and his partners did not disclose the IP information to Professor Campos. In addition, he stated that he had no basis to believe that a guest blogger had disclosed the information to Campos.

Since Mr. Filler is not omnisicent and does not have perfect knowlege, it is not safe to assume that Mr. Campos is incorrect.

Edit: Dan Filler indicated that he and his partners did not disclose the IP information to Professor Leiter***.

Thanks! I read it to say that while Leiter may have gotten IP addresses it would have been through a guest blogger who still had access, which while unfortunate would not be TFL's fault in my opinion (though it would be nice if guest bloggers lost access to ip addresses and emails).

If I could suggest one edit, however, the use of the present tense is a little jarring, and a cynic could argue that the statement would still be true if Dan Filler gave Leiter access to his own email account but then changed the password (no, I don't think this happen, I think a guest blogger probably did provide the info to him). Stronger language applying to past access as well as present access would probably let TFL avoid more criticism.

Ok, time to 'fess up.

It was Col. Mustard
In the Library
With the Lead Pipe

I'm willing to accept this statement, and I apologize if I personally cast aspersions on any particular administrator (if I did).

However, I do think removing access to IP and e-mail addresses from guest bloggers would be appropriate–the website has at least 53 guest bloggers (according to the list on the side), any of whom could apparently have access to that information.

I still think my earlier post is relevant and, indeed, important for resolving this issue:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4-WdohdaHw

This clip is worth going through from start to finish; who knows, it might be the deciding word on this debate about Campos and Leiter.

Is there any person who had access to the information that isn't on this list?

Which list? The one in the statement is just the 10 permanent bloggers. However, another 53 guest bloggers (according to the list on the right) also have administrative access, any of whom would apparently have access to the information. So, assuming the accuracy of the above statement, it still only covers 10 of at least 63 possible leaks.

Leiter has thanked at least one guest blogger in an authors note…unleash the hounds!

Are you now seriously demanding that the admins — who made the above statement as you demanded to shut you lot up — now also change the way they run *their* site so *you* can continue to trash people online with no fear of consequences?
How about just going away?

Darren — Prof. Campos very specifically accused Prof. Filler of providing the information. See, for example, his 3/8 post on Lawyers, Guna and Money. It appears that reckless allegation is incorrect.

Ready, shoot, aim.

Ok, so with 50 names not accounted for, this statement is next to worthless. Sort of like average salary of 90k based on 20% responding.

And you do have reason to believe it, the allegations made against you based on 3 different people receiving stalker emails from Peter Aduren immediately after posting remarks to this blog. That's reason to inquire further.

It doesn't matter. The story is out there to be read here and elsewhere. People will make up their owns minds about what is likely to have happened.

Filler could also be lying. There is no way to prove that he did this, so lying is the obvious move. He's be a fool to admit to it.

The statement is not worthless, of course, for at least one reason that's been offered: numerous people on this blog and elsewhere specifically and repeatedly accused Dan of releasing information. You may not have been one of them and you may not be satisfied now. Others may now choose to disbelieve the statement, or to retract their earlier accusations–or, I suppose, to say nothing and call their own basic decency, integrity, and reliability into question. And by "others" I mean those who actually use their names when accusing others; those who didn't and don't speak volumes about their lack of character, but should otherwise be disregarded (or, I suppose, sued).

Hear that wind blowing? It is the sound of the goal posts moving.

Can we discuss Kansas-Nebraska now?

@Paul Horwitz: I don't think Dan was lying, and I freely admit that based on the evidence presented, including Dan's behavior in response and his strange non-denial on AbovetheLaw, that I believed wrongly that he was the guilty party. I also appreciate how the denial here was edited to remove any temporal loopholes. I was wrong about Dan.

But let's be honest here; there has been no other credible explanation of what happened other than someone with administrative access to TFL provided Leiter with the information. The fact that neither Dan nor the other permanent bloggers are responsible is reassuring, and a privacy policy that sets out exactly who has access to IP addresses and emails would help reassure us that our information is safe. The revelation that guest bloggers get administrative access is a little unsettling, honestly.

But this whole issue has not occurred in a vacuum. I don't think anyone has anything against TFL in general, it's just a lot of people are just done with Brian Leiter, his nastiness, his hypocrisy (over, hilariously enough, anonymous posting which he has no problem doing himself), and his enablers.

Yeah, I'm not comfortable speculating about whether anyone on TFL might be lying or not. I think it will likely be impossible to determine precisely what happened, unless someone comes forward, and under the circumstances proof will probably be lacking with respect to any individual person. So, I think it's best to simply accept the statement at face value, and move on.

With regard to future practices, however, leaving access to the information open to (apparently) at least 63 people seems like a bit of a security flaw, so that might be worth patching up.

I can't speak for this blog, but many blogs including my own keep an honor roll of links to past guest bloggers, long after their guest stints (along with any access) have ended. I'm not trying to assist in such an inquiry, but one certainly shouldn't just assume that past guests have any access.

Let's not act like Filler didn't invite suspicion. Given the circumstances, he was an obvious suspect. He was asked about this early and he chose not to respond and to offer that bullshit to Above the Law. If the accusations against him became pointed, he invited that if not downright encouraged it. Maybe he thought he was "baiting" somebody so he could then pull a move like this. Screw it. Nobody should be apologizing to him.

Maybe, maybe not. I'm not sure exact numbers matter.

Predictably, suspicion has now shifted, both in this thread and on other blogs, to the guest bloggers at TFL. As Paul suggests, past guest bloggers may or may not retain access to TFL commenters' IP addresses and email addresses (I have no idea). But as a current guest blogger, I obviously do have such access, as the regular bloggers' statement above points out. In an effort to preempt emails, phone calls, off-topic comments on any further posts that I may publish on TFL, and who knows what else, I therefore now feel compelled to state for the ever-increasing and permanent Internet record of this affair, that I have never shared any TFL commenter's IP or email address with any third party (including but not limited to Brian Leiter, who I have never met and with whom I have never corresponded), nor will I do so in the future.

I realize that this statement may contribute to the privacy unraveling effect set in motion above, perhaps putting pressure on other TFL guest bloggers to make the same denial, lest they inculpate themselves with their own silence. I'm not sure how much, if any, regret to feel about that, since I don't know the circumstances under which someone with access to TFL may have disclosed information to a third party (assuming that such disclosure in fact occurred via this blog as opposed to another one, or indeed, occurred at all). But I have no desire to have my name any more associated with these allegations than it already is.

Oh my goodness…me too: "I therefore now feel compelled to state for the ever-increasing and permanent Internet record of this affair, that I have never shared any TFL commenter's IP or email address with any third party (including but not limited to Brian Leiter, with whom, unlike Michelle, I have in the past corresponded, although it was several years ago and had nothing whatsoever to do with the topic at hand), nor will I do so in the future."

So the options then are:

1. This statement is untrue;

2. One of the many guest bloggers provided information to Brian Leiter (note that Leiter's own account is that he was supplied such information by "different people" whom Campos had criticized before, so there is NO dispute that one or more bloggers were feeding Leiter information); or

3. One of the Faculty Lounge bloggers himself adopted the false Peter Aduren email/identity so as to email and threaten Leiter's critics.

Explanation 2 is the least unflattering to the blog proprietors, but it still calls for some action as to what guest bloggers are allowed to do.

I find this whole business unseemly (while also incredibly entertaining, in the same way that gladiatorial combat was likely entertaining).

If everyone here is to be taken at face value, it seems that the following things are true:

One out of approximately 53 people who have guest-blogged on this website has abused his access to this valuable forum.
Mr. Campos inappropriately overstated the case that Mr Filler was the guilty party here, and he ought to admit as much.
Mr. Leiter has displayed a noteworthy vituperative streak on his own blog and–if we are to believe those who have come forward on this and other fora–a truly disturbing tendency to seek out critics and make (arguably) veiled threats in his personal, anonymized e-mail correspondence.

This is a sad (and perhaps instructive) episode all around, but most particularly for those who know and have regard for Mr. Leiter.

If its not Dan Miller, then my guess is guest blogger Tamara Piety. Leiter did indicate that whoever gave him dybbuk's information was somebody that dybbuk had antagonized and he's certainly antagonized Ms. Piety on this blog and elsewhere (I think he once even wrote her a poem) All 3 of the commenters claimed to have received emails from Brian Leiter have posted in Piety's threads, dybbuk, MacK and BLRT, the latter of whom only posted in one thread here and it was one of hers (the one about Brian Leiter and whether the law schools were losing applications from the best people) (the comments have since been deleted).

Obviously, these are three annoying people who deserve little sympathy from the very law school professors that they hate. But somebody still gave out emails to somebody.

Filler (or whoever else did it) is safe in denying everything, as long as he remains on good terms with Leiter — the only person in a position to "out" the culprit.

I think, at this point, that I'd shut these commenters down — TFL has no additional obligations (indeed, there was no obligation, legal, moral or otherwise, to answer the hecklers' demands in any event) and this has devolved into a series of anonymous troll smears of legal academics against whom they hold a generalized grudge. Nothing will satisfy them short of Leiter jumping off the Sears Tower while screaming "I'm sorry ssscccaaaaammmmbbblllllooooooggggggeeeerrrrsssss" — they've become a mob, right down to the irrational groupthink and blood-fever — and need to be dispersed. We are now providing a forum for baseless or at least reckless character assassination, which we need not do and, indeed, may have obligations of various kinds to prevent.

Agree with 7:22 pm. Plus Leiter is plenty harsh to people under his own name ALL THE TIME. The idea that he has to do it without his own name is, well, suspicious.

There's an ambiguity in the phrase "identifying information," as it admits of a maximal and a minimal interpretation.

Maximally, it means "sufficient to establish real life identity."

Minimally, it means "sufficient to establish cyber-identity."

So if the phrase is taken maximally, the above statement could allow someone to have passed on an IP address and an email address, as these are not sufficient to establish real life identity.

To resolve this ambiguity, the admins should specify whether IP addresses and email addresses have been passed on.

Might I suggest a comments policy which says anonymous comments are only permitted in posts which do not use someone's real name (other than public figures outside the legal academy). if you attack someone using their real name, you have to sign it with your real name, or the IP address will be given, upon request, to anyone you attack in your post.

That might cut down on the number of comments a bit, and raise the level of discourse.

Leiter also has a long, long history of anonymous/pseudonymous attacks on people, too, though, so no, it's not really suspicious.

And yes, I think it's best to drop the speculation about which blogger it may or may not have been–unless someone admits to it, there will almost certainly never be any proof that's anywhere close to definitive.

Not suspicious at all that Leiter uses fake names on the internet. He often does it in order to praise himself. This is a sick man we're dealing with, not a normal human being.

"Leiter also has a long, long history of anonymous/pseudonymous attacks on people, too, though, so no, it's not really suspicious."

Is there evidence whose source isn't Campos?

"I therefore now feel compelled to state for the ever-increasing and permanent Internet record of this affair, that I have never shared any TFL commenter's IP or email address with any third party (including but not limited to Brian Leiter, who [I have not corresponded with for more than 6 years]), nor will I do so in the future."

Yes. Google "Brian Leiter, academic thug" and "why does Brian Leiter hate us" for two examples.

Yes.

http://keithburgess-jackson.typepad.com/blog/2009/01/brian-leiter-academic-thug.html

http://www.autoadmit.com/leiter.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Brian_Leiter/Archive_2&diff=344928315&oldid=344927909

This third one is particularly fun. Read that and tell me it is isn't Leiter himself fighting with critics over his wikipedia page, but pretending to be somebody else.

(none of these have anything to do with Paul Campos)

Autoadmit? Seriously? Burgess-Jackson isn't a prize either:
http://dadahead.blogspot.com/2005/02/keith-burgess-jackson-is-not-mentally.html

Anon at 7:22pm: It's the Willis Tower now. If you had practiced, you would know that.

Yeah, and those are just a few of the easy cites. There are also many message board and other appearances under various thinly-disguised pseudonyms that don't happen to have webpages devoted to them.

Nobody is even pretending to care anymore about the truth — this has devolved into an "eye for an eye" rant by two or three obsessive folks. Leiter was mean and had the audacity to come after those who anonymously smear academics — and job-seekers, as many of you are!!! — so you're going to pester and try to injure everyone who's ever associated with him. Remember, that's what STARTED ALL THIS IN THE FIRST PLACE. Among other things, that's a tacit defense of what the outed commenters said; but it is no defense of their reprehensible actions to argue that someone else did something similar after the fact. Painfully parsing the language of what was obviously a good faith attempt to satisfy your ever-changing paranoid demands while, at the same time, condemning exactly the statement you demanded as a lie underscores the futility of trying to engage you all in an actual debate. The fact that, you claim with nearly zero evidence, Leiter uses anonymous posts to attack others — a practice that you argue is BAD but then proceed to hypocritically do yourselves repeatedly — is sufficient in my view to discredit your purported "quest" for "justice." Go vent on JDU or someplace that is already a cesspool of free-floating rage. This is a serious academic discussion forum, not your playground for compulsive, juvenile bombast. You may be right that Leiter has been mean to your idol Campos, but Campos has plenty of access to means of public self-defense (he has his own blog(s), after all); he does not need an undisciplined posse to continually lob painfully repetitive tripe at people who have now established they have zero relationship to this so-called problem. The real issue seems to be that you feel threatened, your cloak of anonymity has proved not quite so impervious, and you're now trying to obscure (or justify) your own reprehensible past behavior by shifting the blame to innocent and well-meaning folks who have tolerated your airing of grievances far longer than even a broad sense of decency and egalitarianism warrants. If dubyyk (or whatever the handle is) is outed, it's a victory for civility on the internet. If you want to impact the law school system, you should work harder not to so fully discredit yourselves and your cohort with this craziness. Unless, of course, someone would like to defend on the merits the right of those who may be outed to say what they said with zero accountability.

Heroin, be the death of me
Heroin, it's my wife and it's my life
Because a mainer to my vein
Leads to a center in my head
And then I'm better off than dead
Because when the smack begins to flow
I really don't care anymore
About all the Jim-Jim's in this town
And all the politicians makin' crazy sounds
And everybody puttin' everybody else down
And all the dead bodies piled up in mounds

'Cause when the smack begins to flow
Then I really don't care anymore
Ah, when the heroin is in my blood
And that blood is in my head
And thank God that I'm as good as dead
And thank your God that I'm not aware
And thank God that I just don't care
And I guess I just don't know
And I guess I just don't know

I don't know just where I'm going
But I'm gonna try for the kingdom, if I can
'Cause it makes me feel like I'm a man
When I put a spike into my vein
And I'll tell ya, things aren't quite the same
When I'm rushing on my run
And I feel just like Jesus' son

Lou Reed

I didn't say it was necessarily bad (or no more so than anyone else doing it), just that he did it. It is rather hypocritical, however, given his positions on anonymous posting by others and his attempts to "out" people he disagrees with. And, I suspect it's not the first time the words "juvenile" and "Leiter" have been associated with each other.

For what it's worth, I don't particularly care about Campos, and I'm definitely not part of any Camposite army.

I think it was definitely Tamara Piety.

". . . people who have now established they have zero relationship to this so-called problem."

They have asserted it. They have not established anything of the sort.

"painfully parsing"? If you knew how to think like a lawyer, you'd see the following is a perfectly natural follow-up to an ambiguous phrase like "identifying information." Because if there's one thing this episode has shown is that there's a big difference between real life identity and cyber-identity.

To repeat:

There's an ambiguity in the phrase "identifying information," as it admits of a maximal and a minimal interpretation.

Maximally, it means "sufficient to establish real life identity."

Minimally, it means "sufficient to establish cyber-identity."

So if the phrase is taken maximally, the above statement could allow someone to have passed on an IP address and an email address, as these are not sufficient to establish real life identity.

To resolve this ambiguity, the admins should specify whether IP addresses and email addresses have been passed on.

Time to shut `er down. Keep the comments or not as you will. Statements been made. That's exactly what was asked for.

At this point, people are even accusing someone named Piety of Impropriety. That's a hilarious campaign slogan, but not much of a funny joke here today.

What's that phrase y'all real lawyers use? Oh yeah, it's "Asked and answered, Counselor".