(Before I saw Casper's email, I'd intended to write another post about Edith Wharton.  I apologize to those of you who read me for, well, what I write.  You shouldn't be subjected to this.  So more on Wharton tomorrow.  Also, I've posted more today than I've ever posted on a single day before, which is ... a dubious distinction. I'll be posting less frequently, but more substantially, very soon.)

Is it against the law to request the IP address of someone who refuses to provide identifying information for the purposes of having his lawyer contact them?  Is it a felony?  According to someone, it may be "solicitation to commit a felony/conspiracy and solicitation to commit a felony/substantial battery."  Given that I acquired his IP address from the very email he sent me, I wonder whether he is himself complicit (thus culpable) in this conspiracy? 

As you might imagine, someone has forwarded another email.  It is over 2,500 words long and apparently took him two days to compose.  I'll post the "highlights" below the fold, but let me take a moment to explain why I'm not simply letting this drop.  I received hundreds of emails—which I'm responding to, albeit slowly—from people who have been harassed by the likes of Casper. 

Most were women.  Most had no way to respond.  I'm lucky enough to have a wide enough audience to publicly shame Casper for his abusive behavior.  It is not acceptable.  His words drip with privilege, born of race and class, bolstered by his belief that he's superior to those he claims to defend.  His treatment of Kevin is typical.  It may seem hypocritical of me to speak for those who can't while mocking him for doing the same, but there is one crucial difference: I don't assume anyone incapable of self-defense.  I know people had no recourse, that they were happy that someone stood up to an online bully.  He assumes all African-Americans unable to mount any sort of defense against a "racist" like me.

That he sends his emails to everyone who looks African-American at UCI is significant.  One recipient of Casper's mass-mailing wrote me back surmising, correctly, why he, a native of Nigeria, had been included in the email.  He wondered why those who oppose racism in their words are so quick to endorse it in their actions.  With that, I present the latest defamatory statements by John Casper:

[1.2] Does UCI own the software, lines, or servers that Mr. Kaufman used to try and obtain my IP address? If not, who does?  I am very interested in what Mr. Kaufman planned to do once he unlawfully obtained my IP address. Is he still looking for it? A police report provides that kind of detail and I most assuredly want a copy of the police report for my files.

Not still looking for it.  You already provided it to me. 

[1.3] A related issue is that Mr. Kaufman accused me of harassing him. Did Mr. Kaufman follow UCI procedures for reporting "harassment?" If not, then I need written confirmation of that for my files.

I did contact the police. The investigation is open. This very email was immediately forwarded to the officer investigating Mr. Casper's actions.

[2.2] I am not a lawyer ...

Really? 

[2.4] Mr. Kaufman emailed the owner of that "personal blog" and me with a signature that unambiguously identified his employer, his name, and his department. The fact that in his final emails Mr. Kaufman decided to drop that signature and all references to the English department at UCI is not insignificant in my opinion.

His opinion doesn't matter. I can prove that I sent the email from an online Gmail interface by the confirmation letter Gmail automatically generates when email is sent through it. The fact that my signature did not appear on that email but did appear on subsequent ones demonstrates that I consider it insignificant. That he considers this point worthy of a bullet demonstrates the pettiness of his crusade.

[3] You also wrote: "It is therefore outside the scope of the nondiscrimination policies."

With all due respect ... it sounds to me as though you have a lot of hard work ahead of you. If there is nothing in your policies that covers a self-identified UCI faculty member from advocating that a screamingly white supremacist obituary appear and be linked to an ABC affiliate's blog, the problem is with your policies.

I would urge you to stand in a high traffic area at UCI and randomly ask students, faculty, and staff if they thought UCI policies should ignore what Mr. Kaufman did?

I could conduct his experiment whenever I so please.  I wager he would be unhappy with the outcome.

[4.1] My uneducated guess is that this really was about Mr. Kaufman's lack of sensitivity. He saw patriotboy's links on the ABC affiliate's blog and followed them back to Jesus' General. Maybe Mr. Kaufman thought he could boost traffic to his site, and that he could make a few dollars selling advertising? Mr. Kaufman deliberately chose an issue far more incendiary than the "the use of rope imagery in Moby Dick."

First, if I were to harass someone, I would do some basic research. For example, if I wanted to defame someone's character by suggesting that his or her actions were intended to drive up advertising revenue, I would check to be sure that person had advertisements on his site. What his aspersions have to do with the case at hand, however, is uncertain. Does he intend to claim that I'm a for-profit supremacist? Otherwise, his attempt to divine my motivation is purely defamatory.

Second, as luck would have it, I did write about rope imagery in Moby Dick as an undergraduate.  I titled it "The Play of the Line in Moby Dick."  Here is the opening paragraph:

It is impossible to read Moby Dick without suffering the impression that Melville’s symbolic appropriation of whale-lines and the puns he derives therefrom are as tangled as those lines’ “complicated coils, twisting and writhing . . . in almost every direction” (240). But the sublime quality of Melville’s symbolism is only visible when its line is “put in play” and those coils become “perilous contortions” which the critic “cannot sit motionless in the heart of” lest he be “made [an intellectual] Mazeppa of” (241). Melville’s symbolism leads me, like the pre-dart short-warp, “through sundry mystifications too tedious to detail,” but I cannot deny it its moment, and will therefore attempt to follow this line of whale-lines, to trace its path from boat to bath to bloodied body, and with luck I will not suffer the fates of Stubb and Flask, whose harpoons bound them to a strength which “dragged . . . them towards [its] flukes” and “dashed [their boats] together” (457).

The best thing about this essay?  The transitions:

Now let us sally forth and examine Chapter 60, appropriately entitled “The Line,” which skillfully darts the harpoon to which that symbolic line is fastened at Chapter 135.

But enough of my stupidity.  Let us return to Casper and his "uneducated guesses":

[4.2] Nothing, however, was more pointlessly malevolent, than Mr. Kaufman's decision to publish the fact on his web site that Jesus' General, had forwarded me Mr. Kaufman's request for my IP address. Mr. Kaufman knew that Jesus' General had written me, "stay off the threads..." Mr. Kaufman also knew that publishing that would infuriate a large number of his subscribers and severely injure him financially. Mr. Kaufman did not hesitate. I would hope that UCI would document Mr. Kaufman's actions here.

Could someone demonstrate how those first two sentences relate to each other?  What about the third?  After all, I cannot both be a blogger with an audience so small I would pull a stunt like this to drive up my traffic and a blogger with an audience so large that my words could significantly impact the livelihood of Gen. J.C. Christian. (If that's even his real name.)

And for the record: I am documenting my actions here. Those actions include specifying that I would remove information about Gen. J.C. Christian at his request. As I have received no such request, the information remains.

[5] [T]his is what Mr. Kaufman thinks of you and your Office: “I’m not likely to get in trouble for this, but it will annoy people (myself included) through the creation of unnecessary meetings/conferences calls/&c.” Even worse, according to Mr. Kaufman, that's what the English Department and the Department of Humanities think of you too. UCI is a tax payer supported institution. If you and your office are not generating value, there is no reason to keep you around. They can centralize your responsibilities within the UC system. I think you want to demonstrate that it's vital to UCI's mission to have someone formidable on site, who is aggressively advocating for Diversity. I would invite you to consider sitting in on Department meetings and communicating that you can and do intend to be much more than an "annoyance" when it comes to advocating for Diversity. I am hopeful that you and your Office will consider that this incident represents an opportunity on many levels for your Office and the wider University administration. UCI is in the business of packaging and selling education. You also certify competence through grades, certificates and degrees.

Sadly, not only has he already mass-mailed my actual opinion on the matter—parsing all charges of discrimination and acting upon all legitimate ones—he later uses this very point against me. Is he unable to decide which opinion I have? Or, in his intent to defame, is he willing to ignore the apparent contradiction in these two statements? (I say "apparent" because the statement quoted above implicitly betrays my belief that his current crusade is illegitimate.)

Of note: the above constitutes the second number five he bulleted.  I don't know whether this is significant, but it certainly is telling.

[5.1] Mr. Kaufman's conduct raised legitimate academic questions related to media and Journalism. Has Mr. Kaufman ever taken a Journalism course? Has Mr. Kaufman ever taken a course that covered Media ethics? Has Mr. Kaufman ever taken a course that emphasized the difference between "speech" protected by the First Amendment and "speech" that the media can publish? Did Mr. Kaufman ever take a course that covered the additional restrictions on media that broadcast over publicly owned airwaves? What are UCI undergraduate requirements for this material? What about the graduate school's requirements? How does someone get into UCI's Ph.D. program without being very fluent in these basic issues? When they do, it's probably very important to look upstream.

Apparently, we've moved to Germany. Should I tell him that I am, in fact, familiar with the conventions of "Journalism"? Should I specify why? Probably not. It would behoove Casper to research the people he defames.

[5.2] Does Mr. Kaufman's thesis director know about this incident? This is precisely why "methodology" is so important in any academic inquiry. In his thesis proposal, what "methodology" did Mr. Kaufman propose? Are his conduct in this incident consistent with his written proposal? If an academic is going to analyze "online interactions," it's important for them to specify in their methodology, if they are simply observing the interactions or are part of them too. Is there any evidence that Mr. Kaufman segregated his data about online interactions, between those he observed and those in which he participated?

I love his sudden concern for my career. Am I properly disinterested? One would think someone as familiar as Casper seems to be with the conventions of "Journalism" would know about "immersion" and its usefulness both in "Journalistic" and anthropological circles. Moreover, this bullet indicates that, more than anything else, Casper wants nothing more than to see my reputation harmed.

[6] Will UCI contact professional organizations that I am confident Mr. Kaufman belongs to, such as the MLA? What do your policies require you to do? I think that based on his conduct, those organizations may want to review his membership?

This solidifies my impression that he desires little more than to see my reputation harmed.

[7] My guess is that your office has very aggressive policies surrounding the publishing of material related to any investigation you might choose to undertake. My third email to you contains Mr. Kaufman's request that you do investigate this. He specifically suggested that I copy you on his request.

See?  I told you he would cite my opinion that such matters be seriously considered.  Note, also, that there is no investigation.

[8] I hope ... that you will seize this as an institutional opportunity to communicate with civic groups of Latino-Americans, Asian-Americans, Native Americans, Congresswoman Waters, and the NAACP about all your Office does to aggressively advocate for diversity. You could also invite all those groups to audit your Office and to address members of the UCI community who identify with them at a UCI-sponsored event. You would not be committed to accepting anyone's recommendations, but it would be a nice show of respect.

How exactly does not hounding a racist for not making racist remarks constitute an opportunity to "aggressively advocate for diversity"?

[9] Before attempting to acquire my IP address, Mr. Kaufman's position in this was was that he understood the "context" and that others, who disagreed with him, did not. As far as I know that is a textbook example of European American cultural imperialism. Just by way of illustration, for generations military historians complained that they did not know what happened to Custer at the Little Big Horn, because there were no survivors. That was false. They Sioux and the Cheyenne who defeated Custer did survive. They passed down a rich and very accurate oral history that later was found to conform very closely with the latest battlefield archeology at "Last Stand Hill."

[9] I would also invite you to consider sharing Mr. Kaufman's conduct with your peers in Offices of Diversity throughout the state of California. You could also ask them for policies that they think apply.

For example, do they have Professional Ethics policies that UCI does not?

I'm confused.  If that's supposed to German, shouldn't "Professional Ethics" be one word?  Anyhow, note that there are two ninth points here, and that his history lesson is irrelevant, to say the least. While you're at it, note that he asks that if the recipient of the letter cannot punish me, perhaps someone else can. He intends to see my career harmed, and goes to great lengths to communicate said intent.