Especially given the amount of sock-puppetry and trolling by anonymous internet voices prior to the point where most philosophy blogs started pre-moderating, I was extremely uncomfortable with anonymous people recently making public allegations against a semi-anonymous perpetrator, and then an anonymous person soliciting money.* I also know that I'm not the only person troubled by this.
So I think it's worth publicizing a number of things have happened very recently:
- In the original fund-raising campaign, the accuser claimed that the bloggers at Feminist Philosophers would vouch for her identity. Given their recent posts on the issue, (e.g. here)I don't think I'm betraying confidences to share that I contacted them and they did (without in any way telling me the identities of the two people who have made public allegations).
- In this post, Brian Leiter (making clear not to endorse claims which he could not have the evidence to substantiate one way or the other) unequivocally states that he knows the identity of the accuser taking legal action and that her claims deserve to be formally adjudicated.
- A non-anonymous friend of the second accuser, Emma Sloan, has taken over the fundraising site.
- Eric Schliesser provides an argument for contributing here.
I should note that nobody I've linked to here is trying to have a trial by public opinion about the veracity of these specific allegations against the person in question. In spite of this issue, I've left comments open (though premoderated to prevent public trial by commentor).
[*CF Nietzsche: "I'm not upset that you lied to me, I'm upset that from now on I can't believe you." The biggest moral failing of people who use sock puppets and/or anonymously troll is that they force you to have this response to everyone else trying to post anonymously.]
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