Email from Sergio Rivera-Ayala about the spam and blog comments promoting his book
by Steve
Ah, what fun. I got an email today from Dr. Rivera-Ayala that was cc’d to my Dean and the President of my college. I thought you’d like to see the exchange, starting with the email I sent to Sergio Rivera-Ayala after my last post about the strange emails and comments about his book.
I’ll put a few notes after the emails.
Steve Lawson slawson@coloradocollege.edu Mon, Sep 28, 2009 at 10:18 AM To: Tamesis Books trading@boydell.co.uk, Sergio Rivera-Ayala sergio.rivera-ayala@ucr.edu, Sergio Rivera-Ayala sriveraa@uwaterloo.ca Dear Tamesis Books and Dr. Rivera-Ayala, I thought you both should know that someone has been sending emails to at least one librarian posing as a student at that librarian's institution with the purpose of getting her to buy Dr. Rivera-Ayala's book, "El discurso colonial en textos novohispanos: espacio, cuerpo y poder." When my friend, Iris Jastram, who received this email posted something about the incident to her blog, she got a few comments from someone calling him or herself "Verga Parati." You probably know better than I that "verga para ti" in Spanish means "cock for you." The comments were much like the original email in that they appear to be wholly fraudulent. You can find the post that Ms Jastram wrote here, along with the comments from "cock for you": http://bit.ly/knear I wrote about it on my blog, too: http://bit.ly/2dSmqk If either of you are responsible for these incidents, I suggest a public apology to Ms Jastram is in order. If you are not responsible, perhaps you could look into finding out who is? I think it might also be necessary for me to say that any attempts to intimidate or silence me about this matter will be met with as much publicity as I can muster. Sincerely, Steve Lawson -- Steve Lawson, Humanities Librarian Colorado College, Colorado Springs slawson@coloradocollege.edu 719-389-6857 Sergio Rivera-Ayala sriveraa@uwaterloo.ca Wed, Oct 7, 2009 at 9:51 AM To: Steve Lawson slawson@coloradocollege.edu Cc: Richard@artsservices.uwaterloo.ca, F.@artsservices.uwaterloo.ca, Celeste@artsservices.uwaterloo.ca, president@coloradocollege.edu, Susan@artsservices.uwaterloo.ca, A.@artsservices.uwaterloo.ca, Ashley@artsservices.uwaterloo.ca, sashley@coloradocollege.edu, eferguson@boydell.co.uk, sriveraa@uwaterloo.ca Dear Mr Lawson I have received your email and I very much regret that someone has sent anonymous emails to personnel of the library at Colorado College in connection with my book. But neither I nor Tamesis is in any way responsible for the initial request or the subsequent messages on the blog, and we therefore do not feel that it would be appropriate for us to become involved. I would urge you to remove your unfounded accusations. Respectfully, -- Sergio Rivera-Ayala, PhD Assistant Professor Dept of Spanish and Latin American Studies University of Waterloo Waterloo, Ontario Canada N2L 3G1 Phone: 519-888-4567, ext. 38906 Fax: 519-746-7881 http://www.spanish.uwaterloo.ca//rivera.html Steve Lawson Wed, Oct 7, 2009 at 10:28 AM To: Sergio Rivera-Ayala sriveraa@uwaterloo.ca Cc: sashley@coloradocollege.edu, eferguson@boydell.co.uk, Iris Jastram ijastram@carleton.edu Thank you, Dr. Rivera-Ayala. I'll update my blog posts with your message just so it's clear. I'm pretty sure I took pains not to make any accusations; I'll re-read the post and if I did accuse anyone of anything, I'll address that as well. Thanks, also, for emailing my Dean and attempting to email the President of my college [I was wrong about this. In that mess of CCs in his message, I think he actually did manage to email the President of Colorado College]. I'll make sure and note that on my blog, too. Keep it up and I promise to respond in kind. Lastly, you or your publisher really should get in touch with Iris Jastram (I'm copying her on this email), as she has the IP addresses of the person who left the comments with the insulting pseudonym. Of course it would be hard to pin those comments on any one individual, but they make for pretty interesting circumstantial evidence as to who is lying and trying to intimidate librarians. If I were you or your publisher, I'd really want to know who is making me look bad. -- Steve Lawson, Humanities Librarian Colorado College, Colorado Springs slawson@coloradocollege.edu 719-389-6857
OK, so. I took the messages copied to the Dean and President as “attempts to intimidate or silence me about this matter” which is why I’m posting it here. I looked back at my post and I don’t believe I did make any unfounded accusations. I noted that while my first assumption upon reading the email that Iris posted was that it must have been the author or publisher, I also noted that it was impossible to tell and in fact could have come from anyone.
I’m guessing this goes nowhere after this, but that’s what I would have said yesterday before getting this email. Stay tuned.
bevedog 
Interesting.
I should note that I wrote a short note to Sergio Rivera-Ayala before you did, but I haven’t yet received any acknowledgment or reply. Though if he’s going to copy my dean and the president of my college, I’m glad I already alerted some higher-ups to the fact that this situation was a little bizarre.
[…] Update 7 Oct 2009: Professor Rivera-Ayala responded to my email and I posted our exchange. […]
I think you should assume the professor/author has the best of intentions. Besides the folks at your college, he cc’d his publisher and several people at his institution.
Someone else uses spam tactics and sexually harassing language to sell his book and he doesn’t care? That’s disappointing, but I don’t think he’s trying to silence you. I have the sense that if you were actually worried about getting the attention of the president or dean, you wouldn’t be writing about it.
My read is that his academic reputation is at stake here, and he wants everyone who might search on his name to know that he has nothing to do with any of it. I think of this because of the recent kerfuffle over someone impersonating a professor to give credibility to a racist tract (can’t find the link – sorry!)
So he’s not picking up a torch and a pitchfork to go after whoever started this crap. He sent you an apology: +1 for Sergio!
Caleb, all those “uwaterloo” email addresses are his email program trying to deal with the names of my prez and my dean. So he didn’t copy anyone there. And I had originally emailed his publisher, so it makes sense he’d copy them, too.
And I’m not “worried” about my Dean or Prez hearing about this, but I am objecting to his copying them because I see it as an attempt to intimidate me into removing the previous post.
As for the rest, that is a perfectly reasonable interpretation.
Aha, good detective work. I couldn’t figure out the U Waterloo ones and figured it was just some weird Canadian academic computing thing, so right about that but not about who the messages were going to. So if he doesn’t want his dean and president knowing that his name is muddy, that weakens my argument. Give ’em hell.
This is really a very sad indication of the desperation around self-fashioning, marketing, and the academic persona and how people who are very bad at sales work feel compelled to throw themselves into it.
I actually think the way that web 2.0 is so often described as a platform for promoting yourself as a brand is mixing up a lot of people who no longer know how to draw lines between communicating, selling, and shilling.
[…] Lawson shed a little light on the less savory aspects of those comments? And then remember when Steve later got unpleasant emails that were also copied to his boss and dean and college […]