Cc: Lawrence Krauss
I will be ending my appeal letter with a statement about my new awareness of the need to act carefully etc, and
pledge to do so..
Lawrence M. Krauss
Professor
Arizona State University, P.O. Box 871404, Tempe, AZ 85287-1404
Research Office:
On Aug 8, 2018, at 8:49 AM, jeffrey E. <jeevacation®gmail.com> wrote:
yes, i agree with your brother . and it would have been great if this arrived before your interviews. -!
its
very personal.
. I thin it has a better chance of succss than justin the moron
On Wed, Aug 8, 2018 at 11:42 AM, Lawrence Krauss <
> wrote:
actually interesting. From my religious right wing law professor brother..
Dear Lorrie,
Here is my advice. Before dispensing it, two obvious but important caveats:
• I know nothing of your current legal strategy and I do not want/need to know about it. I am NOT
intervening in your relationship with your lawyer. Rather, I am writing as your brother and as
someone who is arguably very well-versed on controversies in the education industry.
• I of course know nothing or virtually nothing about your personal life these days.
With those caveats, my advice is as follows:
• if the ASU investigation was based on one singular event (the alleged groping) with no parallel
accusations in the background, and given that you strenuously deny the groping allegation, i would
fight it tooth and nail. I would make your fight all about the excesses of current political correctness,
the lynch mob mentality for accused males, etc.
• however, lurking in the background are the Buzzfeed charges by many other women, bolstered by
journalists in attack mode. Whether these accusations are true or not (see my 2nd caveat above), they
create a "Harvey-Weinstein" or "Bill Cosby" type atmosphere surrounding you. I think it vital that
you in t deny each and every accusation, you will not be believed except by your true believers, and
they are not a majority of those who will make decisions concerning you. It is easy to surround oneself
with allies and friends and to believe oneself invincible, but you must face the fact that a majority of
folks are neither allies nor friends.
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• Therefore i think you should pursue a mixed strategy. On the one hand, you should non-aggressively,
soberly, suggest that the groping allegation is exaggerated but likely the result of a good faith
misunderstanding. At the same time you should acknowledge that all these accusations have woken
you up. You had never fully realized how vulnerable women are, and how the "me-too" campaign
reflects decades of oppression and exploitation. You were blindly ignorant of, and insensitive to, this
reality. this blind ignorance was all the more inexcusable in that you yourself have a daughter. You
absolutely pledge that all your future behavior will reflect this newfound realization. You pledge to
enroll (and indeed you should find and enroll in before making this pledge) in a program designed to
educate and sensitize men to the pervasive atmosphere of sexual assault and harassment. You pledge
to devote the rest of your career to this goal and to change your behavior to reflect this new
realization. You pledge never ever again to make gestures that even have a slight chance of being
perceived as harassing to females. You apologize profusely for all your hurtful gestures in the past,
and recognize that the women who have complained about you are not making their complaints up.
You were too physical in the past, you were blind to the vulnerability of women exposed to men in
positions of power and influence, you abused that position and their trust even though you were sure at
the time that you were doing nothing wrong. You know better now, because you understand women's
vulnerability in ways you didn't before. You humbly ask Arizona State, or indeed any university that is
interested, to give you another chance to show that you are in fact nothing but a caring, active physicist
who is now more respectful of women. You are absolutely dedicated to pursuing your academic
aspirations without future distractions. Importantly, you should do something dramatic, such as offer
100% of the royalties from your next book to some foundation that assists women who have been
victims of harassment.
You get the drift. Again, as per my first caveat, this is not a legal strategy, this is a PR strategy. It can
accompany your legal strategy. Of course you can reject it based on you and your lawyer's legal strategy.
But if you do that, you should encourage your lawyer to recognize that your battle is not only or even
primarily legal. Your battle is one for the hearts and minds of the educational establishment. That battle is
above and beyond the legal fees of your attorney.
Lorrie, several decades ago a murderer in the state of Washington entered a pharmacy and cunningly
tampered with a bottle of Tylenol by substituting poison for a couple of pills. The murderer was trying to kill
(and succeeded in killing) an unknown stranger in order to camouflage the murdererer's poisoning death of
his wife (he would claim that his wife bought another tampered bottle of Tylenol). Johnson and Johnson was
of course sued in Products Liability. J&J knew that it was not responsible for the poisonings and that it had
done nothing wrong, but when national headlines created a huge scare about Tylenol, J&J bit the bullet and
spent hundreds of millions on a massive campaign of recall, reimbursement and repackaging of its product.
This very expensive PR campaign rehabilitated J&J. It arguably saved the company. Had J&J stuck to its
legal guns, had been blind to the larger PR issue, it might perhaps have won a legal battle but it would almost
certainly have lost the war.
Your brother,
Michael
Lawrence M. Krauss
Arizona State U
Research Office
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