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boston.com retracts story that Harvard Business professor sent a racist e-mail message
By adamg on Wed, 12/10/2014 - 9:42pm
Earlier tonight, Boston.com published a piece suggesting Harvard Business School Professor Ben Edelman sent an email with racist overtones to Sichuan Garden. We cannot verify that Edelman, in fact, sent the email. We have taken the story down.
I ran a post that was based on that story, which I've taken down as well. The site retracted the article after local writer Luke O'Neil reported the professor denied he sent that e-mail:
So someone has apparently hacked him in order to send racist slurs.
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Comments
Ugh
While I don't like the whole Edelman thing at all, someone hacking his account to send racist messages is too much. He did post an apology to the Washington post http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2014/12/10/harvard-bus...
At least the restaurant is getting good business ...best shrimp with black bean sauce ever !
Not "hacked"
You don't need to hack someone's account in order to fake e-mail -- the "from" address on an e-mail message is like the return address on an envelope sent through the postal mail -- you can pretty much write anything you want there. (This is not strictly, technically true in 100% of the cases, as there are some consistency and sanity checks in place - look up "DKIM" or "SPF" for a good start -- but it is pretty close to the current state of affairs)
Even less "hacking" required to fill out a web form
like this one
http://sichuangardenrestaurant.com/contact
where you can supply any From: name and e-mail address you want.
"Spoofed"
Would be a better word, no?
Pretended to be him?
Nitpick much?
It's actually a big difference
If you work in the field then there's a huge difference between being hacked and spoofed. If someone's email account is hacked then that's serious business because it means someone has gained access to everything in your account. Everything about your life is compromised.
Getting spoofed in comparison is more of a prank, like having a "kick me" sign stuck on your back.
Not quite.
No, everything about your email has been compromised. That's bad enough, but it shouldn't send you in search of a new credit card, bank account and SSN. If you're dumb enough to have "everything about your life" in your email account, then you're truly up the creek.
Email provides a lot of access
Once you have access to an email account you can use the "oops forgot my password" link at many sites, which then assumes you have proper control of your email and will send you a password-reset email.
Or ask you a question that is probably solvable by going through someone's email.
So no, your SSN may be safe, but the rest of your life that has any connection with the internet might be messed up.
If you're unlucky enough that
If you're unlucky enough that they can guess where you have accounts, unlucky enough that these sites don't require additional verification in the form of a secret question, and lazy enough not to act when your email gets compromised. It's not everything unless you make it everything.
Only partly unlucky
If you get into my email you would see emails like "Oh hey bank statement from this bank!" - so it's not so much a lucky guess as using your resources.
But yes, I also compulsively check my email so I would notice pretty quickly if someone else was in the account with me. Also, good luck getting into my email with two-factor authentication and a long password.
I just know that many, MANY others are not as compulsive/paranoid about their security online, so you and I may be ok, lbb, but others maybe not so much.
Was it...or wasn't it?
I understand no one can be sure who originated the racists email....however, someone sent an apology shortly afterwards...which would lead me to believe it was him.
Great apology.
Suldog posted a link to the apology somewhere on here. One of the sidebar links was about this guy doing it a couple of years ago.
Link: http://www.boston.com/food-dining/restaurants/2014/12/10/there-more-edel...
So, he says, "I aspire to act with great respect and humility in dealing with others..."
He's really focused on 'prix fixe'.
Methinks he's just a 'prix'.
DISCLAIMER: All the above was based on info gathered in good faith. Please don't sue me.
Yeah, I was going to cut this guy some
slack for his apology. But, aside from what you posted, which makes me worry about his willingness to change, I would want to see how he conducts himself after this current apology.
(There is also a third party complaint on the Internets by him against Virgin Atlantic, complaining about Virgin's alleged misrepresentation of "taxes" as "carrier fees" from September of this year.)
He must list "threatening to sue" under his short list of hobbies.
And this is why I really do not trust his apology:
http://www.businessinsider.in/Harvard-Business-Professor-Defends-His-Ran...
What the hell
Are the teaching in journalism school these days?!?
Simple
The only thing that matters is to get the story out before your competition does.
FTFY
this is a major mess-up
The Globe would have more credibility if they threw out the Boston.com drivel concept, and started clean.
And now this...
http://www.boston.com/food-dining/restaurants/2014/12/10/there-more-edel...
Good God, what a cheap
Good God, what a cheap bastard. Does the man have no self-respect? It's astonishing that someone paid hundreds of dollars an hour is this much of a cheap chiseler. Of course, you can argue that it's his finely honed chiseling skills that get him his gigs...
This guy should just be
This guy should just be banned from restaurants.
original article
Did anyone manage to grab the original article before it was taken down? I would like to see what was published.
Part of it
Here.
So cowardly to remove to protect bad behavior...
He didn't deny writing the racial slur. In his LATEST complaint, he says that he wrote the "slanted eyed" comment to be lighthearted and that the website didn't publish instructions/notice to writers that hitting "enter" would send/post the message. Idiotic lunacy! Be authentic for christ sakes. Stop being afraid and stop protecting CERTAIN people from their bad behavior! smfh
Shouldn't have been posted originally
Others here have explained how easy it is to forge an e-mail.
That verification you note appeared to be from the same source as the racist note.
I do
I have the whole thing saved... I left the article open overnight.. all screen grabbed for Boston Dot Crap prosperity.
Let me know if you'd like for me to post it.
Professor's apology
On his own Web site, so seems legit.
Translation: I got spanked,
Translation: I got spanked, so I'll say I'm sorry in the hopes of stopping the spanking.
Sorry, but when you're in as much of a hurry as this guy is to show your ass in public, you don't get to cover it up and end the pain quite as quickly.
Which "writer" originally
Which "writer" originally posted it? Hilary Sargent?
Two writers
Hilary and Berto Scalese.
In their haste to get even
In their haste to get even more page views from this ordeal, they just ran an incendiary article accusing the guy of being a racist without even checking to see if these were real. Anyone reading them had to immediately be suspicious of their authenticity, I know I was. The guy is smug no question but this is pretty bad. Boston.com acting one step removed from the Drudge Report.
Drudge is a site that links
Drudge is a site that links to other sites. Are you not aware of how it works?
Very aware. Drudge also has
Very aware. Drudge also has minimal integrity and will link to anything regardless of its authenticity.
Edelman and Gruber on Tour
The 2014 National Apology Tour, coming to a theater in your town!
Just found
another apology article on the Huffington Post--
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/10/harvard-professor-chinese-resta...
Does anyone else get frustrated with this issue, though?
I understand he went overboard but this price switch happens to me about four times a year. I have done everything from leave my purchase without paying, asking for the marked price and gotten it, or not said anything. I totally give bad word-of-mouth about the places and never return, though.
I don't think being a "mom-and-pop" store is a good excuse for not being fair to your customers.
I understand what you are saying, Frustrated...
and price switching is not cool, however...
In this instance, I do believe that owner admitted the error and promptly fixed the problem (i.e. website with incorrect pricing). The Professor, in his email exchange, continued to badger him and insult his intelligence as well as attacking his honesty. That is also not cool.
Also, and as it has been reported by a few agencies, the Professor, a Harvard Law graduate did not even get MGL 93a correct in his rant.
"Price switch", to me, says
"Price switch", to me, says it's intentional. Don't ascribe to malice what is more likely due to a stale website.
ya
I don't think it was intentional... It happens. Restaurants are food places, not a web company. Sure its great to have up to date information on your website, but mistakes do happen. Plus it costs $ to update websites, every time you make any change, it costs you to have that done. I can see why it wasn't done.
And it was over 4 dollars. And the owner tried to make it right, which is correct thing to do. I would have gone even further and just comp'd the guy the whole meal just to shut him up.
A good take on the issue from a legal standpoint
why the world hates lawyers
Two things on this
1. What passes for journalism at Boston.com is a complete and utter joke. I'm curious as to how much of an effort was made to reach out to the Professor before they ran the racist email story. One look at that email should make it abundantly clear that this was not written by the Professor. The spellings are all wrong, there are typos, and the tone is completely different relative to the earlier emails (which we know to be authentic). At a minimum, upon receipt of that email -- written as it is -- they should have paused and made substantial efforts to get a hold of the alleged writer before they ran with it.
2. This whole story kind of disturbs me. This guy isn't a public figure -- at least, not in the sense that he is an elected official or has some public sector job. He's employed by a private institution and he's kind of a dick (he also needs to better familiarize himself with the rules of professional conduct, because he's dead wrong about needing to communicate only with the restaurant's lawyer -- the litigants are always free to communicate with each other, and that was clearly just a way to slip in that he himself is an attorney so be afraid, be very afraid). At the end of the day this is private bad behavior. I can understand folks on twitter and social media getting all fired up about it because internet shaming is essentially the way we deal with things at this point as a society, but when a "mainstream media" outlet is leading the charge -- and by that I'm referring to boston.com, I think we need to take a deep breath and maybe walk this back a little bit. What exactly was the public good that was advanced by this story? And if we presume that the public good is to dissuade this sort of behavior from either this guy or his ilk in the future, is that worth the trade off that any time any of us complain about some customer service issue in the future that we run the risk of being objects of public ridicule (assuming we are being objectively unreasonable -- which is, of course, difficult to see at the time we make the complaint).
And if we further presume that the trade off in the context of this story is worthwhile, is this the kind of hard-hitting investigative journalism (or journalisms, if you prefer) that we want our media outlets working on? Because there is a zero-sum game at work there, every minute tracking down former Groupon offering sushi restauranteurs is a minute not spent on any of the real issues our city faces (which is not to say that the occasional whimsical story or odds and end type miscellany is a bad thing).
What exactly was the public
Contrast UHub with boston.com, it's night and day. Like Boston.com has any interest in the public good. They got page views which is all they care about. They ran at least 6 different stories on this guy, who is essentially a nobody. You had Hilary Sargent tweeting all day taking thinly-veiled shots at him - this is the site's editor. Sure, the professor went overboard, that's clear to anyone. But it's crazy that you have people all over the world trashing this guy on social media. They've actually gotten to the point where I kind of feel badly for the professor in a way because the level and intensity of the shaming has gotten out of hand, even though I think his actions were ridiculous. Publishing the fake emails and calling the guy racist is the natural outgrowth of boston.com's shift to silly aggregation site in many respects.
What makes something news?
Your first point goes without saying. It's right on.
As far as your second point goes, the guy basically threatened a small business owner with litigation over $4, and since he was an expert in the field and worked for a prestigious institution, it becomes interesting and he becomes part of the news because of it. Pick a time period other than of course times when there has been pressing news (wartime, disasters, and the like) and you will eventually find from the most popular newspaper in the area a story similar to this. Sure, the torture report, police brutality and the failure of the justice system to respond, Russia's military awakening in Eastern Europe, and the like should be what we are reading about, but all good meals come with a dessert, and stories like this should be our dessert. Not the meal, since that is not healthy.
Sure, I cannot explain why this is news, but then again I cannot figure out why anyone cares about the Karadasians, but there they are, being in the spotlight. At least this story in entertaining.
But there's a distinction...
... the Kardashians put themselves out there. They choose to be public figures.
I think there's something to be said for a guy who abuses his public notoriety (to the extent he has any) trying to extort a small business out of $8 (said in the most sensational way imaginable). But did he do that here? I certainly might have missed it, but I don't recall the part where he says who he is and leverages his position with Harvard or his role as a corporate watchdog (or whatever he does) to try to get the response he was looking for.
And yes, historically, there have always been these sorts of stories. But the existence in the past of these stories doesn't justify their continued existence. This quickly took on the flavor of a witch hunt and I guess it just concerns me that this is where we're going as a society... a private dispute becomes an opportunity for public shaming.
PS I think this guy is a dick... but does he deserve that? Does he deserve me having an opinion about him? A guy I've never met, likely never will meet, and who has done nothing to merit public scrutiny of his actions (like run for office or commercialize his celebrity)? I think it's an interesting discussion but I also hope it gives us some pause moving forward.
one thing
I agree with your point about #2... but I see his point too. Why is this news. But look at the source of said news.. BostonDotCrap. Less news, more crap. So I see why the picked up the story. I also think some of it would be click bait too... big mean professor attacking a small business. Its total click bait.
But to be honest, this isn't the first case for this guy and/or small businesses being attacked by a buncha of attorneys for no real reason except to be nasty about it.
There was a case a few years ago in NYC where a lawyer was suing some dry cleaner for a button missing. The owner tried to make it right, and the dry cleaner was sued anyways (but won I think).
Its one of those "feel bad" stories. I felt bad for the dry cleaner. I use an asian-owned dry cleaner, and I know the people well because I'm there often. These people work hard for their money, and often give free services in exchange for doing business there. (the sweetest lady at my dry cleaner fixed the hem on my suit without even asking.. such good service.. and I paid her twice the amount of the dry cleaning cost as a 'tip ' for doing that). You just feel bad for these folks who get attacked. *shrug*
Are you thinking of the judge in D.C.?
A judge in D.C. sued his dry cleaner over some pants, and lost.
You are correct
My memory is bad.. was 2007!
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/14/us/14pants.html?_r=0
I agree
I too am uncomfortable with the spectacle of internet shaming. People do it gleefully, and the original bully then becomes the one bullied, and the spectators become bullies and....
Maybe the dude should take
Maybe the dude should take some cooking lessons and avoid the restaurant takeout scene .
All I took away from this
All I took away from this whole thing is this prof must be the most boring person in the world. He probably goes into bars and orders water and sips it loudly for an hour.
I concur with others
regarding how 'difficult' many of these PhD types, like Professor Edelman, can be. The fact he's also an attorney doesn't help matters.
But, he is correct regarding the pricing issues on the restaurant's website. He just went about tackling his gripe with a sledgehammer. Someone should have told Professor Edelman while he was growing up that no one likes a pompous smartass. Meh, maybe he just doesn't care what others think, and is only apologising because this time his behavior got put in the spotlight.