linda z has responded in the daily princetonian:
Zagzebski added that the chair of the department of philosophy at the University of Oklahoma had received a threatening email from Sartwell recently that provoked a security response.
“Sartwell is acting very irrationally as is clear from his many blog posts,” Zagzebski wrote. “I think it is sad when a person’s mental health problems are catalogued in detail on national blogs.”
these are serious charges. here, verbatim is the email i wrote to wayne riggs on march 1, in its entirety (obviously, this can be checked with him).
hate to say it, but i have made pretty serious charges of academic misconduct against linda zagzebski on my blog. no need to respond directly to me, but your department should be aware.
i wrote riggs again on march 2. here it is, again in its entirety.
Sorry Wayne: a clear and decisive presentation of the Linda Z case. [then i pasted in an earlier version of this document: a purely factual accounting with nothing that could possibly be construed as a threat.]
these two are the only emails i have ever written to wayne riggs.
as to zagzebski's assertion, shared by dickinson college, that this whole thing emerges from my mental illness, one must regard this as some kind of desperation move to discredit me, and anyone who has any questions about the sanity of my blog ought to read it thoroughly.
the claim that i sent a threatening email to wayne riggs is demonstrably and confirmably false, and it is libelous.
i have written to riggs again. this is the text.
Hi, Wayne. Linda Zagzebski is quoted in the the Daily Princetonian as saying that I sent her chair a threatening email, which 'provoked a security response.'
I have put up the emails I sent to you, Wayne, on my blog, and I hope you will publicly confirm that they contained no threats whatever. Indeed I was trying to do you the courtesy of letting you know that I was leveling this accusation, before the public uproar.
I think you owe it to the public, the profession, and to the University of Oklahoma to confirm that the accusation - which is itself libelous - is false.
