I just sent the following email to Yale Law School Dean Heather Gerken:
Dear Dean Gerken,
It pains me to have to send you this email, but I feel that I have no choice.
I suspect that you know who I am. My name is Sarah Braasch, and I am the PhD Candidate in Philosophy at Yale who is the purported villain of the Living or Napping While Black Incident at Yale when in truth I am the entirely innocent victim of the Living or Napping While Black Hate Crime Hoax at Yale, and the Yale Administration and Police were complicit therein.
I am guessing that you are aware that I was a member of the Justice Collaboratory at Yale Law School, at the time of the Hate Crime Hoax, and Professor Tom Tyler was my advisor. Professor Tyler was very excited about my social psychological study design on the nature of authority, the nature of legitimacy, and the nature of the relationship between the two. Moreover, I had been working, for years, with Yale Sterling Law Professor Alan Schwartz, on an agent based computational model and simulations in Matlab of a corporate control market. The results of our efforts were recently published in the Harvard Business Law Review. Because my PhD Dissertation is on the philosophical foundations of law, I had been very much a part of the Yale Law School community during my entire experience in the PhD Program in Philosophy at Yale.
I write to you to unfortunately let you know about the gross malfeasance of many of the members of the Justice Collaboratory.
Immediately following the Hate Crime Hoax, current Johns Hopkins Professor Vesla Weaver, a current Justice Collaboratory member and longtime friend and collaborator of Tracey Meares, along with one time Yale Professor and also current Johns Hopkins Professor Chris Lebron, used me as a proxy to get revenge against Yale for having been denied tenure. Both Professors Weaver and Lebron knew me and they knew me as a deeply committed anti-racism activist, and I would even go so far as to say that Professor Lebron knew me well at one point. I had worked closely with Professor Lebron while organizing the explicitly anti-racist conference, the Joyce Mitchell Cook Conference at Yale, to honor the first African American woman to earn a PhD in Philosophy at Yale.
Professor Vesla Weaver wrote a patently ridiculous vox dot com article, which she tried to pass off as scholarship, that was nothing but disgusting lies about me. Professor Lebron actively promoted the article as scholarship, including on social media, and he explicitly named me and referred to me as an egregious racist.
I know for a fact that Yale Graduate School Dean Lynn Cooley spoke with Professor Weaver and asked her to retract the article, because it was replete with gross inaccuracies. Please bear in mind that I am under no illusions about the fact that Yale Graduate School Dean Lynn Cooley did not do this for my benefit in any way, shape, or form. She did this to protect Yale, because it was clear to her that Professor Weaver had written this article and used me as a proxy to wreak vengeance upon Yale. I know for a fact that Professor Vesla Weaver told Dean Cooley that she couldn’t care less about the lies in her article and that she had absolutely no intention of altering a single word.
After I publicly denounced Professors Weaver and Lebron for having abused me, an entirely innocent anti-racism graduate student with whom they had worked, by using me as a proxy to get revenge against Yale for having been denied tenure, Professor Tyler dropped me as an advisee, presumably at the behest of Tracey Meares. Professor Meares had been very public in her denunciations of Yale for these denials of tenure. And, she is a longtime friend and collaborator of Professor Weaver’s, who remains a member of the Justice Collaboratory.
Recently, Professor Monica Bell wrote an NYU Law Review article, Anti-Segregation Policing, that names me and grossly defames me. I had worked briefly with Professor Bell at the Justice Collaboratory at Yale Law School. She knew me and she also knew me as a deeply committed anti-racism activist. She absolutely knew that she was telling disgusting lies about me that place my life in the gravest danger and that would likely drive me to suicide. I can only interpret Professor Bell’s actions as an attempt to destroy me and to drive me to suicide to protect the Justice Collaboratory at Yale Law School, including Professor Tyler, Professor Meares, and Professor Weaver.
I beseech you to please help me. In the wake of George Floyd’s killing, I have been subjected to yet another global vilification and defamation campaign against me. I have been in hiding for more than two years. I have been intermittently suicidal for more than two years. I have been deluged with death threats and threats of violence for more than two years. My life and lifelong human and civil rights academic and legal careers have been destroyed. I will never be able to secure gainful employment and support myself. I can’t even tell you how many times I almost committed suicide, including recently, as the result of being named and defamed in the NY Times, the LA Times, the Washington Post, and many, many other publications, as well as on social media. I have endured Twitter mobbing after Twitter mobbing, including recently by one incited by Josie Duffy Rice, the President of The Appeal.
Please help me regain some semblance of my life and career that were stolen from me. I am literally begging you.
I also ask you to address the gross misconduct of the members of the Justice Collaboratory and Yale Law School towards an entirely innocent and dedicated anti-racism Yale graduate school student.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
Best regards,
Sarah Braasch
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