Email Scandals, Law Schools

Flame On! (Responding To Abusive Emails From Other Academics)

You should never emotionally take on the e-flame. Look at it for what it is: a poor attempt to communicate some need.

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I hate you emails email scandalLast week, I addressed the issue of academic bullies. But every so often in academia, your colleagues (or even your deans) will send you hostile, passive-aggressive, or otherwise abusive emails. This week, at LawProfBlawg Law School, two professors sent out a few emails that caused uproar. One was directed at me. Today’s column is devoted to helping academics deal with unwanted hostile emails.

Your antagonist’s email could be about something very small, insignificant, and yet, to the writer, the issue is THE pressing issue of the century. Thus, you need to be careful how you deal with it. Here are some tips.

Do not respond in kind. Your initial response might be to respond to the hostility or snark in kind, which will lead to a blood feud. Twenty years from now, during some faculty meeting, you won’t get your way because your colleague will punish you for your return snark. That’s just how academia (and 8th grade) works.

People who write passive aggressive or hostile emails do not appreciate it when you mistreat them. Yes, I get the irony. Most people do not send emails imagining how they would feel had they been on the receiving end of them. If they did, they wouldn’t be so passive aggressive or hostile.

Also, there is a chance the person engaged in the e-flame is a drama llama. Drama llamas like drama. Responding with hostility will just fan the flames more. And you’re too busy for that, even if the other person isn’t. Worse, the person may be a narcissist.

Don’t Respond? If the email does not solicit a response, then don’t. Often times, people are not interested in what YOU have to say, but are very interested in being heard. Again, I get the irony. No need to potentially stoke the fire. Responding when no response is necessary takes away valuable time from doing something useful. However, be careful here. I have a colleague who chastised me for not responding to emails, even after a hallway conversation. The drama became about the lack of response. Sometimes, people are spoiling for a fight.

BIFF, but….. BIFF stands for Brief, Informative, Friendly, and Firm. It represents the notion that you should try to defuse the colleague bomb, and the best way to do that is with honey and not vinegar. Normally, I would highly recommend this approach. The problem with using BIFF in academia is that the Friendly is sometimes replaced with passive aggressive. For example, a response of “I hope you’re having a good day” will be interpreted as “you think the reason I’m mad at you is about my day, and not about you!”

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The same is true for being firm. Academics do not do that well. You might think you are saying the choice is obviously either A or not A, but when academics write that it comes out “A or bite me.” So, be careful with this method.

Is the person right? Is the person communicating about something you did wrong, but in a horrible way? If that’s the case, you might choose to respond to the part for which you are responsible, while not taking on the person’s poor communication skills. In that sense, a BIFF response might be useful.

If the person is wrong or misinformed or flying off the handle, you should not take on whatever the person is attempting to foist upon you. There may be implicit assertions that you’re incompetent, that the person sending the email thinks they are your superior or boss, or that you are in need of repair because you are defective. Over time, repeated messages such as those amount to abuse, and can start having an effect on your psyche. Meditation and the ability to distance yourself from the conflict will help calm you sufficiently should you need to respond.

So, don’t respond right away. People who launch email flames are seeking to foist on you that which is not yours to take on. So don’t take it on. Sometimes a good 24 hours is necessary to be calm enough to respond to a flame-mail.

If at all possible, avoid responding via email. Talk to the colleague in-person. The person who sent the email may not even be attempting to e-flame. Sometimes, communication is lost via email. While email is a quick easy means of communicating, it is also a quick means to start departmental wars, mismanage people, offend allies, embolden enemies, and cause turmoil where none is needed.

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Regardless, you should keep the email. Not that you need to hold grudges, but in case it becomes a pattern, you can find others who were similarly abused. That collective action (or the threat of it) might mitigate the problem.

Bottom line is that you should never emotionally take on the e-flame. Look at it for what it is: a poor attempt to communicate some need. If the problem is one you caused, fix it. If not, don’t think for a moment you’re going to correct the e-flamer’s behavior. The best you can do is to control how it impacts you. If they persist, you can make sure it impacts them in the future as well.

LawProfBlawg is an anonymous professor at a top 100 law school. You can see more of his musings here and on Twitter. Email him at lawprofblawg@gmail.com.

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