Henry ("Harry") de Valence, a former Ph.D. student at Technische
Universiteit Eindhoven (TU/e), posted a remarkable collection of
misinformation last Thursday. I'm Daniel J. Bernstein, a professor at
TU/e who served as one of Mr. de Valence's supervisors. I'm writing this
document to set the record straight.

My most important role in these events is as the manager of TU/e's
Cryptographic Implementations group, and in particular of another
student, Jacob Appelbaum. Mr. de Valence was in another group, TU/e's
Coding Theory and Cryptology group, managed by Prof. Tanja Lange.

Mr. de Valence falsely claims that in mid-2016 he told me that he felt
he "had no option but to resign, due to sexual harassment, blackmail,
and physical abuse" by Mr. Appelbaum. This claim is, in both words and
content, wildly exaggerating what Mr. de Valence actually told me at
that time.

I don't mean to say that what Mr. de Valence told me was content-free.
Most importantly, (1) he indicated severe discomfort being around Mr.
Appelbaum as a result of stories that he had heard (and obviously
believed) from some non-students regarding Mr. Appelbaum's behavior
towards them; and (2) he reported a firsthand eye-drop story that
sounded much less severe than what he now claims (see below) but that
was obviously bothering him.

The right way forward was for Mr. de Valence to send me a self-contained
written complaint. But Mr. de Valence never did this, even after I sent
him email on 16 June 2016 very clearly advising him to do so.

If Mr. de Valence believed that he was a victim of blackmail, sexual
assault, battery, or any other crime, then why didn't he go to the
police? If he believed he was a victim of sexual harassment or any other
serious misbehavior by any of my employees, then why didn't he file a
complaint with me? Regarding what he _actually_ told me, why was he so
resistant to putting that into writing to me when I advised him to?

Mr. de Valence seems to indicate that, a few months later, he sent some
sort of complaint to other people in the department. He never sent me
the complaint, and I still haven't seen a copy; I don't know how similar
it was to what he now posts. I'm told that Mr. de Valence was repeatedly
advised to file a formal complaint with the appropriate university
complaints committee. It seems that he never did this. Why not?

On occasion Mr. de Valence seems to be attempting to answer these basic
questions, but his answers don't make any sense. Even if he actually
_had_ some legitimate reason for refusing to follow the recommended
complaint procedures, the simple fact is that he _didn't_ follow those
procedures. This fact is quite contrary to his picture of complaints
being ignored. He also says much more that simply isn't true.

Mr. de Valence writes:
> On August 31, 2015, I started a Ph.D. in cryptography at TU Eindhoven,
> working with Tanja Lange and Dan Bernstein. On December 2, 2016, I
> resigned, due to sexual harassment, bullying, blackmail, and physical
> harm

Mr. de Valence also sent a message to twenty people last month claiming
"In fact, I told both Dan and Tanja in June that I felt I had no option
but to resign, due to sexual harassment, blackmail, and physical abuse
by another of their students." See above.

> as a result of their favorite student, Jacob Appelbaum,

Huh? Isn't there overwhelming evidence that Mr. de Valence was our
favorite student? Let's look at just a few examples of the facts that
immediately come to mind and that could be dredged up by someone who
wants to write a "Henry de Valence: Dan and Tanja's favorite student"
book.

Our home has some space for guests, and part of this guest space was Mr.
de Valence's home for an extended period, including a week when we
weren't there and many times we were there. We treated him to meals many
times. I loaned Mr. de Valence my walking stick (a nicely engineered,
hard-to-replace item that we had found during a visit to Taiwan) after
he hurt his knee on a mountain trip; when he carelessly damaged the
stick, I didn't ask him to replace it, or even to pay for the
replacement that we eventually found. We spent a tremendous amount of
time, both at home and at work, trying to help Mr. de Valence with his
non-work problems; for example, trying to console him when he revealed a
private issue in his consensual sex life and indicated how disturbed he
was about it. As for work per se, Mr. de Valence was offered and
accepted a special Ph.D. position with a package of perks that very few
Ph.D. students obtain. I devoted extensive time to finding research
tasks at the right level for Mr. de Valence and guiding him through
those tasks. I insisted on keeping his name as coauthor on a paper even
after his scientific misbehavior provided almost overwhelming
justification for kicking him off. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

The reality is that we try very hard to provide a welcoming, supportive
environment for _each_ of our students, and to launch _each_ of them
into a successful career. I'm sorry that this didn't work in Mr. de
Valence's case, and I wish I had more insight into the reasons for his
puzzling behavior.

> as well as Tanja and Dan's total abdication of their responsibility to
> manage the workplace environment in their research group.

I don't think I need to respond to claims by Mr. de Valence that are at
such a remarkable distance from amply documented reality.

> This is the story of why I felt no option but to leave, and
> why I feel that I have no option now but to speak about what happened.

I can believe that this is an accurate statement of how Mr. de Valence
feels. But then why didn't he send me a written complaint when I advised
him to?

> I first heard of Jacob's inappropriate behaviour in December of 2015,
> while in Berlin after the CCC. A close friend contacted me, telling that
> Jacob had grabbed her, that he had told her to "just go with it" when
> she told him to stop, that he had repeatedly violated her boundaries, and
> that she wanted me to help watch out that he did not have an opportunity
> to violate them further.

The word "violated" sounds serious. "Grabbed her" and "repeatedly
violated her boundaries" might even be accusations of sexual assault,
depending on various details that are not stated here. If Mr. Appelbaum
committed a crime then he should go to jail.

I understand that Mr. de Valence feels convinced by whatever details he
heard, and does not feel the need for any additional verification before
he acts upon the accusations. Similar comments apply to various other
accusations that Mr. de Valence repeats regarding Mr. Appelbaum. To be
clear: If I don't quote an accusation, does this mean that I'm saying
that the accusation isn't important to Mr. de Valence, or important for
its own sake? Certainly not.

> I had observed numerous red flags from Jacob over the preceding four
> months, including an incident at the September 2015 Tor meeting,

During those four months I observed Mr. de Valence frequently laughing
and joking with Mr. Appelbaum, seeming to enjoy and actively solicit his
company, and sharing intimate personal information with him. They even
seemed to be actively investigating shared long-term two-or-three-person
housing options together.

By retroactively using the words "red flags", and by being amazingly
selective in the information that he reveals, Mr. de Valence leads the
reader to imagine a picture of fear and loathing. If Mr. de Valence
actually felt this way at the time then he was doing a masterful job of
concealing it.

Mr. de Valence does not _explicitly_ state this picture; he merely lets
the reader imagine it, and suppresses information that would have made
the actual picture clear. There is much more of this type of deception
in Mr. de Valence's blog post. (There are also many outright errors, but
that's a different issue.)

> "rape is not a problem in our community". (Tor's subsequent internal
> investigation would seem to disagree with his assessment.)

I've heard people expressing radically different understandings of (1)
whether the Tor Project concluded that Mr. Appelbaum raped someone and
(2) whether the Tor Project followed procedures that give an adequate
level of confidence in whatever its conclusions actually were.

Rather than engage in similar speculation on the basis of sketchy public
information, I sent email in July 2016 to the Tor Project's Shari Steele
asking for the investigation report:

   I gather from

      https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-project/2016-July/000521.html

   that there's an announcement of "the conclusion of the investigation"
   coming up this week. Would it be possible for me to peek at the
   investigation report? I'm interested both in procedural questions (for
   example, if the investigation had enough procedural protections, then
   perhaps other parties could safely rely on it, rather than initiating
   their own investigations) and in substantive details. I assume that the
   confidentiality levels vary between different parts, and of course I'll
   follow your confidentiality directives in detail.

In response she said she wouldn't be able to share any of the report
with me:

   We will be announcing the conclusion of the investigation this week.
   Sorry, but the report from the investigation is confidential, and I
   won't be able to share any of it with you.

This is very far from answering the obvious questions regarding content
and procedures.

> In the fall of 2015, I worked as a TA grading homework for a cryptography
> course Tanja taught at Eindhoven. In January 2016, after missing the
> lectures for the course, Jacob returned to the university to write the
> exam.

First: The lectures were videotaped. There was no presence requirement
for any of the students, i.e., no requirement for any of the students
to be physically present in class.

Second: Mr. Appelbaum followed an education plan stated in his contract,
a plan reviewed and approved at the highest levels of the university.
His compliance with this plan was reviewed in detail by an independent
committee. His requirements regarding this course did _not_ include any
requirement to attend the lectures.

Third: The lectures were given in one quarter. Mr. Appelbaum followed
the course in the _next_ quarter. Mr. de Valence comments repeatedly on
timing without mentioning this obviously relevant point.

> After he wrote the exam, Tanja asked me to grade Jacob's homeworks,
> informing me that his homework grade "really did matter",

As a general note, Mr. de Valence's accusations regarding Prof. Lange
are wildly inconsistent with things I heard much earlier from Prof.
Lange. Obviously Prof. Lange can speak for herself. If I skip past one
of these accusations, it's not that I'm endorsing the accusation; it's
that I'm focusing on the parts of Mr. de Valence's story that I know
_firsthand_ to be false.

From various discussions that I witnessed _before_ the exam, it was
completely clear that Mr. de Valence had already been asked to grade,
and had agreed to grade, the homework. What Mr. de Valence says about
timing is therefore fundamentally wrong.

The fact that Mr. de Valence had agreed to grade the homework brings me
to a very important issue.

If I believe what Mr. de Valence writes in his blog post now, then Mr.
de Valence was deeply angry with Mr. Appelbaum. Furthermore, he knew
this starting in December 2015, _before_ he graded the homework. Mr. de
Valence was obliged to disclose the existence of a conflict, and recuse
himself from grading. But he instead hid this information.

Why did Mr. de Valence hide this information? Why did he not recuse
himself from grading? This would appear to be severe academic misconduct
by Mr. de Valence. Perhaps there's something that Mr. de Valence can say
to defend himself, but I can't figure out what this might be.

> and allowed Jacob to tell me in her presence that I needed to grade
> his homeworks favourably.

This doesn't match any of the discussions that I witnessed. What exactly
does Mr. de Valence claim that Mr. Appelbaum said, and when exactly does
he claim that this happened? What exactly does Mr. de Valence claim he
said in response? What exactly does he mean by "allowed"? If Mr. de
Valence thought he was being pressured, why didn't he immediately file a
complaint?

> Of course, all of the other students in the class were required to
> submit their assignments on time,

Different quarter. See above.

> to be graded together according to a standard rubric.

Clarification question for Mr. de Valence: Are you claiming that, under
pressure, you did _not_ follow the standard rubric in grading Mr.
Appelbaum's homework? Or are you claiming that there was pressure but
you resisted it?

There is a committee at TU/e charged by law with ensuring proper
grading, and I have recently learned that claims by Mr. de Valence
related to this topic have been formally investigated and rejected by
that committee. Now that Mr. de Valence has issued public accusations,
it would seem that a public resolution will be necessary, starting with
Mr. de Valence making clear what exactly his accusations are.

> This incident is an example of how, for Tanja and Dan, rules and process
> are for other people, not for Jacob. Jacob is exceptional. He was not
> required to complete the homework for his required courses on time.

All of this is false. See above.

> He was given special treatment with respect to grading.

The details of this claim are not supported by, and are partly
contradicted by, the firsthand information available to me. See above.

> He was invited to give talks with little-to-no content, which would be
> rejected if they were given by anyone else.

Mr. Appelbaum gave two nice talks at Security in Times of Surveillance,
a general-audience ethics-and-technology event that in three years has
drawn a total of approximately 1000 people. See his videos online:

   https://www.win.tue.nl/eipsi/surveillance/appelbaum.mp4
   https://projectbullrun.org/surveillance/2015/video-2015.html#appelbaum

These talks were invited by a several-faculty-member organizing
committee. The talks were in April 2014 and May 2015, before Mr.
Appelbaum joined TU/e.

I can think of three talks that Mr. Appelbaum gave at our invitation
during his student time. One was a talk at another cross-disciplinary
workshop, Post-Snowden Cryptography:

   https://psc2015videos.projectbullrun.org/#appelbaum

The other two were two talks in a row for a class at TU/e. He was also
invited for a followup Security in Times of Surveillance talk but
cancelled because of illness.

I'm puzzled by Mr. de Valence's "little-to-no content" claim regarding
these talks. Surely Mr. de Valence does not think he would have been
able to give talks communicating the same information to the audience.
Presumably Mr. de Valence is actually trying to say that he doesn't
_like_ this content. Of course he's entitled to his opinion, but there's
ample evidence of quite positive audience feedback for Mr. Appelbaum's
talks.

I also can't figure out what Mr. de Valence thinks he means when he says
that Mr. Appelbaum was invited to give talks that "would be rejected if
they were given by anyone else." Part of the communication problem is
that Mr. de Valence seems to be mixing up two different processes here:

   (1) People are _invited_ to give talks.
   (2) People submit _proposals_ of talks, and the proposals are either
       accepted or rejected.

All of the talks mentioned above followed the first process.

> He was not expected to regularly show up for work or
> for his courses (from mid-January to August, I saw him at the university
> once, when he appeared for the group outing of the Discrete Math section).

1. If Mr. de Valence didn't see Mr. Appelbaum at the university, is this
because Mr. Appelbaum wasn't there, or because Mr. de Valence wasn't
there?

Something Mr. de Valence neglects to mention is that _Mr. de Valence_
was paid for many hours where he wasn't actually at the office. This
fact undermines both (1) Mr. de Valence's statistical argument and (2)
Mr. de Valence's favoritism argument.

2. More importantly, we are very open _for everyone_ in allowing
flexible work schedules, telecommuting, travel, etc. Mr. de Valence was
certainly aware of this, frequently took advantage of it, and now fails
to mention it.

Of course there are advantages to in-person meetings, and sometimes
there are specific requirements to show up. For example, I'm told that
Mr. de Valence was removed from TAing a course as a direct result of his
unannounced failure to show up for an exam that he was required to
proctor.

3. Mr. Appelbaum has never been a full-time TU/e employee. In
particular, he was hired for, and paid for, only 50% time during his
first year, with the understanding that he would be continuing to travel
for his continuing Tor work. See above regarding courses.

4. For part of the period of time mentioned by Mr. de Valence, we were
trying to keep Mr. de Valence and Mr. Appelbaum separated from each
other. One of the reasons is that Mr. de Valence had requested this.

> In February, while the group was planning travel to Japan for the
> PQCrypto conference, Tanja asked me to share an AirBNB with Jacob. Though
> I was not comfortable having to spend time with Jacob, I did not feel
> comfortable declining, since the rest of the group's accommodations
> were already booked.

Once again: if I believe what Mr. de Valence now writes, then Mr. de
Valence knew starting in December 2015 that he was deeply angry with Mr.
Appelbaum. But in February 2016 he was still concealing this information
from me, and I'm told also from Prof. Lange, and I'm told also from Mr.
Appelbaum. Mr. de Valence did _not_ reveal that he was uncomfortable
sharing a room with Mr. Appelbaum.

This is puzzling behavior. Again, why was Mr. de Valence hiding this?

> Jacob came upstairs with a bottle of irritant eye drops, supposedly
> containing menthol, and pushed me to let him put them in my eyes. I
> said no, three times, before deciding that, because Jacob thrives on
> provoking negative reactions from others, it would be best to "go
> along to get along" until I would no longer have to deal with him.

This is similar to a story that Mr. de Valence told me in mid-2016, but
one of the differences is quite striking. In the mid-2016 version of
what Mr. de Valence said, Mr. Appelbaum

   * first put the same eye drops into _his own_ eyes, and then
   * convinced Mr. de Valence to take the same eye drops.

As a more minor point, from the story that Mr. de Valence told me in
mid-2016, I thought that Mr. de Valence had taken the eye drops himself
(i.e., V agreeing to V putting the eye drops into V's eyes, rather than
V agreeing to A putting the eye drops into V's eyes). This could have
been miscommunication, but Mr. Appelbaum taking the eye drops first was
a completely clear element of Mr. de Valence's story. More broadly, Mr.
de Valence's mid-2016 story sounded vastly less nefarious and terrifying
than the story he now puts online.

Why does Mr. de Valence now omit from his story the point about Mr.
Appelbaum taking the eye drops first? And why did he wait months after
February before telling me that something had happened?

I was expecting that, as a result of my advising Mr. de Valence to send
me a written complaint, he would put his version of this story into
writing, and then I could ask Mr. Appelbaum for _his_ version, and then
we would resolve any discrepancies, and then see what further action was
warranted---calling in outside assistance if necessary. Someone reading
Mr. de Valence's current stories might think that outside assistance was
clearly necessary, but, again, what he said back then was different.

I suppose it's progress that Mr. de Valence has now put some version of
his story into writing where I can see it. Why did this take Mr. de
Valence nine months to accomplish after I advised him to do so? Why did
it take him more than a year after the actual events?

I've asked Mr. Appelbaum about the eye drops. He disputes Mr. de
Valence's "irritant eye drops" description; he says that they were
non-prescription Japanese eye drops to _relieve_ irritation. Of course
even the most innocent chemicals can have different effects on different
people, and clearly Mr. de Valence is unhappy with how his eye felt, and
if Mr. de Valence _had_ filed a complaint with me then this information
about the eye drops would have been only the first step in understanding
what happened and what actions were warranted.

If Mr. de Valence were to _now_ file a complaint with me regarding the
eye drops, I would recuse myself and recommend that he file a complaint
with the appropriate university complaints committee for investigation.
It's not that I consider myself incapable of investigating; it's that
there seems to be a significant risk that Mr. de Valence will engage in
ad-hominem attacks in an attempt to discredit any negative conclusions.

> My right eye, into which Jacob placed an irritant eye drop, has never
> really felt the same since then; for months afterward it was
> continually slightly irritated, often watering, and I would get
> headaches localized to my right temple.

This sounds serious---so why did Mr. de Valence wait additional months
before coming to me, and why didn't he follow my advice to send me a
written complaint? His behavior is baffling.

  [ quite a few months after the eye drop: ]
> I spoke to Dan for nearly two hours, describing Jacob's
> behaviour. Specifically, I told Dan that I was contacted by a close
> friend whose boundaries Jacob violated, about Jacob's conduct in the
> AirBNB, including that he made threatening statements, about the damage
> he caused to my eye, that he had repeatedly behaved inappropriately to
> me, and that he had threatened retaliation against my partner.

Mr. de Valence is using a highly deceptive rhetorical device here. I
never saw him do anything like this in person; in particular, what he
actually said in this particular conversation was quite different from
what this description makes the reader believe.

Let me give an example to explain what the rhetorical device is. Is Mr.
de Valence claiming that he told me that he was sexually harassed?

Mr. de Valence did indicate that he felt severe discomfort being around
Mr. Appelbaum as a result of stories that he had heard from other people
regarding Mr. Appelbaum's behavior. But this doesn't answer the question
I'm asking. The question is specifically whether Mr. de Valence is
claiming that he told me that Mr. Appelbaum sexually harassed _him_.

Mr. de Valence writes that he had told me that Mr. Appelbaum "had
repeatedly behaved inappropriately to me". Given the context, many
readers would leap to the conclusion that the reported behavior towards
Mr. de Valence was sexual harassment---maybe even sexual assault.

But that's flatly wrong. Mr. de Valence did _not_ report to me that he
had been sexually harassed. The impression that he creates in the mind
of many readers is divorced from reality.

In response to my pointing out this deception, Mr. de Valence can say "I
never said that I reported being sexually harassed---I simply said Jake
was behaving inappropriately to me", evading responsibility for the
deception created by his own choice of words. This deniable type of
deception arises from

   (1) the wide range of meanings of "inappropriately",
   (2) a reader mindset created by the context, and
   (3) a failure to add details that provide clarity.

"Inappropriately" is not the only word that allows this type of abuse.
I'm deliberately choosing the word "abuse" here as another illustration:
if someone accused Mr. de Valence of engaging in abuse, without giving
these clarifying details, then many readers would be deceived, and yet
the accuser would have deniability. Students of rhetoric will observe an
impressive display of such deception in portions of Mr. de Valence's
blog post.

In person, Mr. de Valence didn't use words like "inappropriately", and
didn't play such games with the context. He was making vastly more clear
statements of fact (or at least what he seemed to believe to be facts).
He was describing questions from Mr. Appelbaum and telling me that he
didn't want to answer those questions. He was describing stories from
Mr. Appelbaum and telling me that he didn't want to hear those stories.
He didn't say that Mr. Appelbaum had "behaved inappropriately", and he
was describing his own perspective at the end of those conversations as
"yeah, whatever" with a dismissive hand wave---quite different from
claiming that the conversations were serious problems. I nevertheless
told him that if he had clearly told Mr. Appelbaum to stop, and Mr.
Appelbaum had persisted, then he should complain to Prof. Lange and me.

Mr. de Valence expressed much more concern with his eye-drop story---a
story where he agreed to take eye drops after seeing Mr. Appelbaum take
them---and clearly he was troubled by the much more serious accusations
that he had heard from other people. Mr. de Valence didn't say that Mr.
Appelbaum had "caused" damage to him or subjected him to "physical
abuse", but I thought formal followup action was warranted. I advised
Mr. de Valence to send me a self-contained written complaint. He didn't.
Why not?

> Dan's suggestion on hearing that Jacob caused me physical harm

Once again: What Mr. de Valence actually told me was that Mr. Appelbaum
had first put the same eye drops into his own eyes, and then convinced
Mr. de Valence to take the same eye drops.

> was to suggest that Jacob and I should have an unspecified "mediation
> process".

In response to what Mr. de Valence _actually_ told me, I pointed out
various problem-resolution options, including ombudsmen and mediators.
Not long after this, I sent Mr. de Valence email advising him to file a
written complaint with me.

> The Tor Project announced the reasons for Jacob's departure during a
> summer school on cryptography in Croatia. At the same time, an anonymous
> group posted their stories of Jacob's abuse online.

I'll comment on this simply to point out an interesting difference in
terminology.

The author name on the page was "Jacob's Rape Victims Collective". I've
checked now, and the author name on the page is still "Jacob's Rape
Victims Collective":

    <meta name="author" content="Jacob's Rape Victims Collective">

It is not "Jacob's Abuse Victims Collective". The people who
spray-painted Mr. Appelbaum's house spray-painted "rapist" and
"Vergewaltiger", not "abuser".

> On June 4, Dan sent an email to the entire research group. Dan informed
> the group that the only appropriate venue for dealing with Jacob's
> behaviour is the criminal justice system

Anyone who compares this assertion to what I actually wrote can see that
Mr. de Valence is not telling the truth here; not even close.

Many behaviors---for example, how Mr. Appelbaum behaved according to Mr.
de Valence's mid-2016 version of the eye-drop incident---are obviously
part of my job to investigate. This is one of the reasons that I
repeatedly advised Mr. de Valence to file a written complaint with me
(something he never did).

My "crime and punishment" message never said anything to the contrary.
The message was very clearly talking about rape accusations, and even an
incredibly sloppy reader cannot possibly have missed this. Surely Mr. de
Valence cannot be so confused as to imagine that it's my job to
investigate rape accusations.

Let me again draw attention to Mr. de Valence's choice of words, in
particular the word "behaviour", which has a wide range of meanings,
including meanings on opposite sides of the line that Mr. de Valence
draws:

   * Someone who reads this word in the context of Mr. de Valence's
     earlier comment will think "behaviour" means, e.g., the eye-drop
     incident, and will be deceived into thinking that I said this
     incident had to be handled by the courts.

   * Someone who compares this word to what I actually wrote will think
     "behaviour" means rape, and won't see how Mr. de Valence is
     misrepresenting my message.

   * Someone who reads the context _and_ the word _and_ my message will
     immediately see that Mr. de Valence is misrepresenting my message.
     But what fraction of readers will read this much?

I think it's reasonable for me to accuse Mr. de Valence of engaging in
deliberate deception here. I try to follow Napoleon's maxim of never
attributing to malice what can be well explained by incompetence, but I
simply don't see how such patently false characterizations of my message
can be explained by incompetence.

> and that he felt it would be inappropriate for him to take any action
> before the outcome of a court case.

No, this again misrepresents my message. See above.

> He took the time to emphasize the need to punish "false accusations",
> which occur "often"

Mr. de Valence doesn't even manage to quote accurately: my message does
say "false accusation" at one point but doesn't say "false accusations".

More importantly, here's the actual "often" paragraph from my message:

   Often people are falsely accused of crimes. I see it as part of my duty,
   as a member of a civilized society, to avoid prejudging and punishing
   people who are accused and who have not had their day in court. On the
   opposite side, often people are correctly accused of crimes, and I also
   see it as part of my duty to avoid prejudging and punishing accusers who
   have not had their day in court.

What, if anything, does Mr. de Valence disagree with here?

> (in reality, between 2% and 8% of the time),

Let's assume 2%. Is this not "often"? What exactly does Mr. de Valence
think he's disagreeing with?

Some examples might help for clarification. I'm horrified by what Brock
Turner did, and what Bilal Skaf did, and what happened at My Lai. At the
same time I'm horrified by what was done to Phi Kappa Psi, and to the
Scottsboro Boys, and to Iraq. All six of these examples were barbaric.

Mr. de Valence's position is not clearly stated, but _appears_ to be the
following:

    (1) Mr. de Valence is just fine with what was done to Phi Kappa Psi
        and the Scottsboro Boys and Iraq, among many other examples.

    (2) His logic starts from the assertion that the underlying
        accusations are correct 98% of the time, so the collateral
        damage is only 2%, which Mr. de Valence considers acceptable.

If Mr. de Valence _doesn't_ hold this position, perhaps he should
clarify what exactly he thinks he's disputing in my message. I'm aware
that there are some people who are unable to think rationally about
these issues, and who will instead resort to dishonest emotional games,
such as falsely accusing me of equating Phi Kappa Psi with Iraq; I don't
consider this an adequate reason to avoid commenting on the topic.

> and described only two outcomes: a "true" accusation, leading to jail
> for the accused (in reality, 6 of every 1000 perpetrators are jailed in
> the United States),

Here Mr. de Valence is disputing something that I didn't actually say.

What my message actually says is "If it's true that Jake raped someone
then of course he should go to jail for this heinous crime." Notice that
this says "should", whereas Mr. de Valence's false characterization
makes it sound as if I had said "will", and then attacks this position.

> According to Dan's mail, there is no possibility
> beyond "punish the accused" or "punish the accuser", or any
> level of inappropriate conduct below that which is strictly illegal:

I have never said anything of the sort, either in this message or
anywhere else.

> for instance, Dan did not mention the plagiarism alleged in the tweets
> he referenced in his own email.

Even for a lifelong academic like me who considers plagiarism a major
offense, rape is a far more important topic. Why does Mr. de Valence
think I should have mentioned plagiarism in a "Subject: crime and
punishment" message?

> When Dan sent this mail, he had already received reports from multiple
> people that Jacob's abusive behaviour was not limited to Tor, but also
> extended into his research group

I think that pointing out Mr. de Valence's usage of the same rhetorical
device is an adequate response to this astoundingly deceptive sentence.
See above for further comments on the device.

> and I suspect that he knew even
> more, since Jacob was staying at Dan and Tanja's apartment at the time
> that he was attempting to negotiate his exit from the Tor Project.

Mr. Appelbaum and Roger Dingledine were both visiting. Both of them had
obviously heard that there was some sort of accusation against Mr.
Appelbaum, but both of them seemed to be completely in the dark about
the details. They were each out of the room large parts of the time,
apparently on the phone.

My impression from them was that the Tor Project was being threatened
with public exposure of the accusation (whatever exactly it was) if Mr.
Appelbaum didn't resign from the Tor Project. Mr. Appelbaum and Mr.
Dingeldine both obviously cared deeply about the continued success of
Tor and didn't want Tor hurt.

I was, and am, puzzled by the date claimed in Ms. Steele's blog post on
2 June 2016: "Jacob Appelbaum stepped down from his position at The Tor
Project on May 25, 2016." Unless Mr. Appelbaum and Mr. Dingledine were
both playing some sort of elaborate charade, this decision wasn't
actually made until a slightly later date. Perhaps Ms. Steele meant
"effective" rather than "on", but this isn't what she wrote.

> When Dan wrote that dealing with Jacob is a job for the courts, and
> not for Dan, he did so knowing that Jacob's abuse was not limited
> to a single person and also affected one of his students.

Again Mr. de Valence's characterization of what I wrote is highly
inaccurate.

The underlying problem is that Mr. de Valence is mixing up _criminal_
accusations (which are certainly a job for the courts) with much less
severe accusations (such as Mr. de Valence's mid-2016 version of the
eye-drop story). Notice again how Mr. de Valence uses the word "abuse"
in a way that fails to distinguish these different situations.

Did my message make any broad statements about "dealing with Jacob"---
as opposed to statements specifically about the rape accusations? No,
it didn't. Of course, if Mr. de Valence were being honest in reporting
the scope of my message, then he wouldn't be able to get away with the
"one of his students" claim.

Further sloppiness in Mr. de Valence's description is worth pointing
out: specifically, the word "knowing". I had _heard accusations_ of rape
(specifically the shocking tweet "Jake finally raped enough people that
Tor as an organisation couldn't ignore it anymore"), but it's flatly
wrong to claim that I _knew_ that there was rape. Mr. de Valence
obviously doesn't share my verification standards, but this doesn't
justify him misrepresenting my knowledge.

Of course the severe ambiguity of "abuse" will allow Mr. de Valence to
respond by sliding to something else that he claims I _did_ know---but
I can't think of anything that would justify this part of the sentence,
even if I disregard the starting topic (what "Dan wrote"). The eye-drop
incident, in Mr. de Valence's mid-2016 version, was clearly not abuse.

> I asked Dan to isolate me from Jacob; he wrote that we should all
> wait, presumably for several years, "for judges and juries to do their
> jobs" before taking action.

Again Mr. de Valence misleads the reader into thinking that my message
was about _all_ alleged aspects of Mr. Appelbaum's behavior---and that
the message was in response to an "isolate me" request.

My message said "Subject: crime and punishment". It was completely
explicit in addressing _rape accusations_. Here's the actual "waiting"
paragraph from the message:

   As long as nobody goes to court claiming rape or slander, I would ask
   that you join me in presuming that the accusations of rape are false,
   _and_ in presuming that the accusations of slander are false. Assuming
   that someone _does_ go to court, I would ask that you join me in waiting
   for judges and juries to do their jobs---no matter how tempting it is to
   instead join a poorly informed mob on one side or the other. I'm not
   saying that judges and juries never make mistakes; I'm saying that the
   alternatives are much worse.

Mr. de Valence says "taking action" without mentioning that my message
was about actions _regarding rape accusations_.

> I told Dan that Jacob had blackmailed me and my partner;

No. Mr. de Valence never used the word "blackmail" in his conversation
with me, and never said anything that added up to blackmail---not even
close.

> he wrote about the need to punish those who are unsuccessful in raising
> complaints with the court system.

Again, I don't think I need to respond to claims by Mr. de Valence that
are at such a remarkable distance from amply documented reality.

  [ regarding a conversation with Prof. Lange: ]
> At this point myself and Isis left in tears, ending the conversation.
> Dan watched us leave.

This is false. I had left much earlier, and was far out of sight,
roughly 100 meters away, not even on the same floor of the building.

I'll comment in more detail for people who have been to the venue. The
event reception had a ton of people in a large room downstairs. I saw
the conversation starting at a fairly central location in that room
during the reception; I was chatting with other people. At some point I
left the room, went upstairs, went around the corner, went down the hall
to the bar area, took one of two low chairs facing each other, and
pulled out my laptop.

Some time later, still sitting in the same chair, I saw Mr. de Valence
and his partner appearing. This could have been under a minute after
they left the conversation with Prof. Lange, but saying "watched us
leave" is still wrong. Specifically, I saw them appearing at a distance,
at the end of the hallway leading to the bar area, coming towards me,
presumably aiming for their hotel room. Mr. de Valence seemed to be
looking in my direction. He then turned slightly to his partner---I
thought he was saying something, although they were too far away for me
to be sure---and switched to staring in a different direction, while his
partner was staring at the floor. I made a snap judgment that they
obviously didn't want to be bothered, so I didn't keep watching them; I
was typing on my laptop as they came down the hall past me.

> The next day, I told Dan I did not see a way to continue at Eindhoven,
> and avoided contact for the rest of the summer school.

Mr. de Valence neglects to mention my response: basically, that it
wasn't good to make career decisions under stress, and that he should
take a month to think about things.

> The following week, I spoke to Dan, telling him that I found Tanja's
> reaction unacceptable, that I feared retaliation from Jacob, that my
> conclusion from Tanja's comments was that she would never believe a
> complaint from me about Jacob's behaviour, and that I felt unsafe at
> the university.

There's much more that I could say about how our discussion actually
went, but I think I can simply point out that the time in question was
just a few days before I sent Mr. de Valence email recommending that he
send me a self-contained written complaint---which he never did.

> The day that Isis published their account, Dan cut off communication
> with me,

This is simply not true.

The only marginal overlap with the truth is that I sent email to Mr. de
Valence (dated 16 Jun 2016 15:33:41 -0000) saying "Given these concerns,
I've decided that this message will be the end of our strictly
confidential conversation." But this was explicitly ending _one_
particular conversation, and here was the very next sentence:

   I recommend that you send me a separate message explaining in detail
   what problems you're facing---without any reference to the previous
   conversation; again, it's procedurally impossible for me to take
   action that relies even slightly on any portion of a strictly
   confidential conversation---and explaining what actions you would
   like me to take.

Describing this as cutting off communication is absurd. I was very
explicitly recommending that Mr. de Valence send me further email.

As a side note, what Mr. de Valence says about timing is also not
correct. The blog post from his partner is actually dated three days
earlier, and checking Twitter I see a date of "10:21 AM - 15 Jun 2016"
on the tweet announcing the blog post.

> Dan instructed me to "follow proper procedures", and instructed me to
> communicate with him only over email

Again Mr. de Valence is sloppy in his handling of quotes. What my
message actually said is "I'm sorry if this sounds excessively formal,
but following proper procedures avoids errors and provides protection
for everyone involved."

"Instructed" is also wrong; the word from my email was "recommend". What
I was recommending that Mr. de Valence do, in a nutshell, was send me a
written complaint. See above for the exact quote.

More broadly, readers will understand Mr. de Valence's "communicate with
him only over email" as referring not just to the _one_ conversation
that I was explicitly ending, but to _all_ of our communication. This is
another fabrication by Mr. de Valence. I never told him any such thing.
We also had in-person discussions after this; an interesting example
that leaps to mind is a September 2016 discussion that I'll describe
below.

> with no reference to any previous conversation,

This was regarding the complaint that I was advising Mr. de Valence to
file: the complaint needed to be self-contained, rather than referring
to our previous conversation.

There are many obvious reasons for this. For example, _if_ someone is
falsely accused, but some components of the accusation are hidden from
him, how will he even know how to begin proving his innocence? Maybe
the parts he sees will be enough, but maybe not.

> effectively helping him to pretend that I had not already been discussing
> these issues both with him and with Tanja for several weeks.

This is a bizarre assertion.

Mr. de Valence initiated a strictly confidential conversation with me.
This placed an obligation on _me_ to protect Mr. de Valence's privacy by
avoiding disclosure of the contents, or even the existence, of the
conversation. That's also why I wasn't taking notes of the conversation,
and wasn't following up with minutes of the conversation; I was simply
listening and providing advice to Mr. de Valence. At one point I told
him that I might be able to help more if he would _allow me_ to discuss
certain things with Prof. Lange. (He didn't, so I didn't.)

After careful consideration I've concluded that Mr. de Valence's public
misrepresentations of the conversation have now removed his entitlement
to this protection. But the situation back in June was that I was
obliged to, and was careful to, protect Mr. de Valence's privacy.

Mr. de Valence sent me a strange email message in mid-August in which,
among other things, he incorrectly equated non-disclosure with the
"fiction" of non-awareness. Similarly, he now accuses me of wanting to
"pretend" that the conversation didn't exist, and claims that this
pretense would somehow "help" me, in some completely unclear way.

> Dan has written at some length about the importance of "due process",
> both internally to the research group and externally to the world. But
> it's telling to notice that in every such discussion, Dan carefully
> avoided any mention of concrete processes:

False. For example, I very clearly advised Mr. de Valence to send me a
self-contained written complaint; that's a concrete process.

> he did not define the "different procedures" suddenly required for him
> to take action, nor what "proper procedures" should be followed.

False. Again, I very clearly advised Mr. de Valence to send me a
self-contained written complaint.

> He made vague references to "mediation" when I report physical harm,

Mr. de Valence reported that he had willingly taken eye drops after
seeing Mr. Appelbaum take the same eye drops. See above.

> but never suggested any particular person or office to contact.

False. I recommended that Mr. de Valence file a written complaint _with
me_. That's a particular person, and he never asked me for a referral,
nor did he say anything to make me think a referral was needed. What Mr.
de Valence had actually told me was well within my power to handle---but
then for some reason he didn't send me a complaint.

> For all his interest in "due process", he never provided any
> information on the university's processes,

The first step in the process is for the manager---in this case me---to
try to resolve things. I very clearly advised Mr. de Valence to file a
written complaint with me. Of course---as noted in, for example,

   https://educationguide.tue.nl/organization/official-rules-and-regulations/complaints-and-disputes/

in the context of the university's education program---there's actually
a step zero that Mr. de Valence seems to have skipped: "Before taking
formal steps it is advisable first to contact the body or person against
whom you wish to submit an appeal, objection or complaint. Often it is
possible to find a solution without instigating the formal procedures."

> nor suggested contacting particular people at the university, such as
> HR or a confidential advisor,

There wasn't any reason for me to mention HR or confidential advisors
when I was recommending that Mr. de Valence send me a written complaint.
The total number of HR people and confidential advisors at the
university is obviously much smaller than the number of professors and
other managers, and the workload in resolving problems is spread through
all of the managers.

Of course there are some circumstances where HR can be, should be, or
must be involved, but nothing in what Mr. de Valence had actually told
me was suggesting that such circumstances were present. Procedurally,
after seeing a written complaint from Mr. de Valence, I might have
decided to contact HR---but he didn't send me a complaint. Why not?

> nor referred to the university's guidelines on acceptable conduct.

Again, the first step was for me to see a complaint in writing.

> Dan's actions lead me to conclude that this is because Dan's interest
> in "due process" does not extend so far as proactively carrying any
> out.

False. For example, I advised Mr. de Valence to send me a self-contained
written complaint, and he failed to do so.

> Instead, I believe his interest is in obfuscating to protect Jacob,

I have no idea what Mr. de Valence thinks I was "obfuscating". Why
didn't Mr. de Valence send me a self-contained written complaint when I
advised him to?

> while pretending to have met his responsibilities to address the issue.

What does "the issue" mean here? The eye-drop incident? Mr. de Valence's
stated discomfort with being around Mr. Appelbaum? Whatever the issue
was, if it was important enough for Mr. de Valence to blog about many
months later, why wasn't it important enough for him to send me a
written complaint?

> asking why I had not followed the "procedures" he had invented.

It is completely standard for a complaint to go first to the alleged
culprit, then (if that doesn't resolve the problem) to the supervisor,
and so on up the chain. This certainly isn't something I invented. As
for putting a self-contained complaint into writing, this also isn't
something I invented. The question remains: Why didn't Mr. de Valence
send me a self-contained written complaint, as I advised him to do?

> I prepared a written complaint and sent it to our department secretary
> on the 22nd of August,

Looking at the email that Mr. de Valence now posts, I see that his
target was actually our group's secretary, not "our department
secretary". Either way, how did Mr. de Valence imagine that this was the
proper direction to send a complaint?

Last month, February 2017, Mr. de Valence sent email to twenty people
making reference to an August complaint---I guess this one---and, in an
attachment, making reference to a September complaint. Before February
2017, he hid both the contents and the existence of the complaints from
me. I still haven't seen a copy of either complaint.

It's interesting to note that Mr. de Valence's document dump includes
email to the secretary but doesn't include the complaint that he says he
sent.

> since I had no idea who the HR contact person was and neither Dan nor
> Tanja had ever mentioned that information,

Mr. de Valence had never asked me for that information.

The "no idea" comment is also puzzling. Mr. de Valence, like other Ph.D.
students at TU/e, was an employee; and, as far as I know, every new
employee receives an email message from someone clearly identified as
HR, and works with HR to complete the initial hiring forms. The HR
contact information can also be found on the TU/e web pages.

Is Mr. de Valence quite sure that his objective at this point was to
have his complaints actually investigated and addressed?

> since HR was not, apparently, to be involved with "proper procedures".

This comment bears no relationship to anything I actually said.

> In reply to Dan's query, I asked Dan when, in his capacity as a UIC
> faculty member, he had last received Title IX training, since I was,
> and am, surprised by the vast gulf between his idea of standard
> procedures for handling reports of sexual harassment and
  [ etc. ]

Contrary to Mr. de Valence's current insinuations, he never claimed to
me that he had been sexually harassed. Regarding claims from other
people, I'm confident that the notifications I've carried out (starting
on 6 June 2016) have fulfilled my legal and ethical responsibilities.
Mr. de Valence is delusional if he thinks he's entitled to see such
confidential personnel information about other people.

> He did not answer my question

Mr. de Valence was behaving inappropriately by asking such a question.

Notice that I'm giving ample details so that the reader can see the
level of inappropriate behavior that I'm talking about. The deceptive
rhetorical device discussed above relies not merely on the choice of
words, such as "inappropriate", but also on context.

> and instead wrote a long email in which
> he provided further detail on his "procedures",

I advised Mr. de Valence to file a written complaint with me. He didn't.

After I followed up, Mr. de Valence sent a weird response. I then went
into detail regarding basic procedural points such as the benefits of
putting things into writing. Attributing these procedures to me ("his"),
and putting "procedures" in quotes, is strange; these aren't procedures
that I invented.

> attacked my credibility,

Skimming the message I immediately spot comments on Mr. de Valence's
serious inaccuracies, such as the following:

   You now summarize this in a highly inaccurate way, claiming that I "cut
   off communication" with you, while you ignore the fact that I explicitly
   invited further communication from you.

Many months later Mr. de Valence repeats the same absurdly inaccurate
"cut off communication" claim, evidently not understanding what I was
telling him, and then accuses me of attacking his credibility.

I did use the word "credibility" in the message: I said that he wasn't
following proper procedures, and warned him that "failing to follow
proper procedures can call your credibility into question", which he
also doesn't seem to have understood.

All of this was in private email solely to Mr. de Valence. Even after
Mr. de Valence sent email to twenty people last month quite seriously
misrepresenting what we had discussed, I was very careful to limit the
contents of my disclosure in response, and didn't say anything about
this message. Mr. de Valence has now posted the message, and my best
guess is that this will in fact damage his credibility, but that's
entirely his own fault.

> and mentioned that "procedurally improper behaviour" could lead to
> termination.

This is (1) yet another misquote, (2) missing the important word
"sufficiently", and (3) missing other important context. Here is the
correct quote in context:

   In the context of a complaint, there would be note-taking, and prompt
   written confirmation, and no opportunity for anyone to be confused a
   month and a half later about what had happened. But I presume that your
   conversation with your supervisor was also strictly confidential, which
   means that she shouldn't have been taking notes, and then it's clearly
   inappropriate for you to be coming to me a month and a half later and
   making strange claims about the contents of the conversation.

   I don't know what actually happened in that conversation. I do know that
   you aren't following proper procedures. Even if you have a legitimate
   complaint, failing to follow proper procedures can call your credibility
   into question and prevent the complaint from being processed. Behavior
   that is sufficiently improper from a procedural perspective can even be
   grounds for termination.

   Let me emphasize what you should do instead. I understand that you have
   problems with one of my employees. More than two months ago I advised
   you to send me a self-contained email message that explains the problems
   in detail and explains what actions you would like me to take. This was,
   and is, the proper procedure for you to request action from me.

   Your latest email message also indicates that you have problems with my
   reaction to what you've done so far (and also with your supervisor's
   reaction, but that's something you have to discuss with her). If this is
   an allusion to the erroneous notion that I've "cut off communication",
   then I hope my comments above help you get past this error. If you see
   other problems, then please go ahead and explain them to me; I'll
   carefully listen, as I've been consistently doing, and see whether we
   can resolve the problems.

The real question here is why Mr. de Valence kept failing to send me a
self-contained written complaint.

> He also emailed me to advise me to work from home, since
> Jacob would be at the university for a week at the end of August.

Given Mr. de Valence's expressions of discomfort with being around Mr.
Appelbaum, I felt compelled to inform Mr. de Valence that Mr. Appelbaum
would be around. Consider, e.g., Mr. de Valence's earlier statement "I
asked Dan to isolate me from Jacob".

Meanwhile I knew that _Mr. Appelbaum_ had expressed severe discomfort
with being around _Mr. de Valence_, and even with having Mr. de Valence
know his physical location; Mr. Appelbaum had also reported receiving
death threats. I nevertheless felt that my duty to Mr. de Valence
outweighed Mr. Appelbaum's desire for privacy. (_Clearly_ another
incident of favoritism.)

On the Monday of that week, I was astounded to hear that Mr. de Valence
was spending time in his office. Does Mr. de Valence deny this? I don't
recall seeing him firsthand---I was extremely busy with other things---
but I clearly recall the secondhand information.

If Mr. de Valence was in fact spending time in his office that week,
then how does he explain this behavior, given his earlier statement "I
asked Dan to isolate me from Jacob", and given the fact that I had
confidentially informed Mr. de Valence that Mr. Appelbaum would be
around?

> On its way to HR, my complaint was read by another faculty member. In
> marked contrast to Tanja and Dan's reaction, this person immediately
> provided me with links to university policies and contact information
> for the department's "vertrouwenspersoon".

Could it _possibly_ be that this "marked contrast" was a direct result
of Mr. de Valence telling different stories to different people?

Or could it _possibly_ be that this was a result of Mr. de Valence
actually _putting a complaint into writing_, as I had advised him to do?

Why did Mr. de Valence never send _me_ this complaint?

> One of the HR representatives at the meeting then contacted me on the
> 5th of September to say that the departmental board would take action
> on my email, and that "they [the DB] are going to plan a meeting with
> Dan and Tanja in which they will be informed about the complaints you
> have. Do you agree with this action?". I replied, "Sure. Thanks for
> letting me know about these developments."

Whichever department personnel we're talking about, they never passed
the complaint along to me, and never even told me that Mr. de Valence
had filed a complaint. I did hear a vague rumor of some sort of "signals
regarding academic integrity", and it's now clear that this must have
been alluding to Mr. de Valence, but at the time I wasn't able to find
more information.

Why didn't Mr. de Valence simply send me the complaint?

The tone of Mr. de Valence's story seems to suggest that Mr. de Valence
was fine with having his August complaint passed along (although the
story doesn't exactly say this; being "informed about the complaints" is
not the same as seeing the complaints). It's hard to square this with
the bottom line, namely that I never actually saw the complaint.

Maybe it's true that the department personnel were massively screwing up
in how they reacted to Mr. de Valence's complaint; or perhaps Mr. de
Valence is omitting some important part of the actual story.

> At the end of September, I left the Netherlands for a week-long project
> meeting in Belgium, and gave a talk on my work.

Actually, this was a multiple-person _joint project_ led by another
student. I invited Mr. de Valence to join after the project was already
running for a while---I thought that parts of the project would be at
the right level for him. The scope of Mr. de Valence's talk omitted a
considerable portion of the project but certainly wasn't narrow enough
to justify the phrase "my work".

Standard practice in mathematics and computer science is for results of
a joint project to be announced as results from the entire team. Credit
of specific results to individuals is generally not disclosed outside
the team without team agreement, although of course it shows up when
senior scientists are writing confidential recommendation letters.

Mr. de Valence was required by project rules to show up to a closed
meeting and give a talk about _something_. My understanding was that he
didn't have anything else to talk about. The team agreed that he could
talk about this project at this closed meeting. The team had quite a bit
of discussion of the talk before it happened.

Meanwhile the only _public_ announcement was one short tweet. The team
hadn't agreed on any other public disclosure, and _had_ very explicitly
discussed the standard practice of obtaining consensus within the team
before announcing results.

Furthermore, the timing claimed by Mr. de Valence is very far off. My
understanding is that Mr. de Valence actually left the Netherlands on
Sunday 18 September; the Belgium event started on 19 September. The gap
between Mr. de Valence's timeline and reality is important because of
related events that Mr. de Valence fails to mention.

The team was aiming for a submission at the beginning of October 2016 to
an important conference. On Friday 16 September 2016, two weeks before
the deadline, the four TU/e members of the research team---the lead
student, the two supervisors, and Mr. de Valence---had another in-person
meeting. I was concerned about the state of software tasks that Mr. de
Valence had volunteered for, especially since he had travel coming up. I
suggested that we split the remaining software work. He said that he
didn't want to be a hog "but"---I recall a smile and dramatic pause
after the word "but"---wanted to keep going on the whole thing.

Six days before the deadline, Mr. de Valence said on the chat system
that he wouldn't get much done that day or the next day because he felt
"quite burnt out from last week and travel and some life crises", and
that he would check back in the next day. He then fell silent, with the
status of his work far from clear.

Three days later, after the lead student finally managed to track him
down by smartphone, Mr. de Valence sent one message saying

   Hi, sorry if I was unclear, I merged the WIP code I had into master
   so that other people could work on it, because I am burnt out and
   can't do both implementation work and the Tor meeting at the same
   time.

He then fell silent again. It turned out that the software was quite far
from a satisfactory state. The rest of the team had to stay up late
nights writing code and text to get the submission done on time.

> I then spent a week at the Tor meeting in Seattle, took a week of
> leave in Canada, and visited Waterloo, where I was invited to give
> essentially the same talk.

"Invited to give essentially the same talk"? Out of the blue? Really?
How did they know what the talk contained? It's of course possible that
they saw my tweet, which of course included Mr. de Valence in the list
of contributors, but that's not the same as knowing what the talk said.

Mr. de Valence didn't tell the rest of the team that he wanted to give a
public talk on this paper. I doubt that the team would have agreed if he
_had_ asked for permission.

I first heard about the talk from a Waterloo tweet two days before the
talk. I sent Mr. de Valence (and the team) email dated 13 Oct 2016
15:25:41 -0000 asking for his slides and, among other things, saying
"Announcements should always have approval from all authors", which I
think was _extremely_ gentle given how Mr. de Valence was behaving. Mr.
de Valence never replied to the email.

> I would say this is probably the point at which I lost faith in
> the university's ability to deal with the situation.

Could it _possibly_ be that the university's "ability to deal with the
situation" was affected by Mr. de Valence failing to file a written
complaint for me to investigate _and_ failing to file a written
complaint for complaints-committee members to investigate?

Let's recap the complaint status at this point in Mr. de Valence's
story:

   * Mr. de Valence has spread various versions of his complaints to so
     many people that I've lost count, and I suppose to even more that
     he hasn't bothered to mention.

   * However, Mr. de Valence seems to be avoiding sending his complaints
     to the people who say they'll actually investigate complaints (me,
     and of course higher-level complaints-committee members).

   * Mr. de Valence also seems to be avoiding sending copies of his
     complaints to the people he's complaining about.

This is puzzling behavior, if Mr. de Valence actually believes the
contents of his complaints.

> The same day, he sent an email to a Ph.D. student at Waterloo, placing
> Alfred Menezes in CC, noting that he had previously described my
> situation to Alfred as "pathetic"

False. Here is what my message actually said:

   Do you happen to know whether the slides from the Oct 14 seminar
   "Efficiently finding short generators in multiquadratic fields" were
   copied onto a Waterloo laptop that might still have a copy?

   I asked Alfred (in cc), mentioning that I'm one of several coauthors,
   and that the reason that we don't have the slides is a long and pathetic
   story that I wouldn't bore him with. He said that speakers usually bring
   their own laptops, but suggested contacting you as the main organizer of
   the seminar.

In Mr. de Valence's misrepresentation, this was about him: "he had
previously described MY SITUATION to Alfred as 'pathetic'" (emphasis
added). In the actual message, I wasn't blaming anybody, and most
readers would guess that the reason I was sending email is that I had
somehow managed to carelessly lose all the team copies of the slides.

This effort to protect Mr. de Valence is, I suppose, yet another item
for the "Henry de Valence: Dan and Tanja's favorite student" book.

Careful readers of Mr. de Valence's misrepresentation will also note the
same deceptive rhetorical device again, this time starting from the word
"situation". Given the context, many readers will envision the
description of this "situation" as some sort of broad badmouthing,
whereas my actual message talked much more specifically about "the
reason that we don't have the slides".

> and asked the student to search through any UWaterloo
> computers for a copy of the slides I'd used there months ago.

"Search through any UWaterloo computers"? Yikes. Call out the forensics
team!

What I actually wrote started with "Do you happen to know" and was
obviously referring to whichever particular Waterloo laptop was normally
used to present talk slides. This certainly wasn't asking for some sort
of broad search.

> The mid-term review meeting for the project I was hired to work on took
> place in January. I was told that Dan reported to the other Ph.D. students
> that I had called in sick in October and resigned in December, and that
> if any of the other fellows knew more, he would like to know.

Maybe this is what Mr. de Valence heard---or maybe not. He's making an
interesting change in his story here compared to a previous version.
Here's the previous version:

   I was told that at the project review meeting in Leuven, Dan Bernstein
   informed the other ECRYPT-NET fellows that I called in sick in October
   and resigned in December, that he had no further information, and that
   if any of the other fellows knew more, he would like to know.

See the difference? Why does Mr. de Valence now omit the "no further
information" part from the new story?

Either way, the story is an oversimplification of what I actually said
at the meeting. For example, I said at that meeting that we were
continuing to move forward with a joint project that the student had
participated in, and that the resulting paper was under submission. I
also reported that the student had called in sick in October, that the
student had resigned at the beginning of December (I later learned that
the resignation letter was dated the end of November), that I had not
seen the sick notice or the resignation letter, that the student had
fallen out of contact, that I hoped he was okay, and that if anyone had
further information then I would like to know.

This is one of several points that I already made in my response to Mr.
de Valence's letter last month. Apparently Mr. de Valence understood the
particular point that "no further information" was flatly wrong. His
response is fascinating: he revises his claim of what he had heard to
omit this point, even though, according to his previous claim, it _is_
part of what he had heard. Somehow Mr. de Valence fails to learn any
broader lesson about the possibility of errors in communication.

> When I informed the project reviewer and the other fellows that, in
> fact, I had resigned due to sexual harassment

Actually, Mr. de Valence's subject line was pointing to more things:
"Regarding my resignation from the ECRYPT-NET project due to sexual
harassment, blackmail, and abuse".

(He also sent the message to four other project people and, for some
completely unclear reason, the press people at the department. I must
admit to some curiosity as to how he managed to find the press people,
if he had so much trouble finding HR.)

If Mr. de Valence actually believed that he was subjected to "abuse"
(whatever exactly he means by this), sexual harassment, and blackmail,
then why didn't he file complaints with me, with the appropriate
university complaints committee, and with the police?

> Dan sent a response which opened with a long, irrelevant, and
> inaccurate story

First, I don't see Mr. de Valence even attempting to justify his claim
of inaccuracy. If he thinks there's anything even slightly inaccurate in
my message, then of course he should say what this is, so that we can
reach agreement regarding the facts.

Second, regarding relevance, the facts shown in my message---especially
the sequence of events at the beginning of the message---are radically
at odds with the picture painted by Mr. de Valence.

Third, I agree that the story was rather long.

> about how my work was low-quality, my research contribution was minor,
> etc.,

My message doesn't say "quality" or "minor", and on a quick skim I don't
see anything similar to this. In general the message is quite focused on
facts; this is hidden by Mr. de Valence's deceptive paraphrase.

> I signed up to do a Ph.D. so that I could do cryptography
> research, not so that I could spend months trying to blow the whistle
> in the face of personal and institutional resistance, and I do not
> intend to waste much more of my life on it.

In June 2016, not long after Mr. de Valence initiated a conversation
with me, I sent him email recommending that he send me a message
"explaining in detail what problems you're facing" and "explaining what
actions you would like me to take."

This was perfectly clear, and is very much the opposite of "resistance".
Mr. de Valence, on the other hand, was then astoundingly resistant to
putting his complaint into writing to me.

Apparently Mr. de Valence put a version of his story into writing three
months later, but didn't show it to anybody who would know---or make an
effort to find out---the facts.

Mr. de Valence has now put a version of his story online, _very_
different from what he had told me nine months earlier, and full of
further statements that I know firsthand to be false---including
statements with such glaring errors that Mr. de Valence _must_ have
known beforehand that what he's saying isn't true.

When the errors are stripped away, what we find from Mr. de Valence is a
fundamental failure to focus on the facts. He's full of accusatory words
and insinuations, and remarkably light on details.

Does this really sound like someone "trying to blow the whistle"?

---D. J. Bernstein

P.S. Here are two comments regarding Mr. de Valence's email dump.

First, Mr. de Valence correctly notes that he didn't send me a copy of
his February 2017 email. Why didn't he do this? I received a copy from
the project coordinator, and of course I included Mr. de Valence in the
cc line of my response.

Second, Mr. de Valence's redactions of names and addresses were quite
sloppy, and in particular I consider it rather antisocial of Mr. de
Valence to add my non-public TU/e email address to spammer databases. A
simple Google search would have shown him that the address was not
previously public.