Academia, Bizarre, Criminal law

Publish and Perish? Florida Professor Arrested For Allegedly Stalking Student With 800 Messages A Day

os-1530294098-3nqmnhr7qy-snap-imageUniversity of Central Florida Assistant Professor Ali Borji, 39, is criminally charged over what police say was a pattern of stalking that included over 800 text messages a day to a female student.  He was arrested on campus at this office on June 28th. UCF says that he resigned earlier from the Department of Computer Science.

 

The alleged stalking continued for months during the Fall 2017 and Spring 2018 semesters.  The messages reportedly included such messages as “you should be happy that somebody likes you this much to stalk you,” and “you think I am sick and I may be! But I still love you.”

Police said Borji found the victim through Facebook in fall 2017 and began messaging her, offering her help with her degree program. After meeting a few times, Borji asked the victim on a date and she agreed, according to police. Officers said after a few dates, when the victim decided the relationship should remain strictly professional, Borji began stalking her.

The student said that she left the school to get away from Borji, but that he continued to stalk her, including allegedly watching her at her gym.  Police say he told the student that he could create an artificial-intelligence facsimile of her and “do anything he wanted.”

The student tod him to leave her alone and tried to block him on social media but he then allegedly switched to email.

The case is a classic account of stalking where the woman was afraid to leave her home.

Police say that, when confronted with this information, Borji insisted that “in his culture [it] was acceptable” to continue talking to the victim after she asked him to stop.

We have previously discussed the “cultural defense” where defendants claim that a cultural norm is a defense to a criminal or civil allegation.

Borji is only facing two misdemeanors for this alleged stalking.

According to his professional page, he has previously taught at both University of Central Florida, University of Illinois at Chicago, and University of Wisconsin (Madison).

45 thoughts on “Publish and Perish? Florida Professor Arrested For Allegedly Stalking Student With 800 Messages A Day”

  2. He’s lived in the United States for 8 years. Someone or something should have clued him in that you don’t approach women that way in this country.

    One curio about him: all of the graduate students working under his supervision at UCF are Muslims. Does he repel everyone else?

    1. DSS – we might want to check their phones to see if they are harassing girls/women as well,

  4. I think even by Iranian standards, this guy would be considered a nut. First offense, chop off his texting thumbs. Second offense, there goes his head.

  5. Clap him in jail to cool off for a few months. If he insists on living his culture when he’s released, deport him.

      1. Nope, even a cursory understanding of history or anthropology would tell you humans function best in relatively small groups with minimal diversity sharing similar values and constrained by familial or social ties. Anything else gets a treatise by somebody like Gibbon.

      2. Isaac:

        I do not think it is bigoted to believe your own culture is best. That is what most everyone does in the world; they think their own belief system is the best. Perhaps there can be many things about other cultures that we enjoy and admire, but it is not wrong to judge abuse harshly or call for change. That kind of misguided logic used today could have been used to argue it was wrong for the US to oppose apartheid or the Nazi treatment of Jews.

        There is a danger in calling criticism of other cultures “bigoted.” Take, for example, the indigenous Amazonian tribes of Brazil. The tribes force the parents of infant twins, triplets, or those behind in their milestones to murder them. They either have to leave the babies in the jungle to be eaten, or bury them alive in a hole. If the parents won’t do it, the only way out for them is suicide, and then someone else does it. There was a Brazilian couple working with a tribe, who described an incident in which a baby girl wasn’t talking by age 2. Her parents were ordered to kill her, but could not, so they committed suicide. Her grandfather was ordered to kill her, but could not, tried to commit suicide, but survived. Her teenage brother was ordered to kill her, hit her on the head, and started to bury her alive. She woke up, and he couldn’t do it, so he hid her in the forest. He brought her food from time to time, but not enough. The little girl survived, but was skeletal. The couple wanted to adopt her, but the Brazilian government objected to “interfering” with the tribe or judging them for their differences from Western values. So…in Brazil, you are allowed to kill a child by burying it alive in a hole as long as you belong to the right tribe. After the couple made an international stink about it, the government caved and let them have her, but then they banned all non tribal members from having any contact at all. Can’t have anyone rescuing any kids, after all. Now, mind you, each of these tribes are pretty small, so the percentages of child murders can be high.

        It turned out the girl had a problem with her thyroid, which, since it was left untreated for years, interfered with her development. Luckily, she was talking within a year of adoption and her health issues were resolved. Too bad she didn’t receive the help when she was one or two.

        I do not think it bigoted to say that the native tribes are utterly and completely wrong to do this. They are uneducated, and believe that twins are evil sharing a spirit, and that there is absolutely nothing to do to help a child who is behind. If they only knew the truth, they’d stop doing this. Meanwhile, the couple’s efforts have started the tribes themselves talk about changing their ways.

  7. There is a big difference between intelligence and wisdom. This guy is a good example of that.

  8. re “Police say that, when confronted with this information, Borji insisted that “in his culture [it] was acceptable” to continue talking to the victim after she asked him to stop.”

    I’m guessing that Borji is Iranian since he is fluent in Farsi. Looking at his LinkedIn profile he looks like a liar – teaching as an adjunct from school to school yet passing himself off as an “Assistant Professor”

    There are many Iranians who live here who are not radical Islamists – people like him need to expelled ASAP. And I agree with KarenS – the victim needs to arm herself since the legal system is not able to protect her.

    1. Harassing women in Iran is the norm, not radical. It is unbelievably bad. Men will follow women down the street, try to follow them home, jeer at them, surround them.

      It’s not complimentary, but rather intimidation.

      One study showed that up to 95% of Persian women had experienced physical harassment. GOOGLE sexual harassment of women in Iran and you will get a plethora of hits.

      https://independentaustralia.net/life/life-display/unveilingsexual-harassment-against-women-in-iran,11512

      And it’s not just Iran. Muslim majority countries dominate the lists of places where women are abused the most. Arguments against reform, such as abolishing child brides, are often religious.

      One of the issues is that if you follow strict Islam, the Qu’ran teaches abuse of women. You are supposed to hold Mohammed up as the best example of how to live. The Old Testament Bible is known to be written by Middle Eastern men thousands of years ago, but the Qu’ran is supposed to be the exact words of Allah, timeless and unchangeable. Then there are the sayings of Mohammed, preserved in respected Muslim sources like the Sahih al-Bukhari. It has real gems, like the one where Mohammed informs his followers that most of the inhabitants of hell are women because they lack intelligence and religious commitment. They lack intelligence because their testimony is worth half that of a man. They lack commitment because they cannot pray or fast during their menses. You could treat them with the utmost kindness and they would still find fault with you. The Qu’ran and hadith are full of abuse against women, even enjoining the faithful to take female sex slaves and rape them. Their wives are a field they can plow whenever they want. There are passages describing Muhammed raping the female servants in his wives’ bedrooms, and their complaining about it. His response is that their bodies are his to do with as he pleases.

      Any Muslim who does not live exactly as Mohammed lived and directed others to live is a reformer, even though he or she might not realize it. Most Muslims do not know that if a fly lands in their drink, they are supposed to dunk the entire fly in, because one wing holds a disease, and the other the cure. They don’t know to drink camel urine as medicine. They don’t think that dead animals in water don’t affect the water’s drinkability. They don’t think the sun sets in a pool of oily, muddy water. Any Muslim who does not beat his wife to teach her respect is a reformer, as is any who don’t either kill every Jew he finds or subjugate them as dhimmis.

      That is exactly why ISIS acts like homicidal maniacs trying to subjugate the world, and killing other Muslims they don’t find extreme enough. They are following the Qu’ran. But are they really following it to the letter? You could throw a diseased dead camel into their drinking well and see if they still drink from it. If they don’t, I suppose they could be killed as apostates. If they do…then problem solved.

      Modern Muslims don’t learn about any of the weird quirks in the Qu’ran, but the Qu’ran is taught as infallible direct word of Allah. The Prophet, PBUH, is without fault. But it’s impossible for a modern, educated Muslim to read all that he should be doing, and reconcile it with the infallibility of the Prophet. And that creates a crisis. In order to reform, you have to acknowledge that the Prophet was a fallible human being in a warlike time, and that all of his revelations were for his own enrichment and enjoyment. That’s too big a leap for many to make. And yet…Islam is not practiced as it was preached.

      All religions that I can think of went through periods of reformation. Islam is no exception. I think that it does need to clean up its act to stop abusing women. I think its prohibition against adoption with full legal rights as any other child is tragic…especially considering it came about so Mohammed could marry one of his son’s wives whom he coveted.

      It is absolutely possible to follow a version of Islam and be a fantastic person. People do it all the time here in America. I have known so many Muslims who simply follow the peaceful versus and ignore the sword, who have Jewish friends. They felt the Haj was a transcendent experience where the rich and poor all dressed alike and were equal. They just have a sense of peace that whatever is meant to happen will do so, and the women only bundle up to pray. If millions of other Muslims would do that, and ignore the bad parts, the world would be a better place. In fact, if everyone would stop doing ill, the world would be better.

        1. I am more concerned with the Israeli Zionists than I am the Iranians.

          Because you’re diseased, Autumn, not because they’re worthy of concern.

        2. Autumn – sure. Statistically, about 5% of women don’t get harassed at all in Iran.

          I have no power to change anything about other countries besides criticize it and hope for the assiduous use of rescue. For instance. I can’t stop the various African countries from chopping off the body parts of Albino children for good luck charms, but I can certainly point out where I think they’re wrong, and hope we can get those kids out.

          In this case, the culture of another country was a problem when someone came to the US and the misogyny did not miraculously dissolve upon setting foot on our soil. This didn’t happen in Iran, it happened in Florida with some khos&*(*& pesar. That is always a concern whenever anyone immigrates from a country without Western values. Assimilation is the hope, but they have to learn and follow our laws and culture.

          As for BDS, I suppose if they play their cards right, they could turn Israel from the only Westernized country in the Middle East to just another place where 95% of women are harassed and endure domestic abuse, and non Muslims have to pay a jizya. I don’t know what else they are trying to accomplish. Boycotting Isreali companies who hire Palestinians, like Soda Stream, was ironic, however.

          I have thoroughly researched this issue, and my full support is behind Israel. They have repeatedly offered the PA everything they wanted, and the PA has always refused, because what they want is the annihilation of Israel. There was never a Palestinian country or language. It was just a region, and until recently, the people living there called it Southern Syria. The Romans punished the Jews for a rebellion, and renamed Judea after the ancient (and extinct) Philistines, a sea faring people related to the Greeks. In fact, Romans called the Jews Palestinians, which is why Muslim Arabs did not use that term to describe themselves historically. The Ottoman Empire ruled the land in a despotic iron fist to keep the various tribes from each others throats. According to the census of the times, the area now known as Israel was an arid dryland sparsely occupied by nomadic Arabs…the same people living in all the other neighboring regions.

          Arabs began calling themselves “Palestinians” after the war of 1967. Before that, if you called one a “Palestinian”, they would take offense, because it either referred to the Jews of antiquity, or the British Mandate for Palestine, the land of the Jews. Any and all references to Palestinians and Palestine in Europe and America was used in reference to the Jews, and only the Jewish people. However, after 1967 the Arabs took over the term to try to claim they were a displaced people.

          The British Mandate started the construction of Israel to address the diaspora, and the global persecution of the Jews, and their being stuffed in Jewish ghettos. Later, of course, the Holocaust added some urgency to give them a place of safety and a homeland. The nomadic Arabs came for the jobs in building Israel, or “New Palestine”, and then decided there was no way in Hell they were going to leave when they were done. No one called themselves a “Palestinian”

          My father was in the military during the formation of Israel, the 6-Day War and various other conflicts. Have you ever looked at the photos of Arabs with guns driving Jews out of the West Bank? Mind you, this occurred not that long after the Holocaust. I also knew people who served in the Lebanese army, and what went on between the Muslims and Christians during their conflict was brutal. For instance, the Muslim army captured a Christian girl, a friend of the man I met, and they raped her to death and then threw what was left of her body over the wall. He still got really shaken up talking about it. But she was a female kafir, and so was there to be used.

          No other country that I know of warns the other side that they are going to bomb a military instillation, so please evacuate civilians, while the other side encourages civilians to stay put so as to maximize casualties.

            1. Autumn – what did Zionists have to do with the Liberty?

              1. Nothing has anything to do with the U.S.S. Liberty. It’s just a hook. Yapping about the Rothschilds got old.

            2. BDS is an anti-semitic movement. Anti-semitism is sadly on the rise, yet again, among Progressives.

              Never again…until we forget.

          2. Karen S – Curtis LeMay paper bombed Japan telling the civilian population that he was going to fire-bomb the cities and they needed to move to safety. The Japanese authorities prevented it, causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians.

            1. The Bomb is one of those terrible decisions that I am so thankful I don’t have to make. I couldn’t do it. And yet, Japan had declared its intent to fight to the last man standing. Women threw their babies off cliffs rather than surrender. We had lost over 400,000 of our own soldiers and were tired of burying our dead. With the bomb and the Soviets entering the fray, it was over. There are millions of Americans alive today because we didn’t spend years fighting in every street of Japan, and there are so many Japanese who are missing today because of the blast. I’m glad the war ended but wish it happened differently.

              It is amazing and moving to me how Germany, Japan, and the US became friends again. After all of the privations the Asians went through in internment camps in the US, or recovering from the war and the Bombs in Japan, they built successful lives. After being persecuted for thousands of years, the Jewish people thrived when the global oppression lifted. Human resilience is one of our best traits.

              I just wish more people valued the Golden Rule, individual liberty, and respect for each other around the world. It is so sad that there are many societies struggling under dictatorships.

              Even now, it appears the trend is for the population to push for a dictatorship. They either choose a charismatic despot, or they push for the government itself to be its master in socialism…which inevitably becomes tyrannical. And yet, that is the global trend – to fight for an all powerful government on the promise it will take good care of you and grant you prosperity.

              Will we ever learn?

            2. oh that made it ok? come on. the allied terror bombing of ww2 was really shameful and strategically unnecessary. dresden, tokyo, hirosh, nagasaki, hamburg

              1. Mr Kurtz – I am somewhat of a military history buff. Considering how the Japanese were fighting on the islands getting to the home islands, yes, what LeMay did was correct.

        3. In addition, let us consider how the region known by the Romans as Palestine was divided. The Muslims got the far larger portion, now known as Jordan. The Jews got the tiny little bit left over, now known as Israel. But it is STILL too much as far as the Middle East in concerned.

          Now, Arabs claim that although Palestinians referred to Jews for thousands of years, and before that a sea faring people that went extinct around 5,000 years ago when it invaded, it now only describes Arabs, and they want their own country…even though they claimed themselves a people in 1967. But they want to whack off even more of the teeny tiny bit of Israel given to the Jews. Fine. 3 times they were offered their own country for a people about 51 years old. 3 times they refused.

          Really, how do you negotiate with someone who will only accept your death?

          The Muslim Arabs DID get their own country. They got the bigger one called Jordan, 34,495 square miles. Israel got 8,000 square miles. It’s only 270 miles long and 85 miles wide at its longest and widest points. It’s only about 9 miles wide at its narrowest.

          Do you have any idea how incredibly vulnerable millions of Israelis are already to ballistic missiles? Thank God they have the Iron Dome, because they are surrounded by Arabs quite eager to finish where Holocaust left off.

          So…no, I do not support BDS. It supports those who wish the genocide of the Jews.

          1. Well you should like these two Jews who actually spent time there

          2. In addition, let us consider how the region known by the Romans as Palestine was divided.

            There wasn’t any such region, Karen. There were 26 Ottoman subprefectures. A dozen of them were assembled into Iraq, seven into Syria, 2 into the Transjordan, 2 into Lebanon, and 3 into ‘Palestine’. There were some boundary modifications in the course of this, mostly involving sparsely populated Arab territory. Influencing this was the Sykes-Picot agreement with France and British understandings with the Hashemites. After an abortive attempt to set up a Hashemite Kingdom in Syria, Feisal bin Hussein was installed as King of Iraq and Abdullah bin Hussein as Emir of the Transjordan. Ali bin Hussein was briefly King of the Hijaz before being ejected by the House of Saud. Feisal’s grandson was overthrown in 1958 and killed, with surviving members of that branch of the family decamping to the Transjordan. The Hashemites continue to rule the Transjordan. As noted, the family’s Hijazi orginally. At the time the Emirate was established, there were Bedouin and some sedentary population and the vernacular dialect spoken was on the Eastern Bedawi spectrum which continues to be the mode on the Sinai peninsula and the Red Sea coast of Egypt. However, about 1/2 of the population is now descendant of Arabs who arrived in 1947-49 and then 1967, and their vernacular is on the Levantine spectrum. There’s also a population of miscellaneous Arabs who came originally as migrant workers (commonly from Egypt).

            The boundaries weren’t optimal. Iraq is a jumble of Shi’ite Arabs, Sunni Arabs, and Kurds. Syria’s Arab population favors dialects on the Levantine spectrum, but the northnermost part of the country is on the Mesopotamian spectrum and the arid zones favor the Nejdi dialect; there’s also a Kurdish district. The French government in assembling Lebanon thought the predominantly Christian territories made for an economic and political unit that would fail so added surrounding territories which have made for insuperable political problems because the whole area is so mixed. The Kurds were chopped up between four different countries.

            The idea in 1947 was to assign the portions of the territory with heavy Jewish settlement along with some trash land to Israel and assign the rest to an Arab state. The surrounding Arab countries and the bosses of the local Arab population refused to accept that deal. They’re still standing tall. (And not asking themselves how it’s been working out for them).

      2. Karen S, you clearly have not actually read the Quran. For example, it states more than 130 times to argue gently with the People of the Book, that is, the Bible.

        1. Sure David Benson, but that’s only after you “kill the idolaters wherever you find them and take them prisoners, and beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them at every place of ambush.” Qur’an Ch. 9, Verse 5.

  9. I like the new look of the blog.

    As for the post…

    “Police say that, when confronted with this information, Borji insisted that “in his culture [it] was acceptable” to continue talking to the victim after she asked him to stop.” This displays the fallacy that every culture is of equal value. From a woman’s perspective, I far prefer the generally accepted Western viewpoint, which is that stalking is creepy and a woman has the right to say no.

    She wasn’t really safe in her home, either. The Professor showed a pattern of behavior with a complete disregard about getting caught. People who don’t care if they get caught tend to act like there are no consequences to their actions…like breaking into a house. It’s not like these were all verbal threats, which would be his word against hers. 800 messages a day works out to 1.8 texts every minute in a 24 hour period. If he kept this up for months, that’s some serious commitment to lunacy. What did he think? The 801st text of the day was going to yield her undying love? Stalking is not devotion, it’s a threat.

    As someone who had a very serious stalker in my 20s, this is why some targeted women may choose to have a firearm at home. They can be prepared to handle at least some situations. In a moment of crisis, it takes a very, very long time to get to a phone, call 911, explain the situation, have the call go out to units, wait for them to drive there, assess the situation, gain entry, and engage the suspect. Too late for most victims, if the perpetrator does not care if he or she gets caught. It’s like Einstein’s theory of relativity. The time it takes for a crazed stalker with a weapon to break into your home feels like 5 seconds, while the time it takes for you to call the police and for them to get there feels like 5 hours.

    My concern is if detectives were able to discover his plans for her. Did they really not extend past texting every 1.8 minutes? Did they search the house to find any illegal firearms, duct tape, internet searches on how to hide a body….? Stalking can often just be the opening act to the horror play.

    Here is the reality for the victim. 2 misdemeanors is not going to put him away. He’s going to be back out there, and she’s going to be helpless. He will blame her for his problems with the law. Sure, she’ll have a restraining order, but a restraining order is not a force field dome designed by Tony Stark that will render her home impenetrable. Her windows are made of one of the most fragile substances on Earth. He didn’t listen to her telling him no, so why would he listen to the court tell him no? At some point, something is going to have to make him stop. Either he’ll do what he wants to do to her, and then go to jail, where the completion of his goals made him stop. Or she may have to stop him herself.

    I clearly recall from my own experience years ago that I felt it was not worth it to press charges. It wouldn’t bring enough of a sentence to do me any good, and it would only piss him and his friends off. I just wanted him to go away. It was a grim feeling, knowing that I could die. Luckily everything worked out for me, and I hope that the same holds true for the lady in this story.

    1. As an aside, I wondered if there should be a second home page link, where the subject breakdowns are listed? I found the home page at the very top in the grey bar, but I’m not the most observant person in the world, so it took a moment. Perhaps add a tab on the left next to “Constitutional Law”?

      Of course, just clicking on the Jonathan Turley RIL bar did the trick, too…

    2. Karen, he’s a 39 year old bachelor whose life since 1997 has been devoted to studying computer science and machine learning. It’s a reasonable guess he’s not… neurotypical.

      1. Neurotypical or not – is he just awkward or violent, too?

        At 1 text per 1.8 minutes, I would guess, as a layperson, that he’s OCD, too…

  10. No, that is not what Publish or Perish is about.

    Looks like he perished.

    1. David Benson owes me five citations (one from the OED) and the source of a quotation, after five weeks – Adjunct faculty do not have to publish but publish he did. 🙂 And he published more than you did, David.

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