ap.io

A.W. Peet's contact details

I am a Professor of Physics at the University of Toronto (UofT) in the province of Ontario in Canada. I am also a human being with non-university interests and a private life. If you wish to contact me and get a response, please follow the instructions below.

Who are you?

There are three broad categories of strangers who try to contact me in an average year. Read all three lists below and click on the category that best describes you. Choose carefully: if you misrepresent yourself, I will ignore you.

1. Students of physics, research/UofT colleagues, and journalists: Currently enrolled UofT students, especially those taking physics courses I teach.; Academic physics researchers (of any seniority), especially those in my field.; Journalists seeking input on physics stories or other academic matters.; Prospective UofT students, especially those interested in physics or mathematics.; Laypeople of any age interested in becoming a physicist.; Students/postdocs/faculty/staff working to imagine and co-create a genuinely pluralistic, inclusive university.; Organizers inviting me to speak to their group on the basis of my academic expertise and/or lived experience.
2. Comrades and potential friends: Trans/nonbinary/queer/disabled people seeking solidarity from a trans, nonbinary, queer, disabled person.; People working to support and build up marginalized communities at the local, provincial, national, or international level.; Leftists interested in building a friendship, after chatting on twitter or at some local event.
3. Others: Anyone making a commercial solicitation.; Anyone feeling entitled to my professional time on demand who has no academic connection to UofT.; Anyone expecting me to tutor them privately about a topic that they can Google instead.; Anyone wanting to inject themselves into my personal life without my consent.; Anyone wanting to criticize me because (a) I had the temerity to challenge their Lobster Cult Leader or (b) I am unwilling to put up with dehumanization of any legally protected class such as trans people.

1. For students of physics, research/UofT colleagues, and journalists

Homepage: ap.io/home
Address: Prof. A.W. Peet
Department of Physics
University of Toronto
60 St. George Street
Toronto ON
Canada M5S 1A7
Email: aw.peet@utoronto.ca
(briefly describe what you want and when in the subject line)
Phone: +1 416 978 3911
(0900-1800h Mon-Fri, 0900-2100h Mon-Sun if urgent)

2. For comrades and potential friends

email: awpeet@gmail.com
phone: +1 416 561 0579
(1800-2100h Mon-Fri or 1200-2100h Sat-Sun)

♿️ Note: I answer personal emails intermittently, when lulls in my job activity allow. Long-term chronic pain (from sports injuries) means that typing more than a few sentences is expensive for me, whereas talking in-person or via audio/video is cheap. Please bear this mind when requesting some of my personal time for discussing matters of common interest. Please also know that I will do my best to honour your own communication constraints as well.

3. For others

I do not list any contact details for you here because I do not actually want to hear from you. If this simple fact upsets you, seek emotional assistance from a trusted family member, friend, or therapist. It is not my job to help random online strangers with opinions to feel heard. I do not indulge people who carelessly waste my time, and I do not tolerate harassment or abuse of any kind from anyone. Here are some recent examples of what not to do.

Do not try to sell me something. If I want a product or a service, I will find out about it on my own, and I will purchase it without your interference.
Do not ask me to do your homework for you. That work is your responsibility, not mine.
Do not ask me to provide personalized tutoring on demand, either free or paid, in physics or gender or any other subject. Offering such a service is my decision to make, not yours.
Do not try to be my groupie. Example: a person with disordered thinking and bizarre ideas about superiority of blonde blue-eyed theoretical physics researchers harassed me by telephone for several years. This is why my university phone line does not have voicemail: they would fill it with garbage. The harassment escalated into a physical assault in my office and a death threat. This person is still banned from entering the UofT Physics building despite repeated attempts to lift the ban.
Do not be that pushy over-entitled parent who encourages their kid to write to an academic expecting help with a science fair project on extremely short notice. When one set of parents did this to me, and I said I was too busy to suddenly drop everything else in my work queue to do their bidding, both of them threw extended tantrums. The mother sent torrents of abuse, and the father reported me to my Department Chair and the Provost (a university's chief academic officer) for refusing to help!
Do not stalk me for non-sexual reasons. Some dude in the USA stalked me online and harassed me for over four years on twitter, starting circa 2009. His pattern was to take potshots from hundreds of sockpuppet accounts, couched as grandiose criticisms of my perceived behaviour. He later restarted his harassment by email in December 2015. My hypothesis is that this guy was trying to get revenge for me besting him in a competition existing solely in his own mind.
Do not stalk me for sexual reasons. Some dude in Germany stalked me online after seeing a livestreamed public lecture I gave, and in April 2016 sent a long and extremely intrusive fan email to my university account. In it, he tried to inject himself into my personal life and declared a fetish for my gender identity. He apparently lives under the misapprehension that I and others he obsesses about online exist for his consumption and enjoyment. Ewww -- dude, get a better hobby!
Do not send me transphobic nastygrams. After I spoke up publically against brazen transphobia from another UofT professor, members of the Lobster Cult harassed me on the basis of my gender identity for months that turned into years -- via twitter, email, SMS, and phone. This kind of harassment is a violation of the Ontario Human Rights Code.
Do not try to get me fired for being a political lefty. Angry conservatives have tried more than once to get me fired from my tenured job for advocating in favour of trans human rights and for expressing leftist political opinions on twitter. They fail to understand that my employer has zero interest in regulating what its professors say on their personal social media feeds (for proof, see how they handled the Lobster Cult Leader himself).