Sometimes even international scholars, at least those with a way on the computer keyboard, have to learn the hard way.
The much-debated case of the New Zealand professor who was summarily sacked from his position at the University of Auckland after firing off an inflammatory email to an international student was not the only case of its kind to set people talking in recent weeks.
Earlier this month, the Pulitzer prize-winning author and Florida State University professor, Robert Olen Butler, dispatched an email to a small circle of students and fellow academics announcing that his wife had dumped him for billionaire Ted
Butler's wife of 12 years, Elizabeth Dewberry, had been attracted to the media mogul, the jilted academic kindly explained, because Turner resembled the grandfather who abused her as a child, the New York Post reports.
"It is very common for a woman to be drawn to men who remind them of their childhood abusers," he added. "Ted is such a man, though fortunately, he is far from being abusive."
Butler has since professed astonishment that electronic word of the affair - Dewberry meets Blackberry, one might say - somehow managed to slip out.
Also surprised on the email leakage front, presumably, was the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Nicholas Negroponte, one of the five people named to protect the Wall Street Journal's editorial independence once it becomes part of News Corporation.
According to wire reports Negroponte was handpicked for the position by the global media conglomerate as part of its controversial $6.5 billion takeover bid.
Problem is, an email sent earlier by Negroponte earlier in the year to a news organisation also describes Murdoch as a close friend and key donor to one of the scholar's own charitable works.
Both the Journal and News Corp have since said they have full faith in the new appointee.
How much faith academic email users of all shades should have in their messages not coming back to nip them on their gowns, however, remains a more difficult question.
