Johns Hopkins Accidentally Discloses Job Candidates’ E-Mail Addresses

A simple mistake by a new employee at the Johns Hopkins University’s history department led to the disclosure of e-mail addresses for 106 job applicants, causing awkward moments for those whose employers did not know they were hunting.

The employee sent an e-mail message to all applicants for two faculty positions in early modern European history early last month, and accidentally put their addresses in the “copy” field rather than the “blind copy” field, said David Bell, dean of faculty in the university’s Krieger School of Arts and Sciences. That meant everyone who got the message saw the addresses of the other recipients.

The department sent an e-mail message to the same group several days later apologizing for the gaffe, Mr. Bell said.

Mr. Bell found out about the error after looking at the Web site Academic Jobs Wiki at Wikia, where outraged posters wrote comments such as: “Don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Anyone who’s ‘secretly’ on the market will be majorly P.O.’ed.”

“It’s always understood that names of candidates should not be made public,” said Mr. Bell, whose position is one of two openings involved in the search because he is headed to a new job at Princeton University. “It was simply a mistake.”