More than 250 university professors were the target of vehement online campaigns in the past year, according to NPR.
Students and broader communities have written against these professors largely with the goal of protesting their exercise of free speech. Statements made via educators’ research, teaching, and even personal social media pages have come under fire.
Professors profiled in the report note that in today’s highly polarized climate, any statements on race or diversity can be taken out of context to be used against someone.
For example, Professor Bruce Gilley at Portland State University was attacked online and over the phone after publishing an academic paper entitled, “The Case for Colonialism,” in which he links the historical facts of the spread of democracy, public health, and human rights to other empires that expanded. Callers and online users levied threatening attacks against Gilley and the editor of the Third World Quarterly journal, eventually leading to the article being withdrawn.
NPR claims that professors are being attacked from both the Right and the Left. The language used is often “dire,” claims the report, leading some professors to fear for their family’s safety. Still others have been forced out of academia altogether.
The attacks originate both from within campus communities themselves and from the broader Internet community via the presence of “trolls,” Internet users who propagate personal stories about individuals anonymously. One professor, Albert Ponce of Diablo Valley College, says that such people even shared pictures of his nine-year-old daughter online as part of an attack on his statements on race and politics.
The chilling effect of these Internet campaigns for both academic freedom in teaching and research is clear, and academics on both the Right and Left have begun to fight back. Some post the foul voicemails and emails they receive on social media coupled with statements of support by colleagues. Others are urging their colleges and universities to make written statements, as 33 colleges and universities already have, committing themselves to academic freedom.
These actions of speaking up evince the famous quote of Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis in 1927: “If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.”
