Policy and Protection:
Over the last several years, right-wing campus organizations and alt-right figureheads have instigated digital attacks on college professors. Let me start this presentation by giving you a few examples.
These examples are just a handful of experiences that scholars and teachers have had with being targeted in digital spaces, and it is important to pay attention to these stories for four reasons.
However, we can’t wait until digital attacks happen to cobbled together protections. We can’t always rely on our institutions to defend and protect us because, even though the AAUP (2023) and PEN America (2023) provide some guidance, many are clueless or apathetic to the dangers and impacts of digital aggression. We also can’t hope that members of our field will come to our aid with support. Instead, those of us who teach “controversial” topics and/or research volatile spaces need institutional support codified in policy that we can lean on. For many of our institutions, that means we must do the work of implementing this support ourselves.
I started doing some of this work at Illinois State University in Fall 2021. The dean of the College of Arts and Sciences held a virtual meeting to talk about online harassment after a couple faculty members experienced Zoombombing, which a colleague from Philosophy and I attended because of its intersection with our research interests. Our takeaway from this meeting was that neither our administrators nor most of our fellow faculty members had any idea about the real threats of digital aggression nor how to protect us from it.
My colleague and I offered to meet with our dean to draft a policy to protect teachers and researchers. Now, I don’t have much experience with policy creation and how the process works, but I’m pretty disappointed by what happened.
In short, our university policy that initially had buy-in from both our College Dean and our Associate Provost was quickly—like, within just a handful of months—downgraded from a university policy to a college resource to a department issue. At the end of the year, the dean retired and any trace of a resource for digital aggression vanished with her. My colleague and I were also very tired and haven’t followed up since then. We have a new dean now who just finished her first year and seems to have a good sense of contemporary academia, so I plan to contact her this coming Fall to re-ignite conversations about creating a digital aggression policy. Our first effort involved only three people: a dean who didn’t really know a lot about digital aggression and two untenured and minoritized faculty members who had little institutional power. I’m now tenured and know of several more colleagues who do work on digital communities that I plan to reach out to.
For the remainder of this presentation, I’m going to give four key components of an effective digital aggression policy.
These are some of the main takeaways I’ve found so far while developing this policy. Hopefully in a year or two from now I’ll be able to share ISU’s policy for you all and other institutions will be able to use it as a starting point for their own. In the meantime, I’m happy to answer any questions and open to any suggestions.
By way of conclusion, I’ll make a last plug for the DigitAggro virtual jam session at Computers and Writing in a couple of weeks, Sunday, June 25 at 9am Pacific time. If you’re interested in joining, send a message to @digitaggrowg on Twitter or an email to [email protected]. Even if you’re not planning to attend the conference, I can still hook you up with a link.
Thanks for listening.
- In 2017, Rachel Fulton Brown, an associate professor of history at the University of Chicago, used her alt-right connections to sick Milo Yiannopoulos and his fanatics on Dorothy Kim, a then-assistant professor of English at Brandeis, because she argued that Medievalists can’t ignore race and racism. To be clear, this was a tenured white professor instigating attacks on an untenured professor of color.
- In 2020, L.D. Burnett, then a professor of history at Collin College received hate for an article she wrote on Slate that criticized Trump. Despite warning upper administrators of an impending attack, her college president responded in an all-campus email that victim-blamed Burnett, treating her, in her own words, “like a public-relations/customer-complaint problem to be solved and silenced” (Burnett, 2020).
- Last year, Rebecca Journey, a teaching fellow for Global Studies at the University of Chicago, postponed her course on “The Problem of Whiteness” after right-wing media outlets found her course description and blasted it on Twitter. As of November, UChicago was taking steps to protect her safety.
- While researching her 2018 dissertation, Bridget Gelms a link Twitter to her survey about gender and digital aggression and was added to feminist researcher watch lists. She removed the survey and locked her profile, but vividly recounts the anxiety she felt when she was expecting a digital onslaught at any moment.
- I’ve (2022) also written about my experience when the space I studied in a 2017 article found my research. Like Burnett, I reached out to my department chair and college dean, but fortunately both pledged support to me. Like Gelms, I waited anxiously for the digital attacks to begin, and thankfully they did not, although it was a long few weeks during which I expected my inbox to fill with vitriol at any moment.
These examples are just a handful of experiences that scholars and teachers have had with being targeted in digital spaces, and it is important to pay attention to these stories for four reasons.
- First, just look at what’s happening in Florida. DeSantis has signed bills that are clear violations of academic freedom, shared governance, and the First Amendment, to put it lightly. Faculty there are so vulnerable to attacks from so many angles, particularly trans faculty right now.
- Second, contemporary academia is entwined with social media. Many of us are public or semi-public intellectuals who use spaces like Twitter to connect with others and share ideas. A downside to being visible in these spaces is that we can potentially invite unwanted audiences who use what we post to incite digital attacks.
- Third, the people most often targeted by these attacks are minoritized, such as scholars of color, women, and queer scholars. Or, as Marzoni (2020) puts it, “scholars whose racial, gender, and sexual identities are similarly contemptuous to the right.” We are already vulnerable in our institutions, and the thread of digital attacks adds another layer of vulnerability.
- Fourth, most of our institutions are ill equipped to support us if we are targets of digital attacks. Support is uneven, with some institutions like UChicago protecting faculty like Journey, and others like Collin College throwing faculty like Burnett under the bus. In addition, it’s unclear how UChicago responded to Fulton Brown’s instigation of attacks on Kim or how Brandeis responded to Kim’s harassment. An online letter circulated through social media urging other scholars in history and beyond to sign and show their support.
However, we can’t wait until digital attacks happen to cobbled together protections. We can’t always rely on our institutions to defend and protect us because, even though the AAUP (2023) and PEN America (2023) provide some guidance, many are clueless or apathetic to the dangers and impacts of digital aggression. We also can’t hope that members of our field will come to our aid with support. Instead, those of us who teach “controversial” topics and/or research volatile spaces need institutional support codified in policy that we can lean on. For many of our institutions, that means we must do the work of implementing this support ourselves.
I started doing some of this work at Illinois State University in Fall 2021. The dean of the College of Arts and Sciences held a virtual meeting to talk about online harassment after a couple faculty members experienced Zoombombing, which a colleague from Philosophy and I attended because of its intersection with our research interests. Our takeaway from this meeting was that neither our administrators nor most of our fellow faculty members had any idea about the real threats of digital aggression nor how to protect us from it.
My colleague and I offered to meet with our dean to draft a policy to protect teachers and researchers. Now, I don’t have much experience with policy creation and how the process works, but I’m pretty disappointed by what happened.
- First, the Dean, Philosophy colleague, and I drafted a policy to protect faculty against digital attacks.
- Then, we sent it to the Associate Provost, who approved it the draft and took it to ISU General Counsel, who were against it.
- Next, the dean decided that the college would develop and implement a document first, with hopes that others across the university would decide to adopt it as well. But she suggested we move from “policy” to “resource,” to keep the document flexible so any right wing professors wouldn’t flip it on us and expect support and protection.
- I asked for the document to be more concrete than a “resource,” explaining that we need something that would provide some protection during our annual salary, tenure, and promotion decisions, the dean suggested that I take that my ASPT concern up with my department to create a guideline. The issue with this is that while our department can ensure ASPT protections, college approval is the next step before university approval. So, even if we implement protections at the department level, there is no guarantee that the college would honor them
In short, our university policy that initially had buy-in from both our College Dean and our Associate Provost was quickly—like, within just a handful of months—downgraded from a university policy to a college resource to a department issue. At the end of the year, the dean retired and any trace of a resource for digital aggression vanished with her. My colleague and I were also very tired and haven’t followed up since then. We have a new dean now who just finished her first year and seems to have a good sense of contemporary academia, so I plan to contact her this coming Fall to re-ignite conversations about creating a digital aggression policy. Our first effort involved only three people: a dean who didn’t really know a lot about digital aggression and two untenured and minoritized faculty members who had little institutional power. I’m now tenured and know of several more colleagues who do work on digital communities that I plan to reach out to.
For the remainder of this presentation, I’m going to give four key components of an effective digital aggression policy.
- Language precision. A good policy needs a detailed yet capacious definition of digital aggression and all of the terms that encompass it so that faculty are broadly protected. Also, frame digital attacks carefully. Avoid calling targets “victims” or telling them “don’t feed the trolls,” both of which are disempowering.
- Provide action suggestions. Add clear action steps to codify a pathway of administrative response regardless of their general knowledge of digital aggression. However, avoid relying on law enforcement since not all targets can trust them. Instead, include suggestions like reaching out to trusted colleagues for support.
- Provide resources. Through proper education and training, responses can be proactive as well as reactive. The Digital Aggression Working Group is working on resources for upper admin, college and department admin, and the employee targeted. We’re having a virtual jam session at Computers and Writing later this month, so drop on by if you’re interested in getting involved. Even if you’re not attending the conference, I’m hosting it on my personal Zoom, so just let me know if you want that link.
- Include clear protections. There are two sentences I wanted to appear in this policy more than anything else: “If a faculty member finds themselves the target of digital aggression, such attacks will not impact their annual salary, tenure, and promotion review. The university will support the faculty member and their employment is secure.” This likely needs to be tweaked a bit, but the key here is to protect faculty members whose livelihoods and careers are threatened by digital attacks.
These are some of the main takeaways I’ve found so far while developing this policy. Hopefully in a year or two from now I’ll be able to share ISU’s policy for you all and other institutions will be able to use it as a starting point for their own. In the meantime, I’m happy to answer any questions and open to any suggestions.
By way of conclusion, I’ll make a last plug for the DigitAggro virtual jam session at Computers and Writing in a couple of weeks, Sunday, June 25 at 9am Pacific time. If you’re interested in joining, send a message to @digitaggrowg on Twitter or an email to [email protected]. Even if you’re not planning to attend the conference, I can still hook you up with a link.
Thanks for listening.
References
AAUP. (2023). Fighting targeted harassment of faculty. AAUP. Retrieved 24 May 2023 from https://www.aaup.org/issues/fighting-targeted-harassment-faculty
Burnett, L.D. (15 Oct 2020). Right-wing trolls attacked me. My administration buckled. The Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved 24 May 2023 from https://www.chronicle.com/article/right-wing-trolls-attacked-me-my-administration-buckled
Gelms, Bridget. (2018). Volatile Visibility: The Effects of Online Harassment on Feminist Circulation and Public Discourse. Miami U, PhD dissertation.
Marzoni, Andrew. (Mar 2020). The trolls of academe. The Baffler. Retrieved 24 May 2023 from https://thebaffler.com/salvos/the-trolls-of-academe-marzoni
PEN America. (2023). How to support faculty and staff who experience online harassment. PEN America. Retrieved 24 May 2023 from https://campusfreespeechguide.pen.org/resource/how-to-support-faculty-and-staff-who-experience-online-harassment/
Sparby, Erika M. (2022). Toward a feminist ethic of self-care and protection when researching digital aggression. In Crystal VanKooten and Victor Del Hierro (eds.) Methods and Methodologies for Research in Digital Writing and Rhetoric, Volume 2 (pp. 45-64).
AAUP. (2023). Fighting targeted harassment of faculty. AAUP. Retrieved 24 May 2023 from https://www.aaup.org/issues/fighting-targeted-harassment-faculty
Burnett, L.D. (15 Oct 2020). Right-wing trolls attacked me. My administration buckled. The Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved 24 May 2023 from https://www.chronicle.com/article/right-wing-trolls-attacked-me-my-administration-buckled
Gelms, Bridget. (2018). Volatile Visibility: The Effects of Online Harassment on Feminist Circulation and Public Discourse. Miami U, PhD dissertation.
Marzoni, Andrew. (Mar 2020). The trolls of academe. The Baffler. Retrieved 24 May 2023 from https://thebaffler.com/salvos/the-trolls-of-academe-marzoni
PEN America. (2023). How to support faculty and staff who experience online harassment. PEN America. Retrieved 24 May 2023 from https://campusfreespeechguide.pen.org/resource/how-to-support-faculty-and-staff-who-experience-online-harassment/
Sparby, Erika M. (2022). Toward a feminist ethic of self-care and protection when researching digital aggression. In Crystal VanKooten and Victor Del Hierro (eds.) Methods and Methodologies for Research in Digital Writing and Rhetoric, Volume 2 (pp. 45-64).
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