Tweets, Threats, and Censorship: Campus Resources to Support Faculty During Incidents of Targeted Harassment
This is part of our series "Faculty Research: Short and sweet," where College of Education faculty share their latest work.
Faculty member:
Associate Professor Nina M. Flores of the M.A. in Equity, Education & Social Justice program
Citation:
Flores, N. M. Tweets, Threats & Censorship: Campus Resources to Support Faculty Through Incidents of Targeted Harassment. UC National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement. Permanent Link: https://issuu.com/ccowper/docs/flores_-_tweets_threats_and_censorship_2_
Research-at-a-glance:
- As culture wars and political conflict continue, a growing form of harassment poses a specific threat to professors: the targeted harassment of faculty.
- Threats to physical, emotional, and online safety have dire implications for free speech on campus.
- I’ve developed a series of interactive workshop training sessions designed as a campus resource to better support faculty.
Summary:
Do you know faculty who have experienced targeted harassment by the public? According to Inside Higher Ed, “If this hasn’t happened to someone on your campus yet, chances are it will.”
As culture wars and political conflict continue, a growing form of harassment poses a specific threat to professors: the targeted harassment of faculty. Targeted harassment of faculty occurs when groups, organizations, or individuals engage in aggressive viral campaigns that are directed at professors.
Such efforts might include a flood of contact via email, messaging, and social media, with the potential of escalating to include threats of violence, rape, or death. Harassment may also come in the form of phone calls and messages, letters or mail pieces, and in-person acts of intimidation.
Targeted harassment may stem from the faculty member’s teaching materials, class lectures, research presentations, area of expertise, social media posts, personal identity markers, presence on professor watchlist sites, public appearances, or as a potential peril of engaging in public scholarship such as writing opinion pieces.
Very few campuses have any plans in place for supporting faculty and staff during these incidents, and it’s unacceptable that they then have to navigate this on their own.
Threats to physical, emotional, and online safety have dire implications for free speech on campus. The resulting “silencing effect” is two-fold: first, the potential self-censorship by the person who is targeted, followed by the potential for self-censorship by others who may witness and want to avoid these attacks. Both impact the ability for faculty to fully engage in academia, the profession, and with the public.
Very few campuses have any plans in place for supporting faculty and staff during these incidents, and it’s unacceptable that they then have to navigate this on their own. It is a full-time job to handle this kind of harassment, with negative emotional and psychological impacts, as well as detrimental effects on faculty and their ability to fully engage in their research, teaching, and more.
In response I’ve developed a series of interactive workshop training sessions designed as a campus resource to better support faculty. The goal of the workshops is to avoid a “what not to do” stance, which carries with it issues pertaining to academic freedom, free speech, and censorship, and to instead approach the issue from the standpoint that faculty should be confident that their department, college, and university are prepared to support and stand with them during these incidents.
Last fall, for example, I was invited by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln for a two-day campus visit during which time I met with departments, chairs councils, academic freedom groups, academic centers, faculty organizations, and grad students to share my research on the issue. For each group, I developed a specifically tailored workshop based on the specific concerns that may be relevant to the group. We then engaged in workshops and dialogue about formal and informal support for faculty, identifying available support structures, and noting gaps in resources and strategies.
In recognition of this research, I was named the Senior Fellow with the UC National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement. For my current project I am putting the research into action by traveling to campuses across the country to engage in these day-long training sessions.
