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Doxxing, Tenure, And [Academic Freedom]
AngelHedgie
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
So, Marquette University is seeking to dismiss a tenured professor who has a history of doxxing female students whom he disagrees with politically, opening the doors to abuse, after he doxxed a TA who had informed a student that his homophobic arguments were not acceptable in the discussion session when meeting with them after class about the matter. His doxxing of this TA ultimately led to her leaving the university.
What is surprising is how many people across the spectrum are decrying this move as an "attack" on academic freedom. What's worse is how dishonestly they argue the point, from ignoring the past behavior of the professor and arguing that he is being dismissed for "a single blog post", or ignoring the power differential between the two individuals involved. It strikes me as being in the same vein as arguments we hear about the "chilling effect" of combating abuse online to free speech, while ignoring the fact that the abuse is chilling speech by forcing people out of the discussion. The cause of academic freedom is not helped by this argument.
What is surprising is how many people across the spectrum are decrying this move as an "attack" on academic freedom. What's worse is how dishonestly they argue the point, from ignoring the past behavior of the professor and arguing that he is being dismissed for "a single blog post", or ignoring the power differential between the two individuals involved. It strikes me as being in the same vein as arguments we hear about the "chilling effect" of combating abuse online to free speech, while ignoring the fact that the abuse is chilling speech by forcing people out of the discussion. The cause of academic freedom is not helped by this argument.
XBL: Nox Aeternum / PSN: NoxAeternum / NN:NoxAeternum / Steam: noxaeternum
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A student might be and should be silenced for being off-topic, monopolizing class time, or just being plain wrong. I didn't pay tens of thousands of dollars to listen to some 18-year-old freshman's drivel.
If the professor doesn't feel that his TA is properly herding the students in a discussion session, there should be an official procedure for ameliorating that. I don't know if Marquette has such procedures, but if they do, I suspect that public shame is not one of them.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
She wasn't his TA (they're not in the same department, I believe.) He's just a rather conservative professor who is known to be active in the right wing blogosphere.
I do not know the social / political dynamics of this particular department, but assuming there was no manipulation or otherwise unseemly business, a "department consensus" of that opinion is quite damning. Combine that with:
Bitching about students on a blog is not within the purview of 'academic freedom'.
While I agree this doesn't fall under 'academic freedom', I don't really like the implied stance that you can't reference someone by name without their consent.
Reminds me of this guy:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/maryland-council-member
pleasepaypreacher.net
Here's the TA's side of the story:
So yeah, I'm not really seeing how it isn't doxxing.
Edit: It's worth pointing out that Marquette took the death threats she received seriously enough to post security at her classroom.
Well in this particular case we're talking about a student being called out by name by a professor.
For a tenured professor to attack the actions of undergrads on a public blog is a gross violation of the principles of his position. He should be fired as fast as they can legally manage.
And this has nothing to do with free speech or the example about the reporter and the politician. That's an irrelevant issue. The relevant issue to the university is that a tenured professor has a responsibility to ensure the well being of the students in his university, a responsibility that is completely breached by attacking students by name on a public forum for actions that are well within the bounds of normal student conduct and behavior.
pleasepaypreacher.net
Well, he styles himself a journalist on his blog.
So it's really about ethics in university journalism.
I wasn't familiar with "doxxing" until this thread, but from what I understand now it's the tactic of releasing the personal information of someone you disagree with so the internet can attack them. This professor wrote a blog post shaming the TA for disagreeing with him and released her name, workplace and specific department (possibly even the specific class she was TAing, that's unclear), which is more than enough information for anyone to find that TA, and as a result she became the target of a barrage of hateful right-wing emails. Sounds exactly like doxxing to me.
And yes, speaking as a tenured professor myself, what this professor did was completely unacceptable. He released that student's personal information in his blog, he set her up to be harassed by an anonymous online mob, and he tried to publicly shame her to stifle her dissenting opinion to his. These are all serious breaches to academic behaviour and any university's policies. None of this has anything to do with his academic freedom - he could just as easily have written the same blog promoting the same arguments but talking about "a TA whose name I won't mention" and have dodged any problems, but instead he went out of his way to publicly name her and shame her personally in front of his followers. That is not academic freedom, it's petty vindication. Even for this incident alone he deserves to be fired, not even counting the fact he apparently has a history of doing this crap.
I work in a University IT department where I have access to highly restricted data. I work with our Information Security Officer every day to make sure that data is secured, and that the demographic data of our students, faculty, and staff is protected.
The following is 100% anecdotal and reflects my opinions. It does not reflect the opinions of my institution or management, faculty, or staff.
We treat home addresses, phone numbers, and the like as restricted information, which is our second highest classification. Further, we give everyone the opportunity to opt-out of having their business or home addresses displayed in our public directories.
As one of the data stewards of this information, if I found out someone was giving out such information without authorization, I would crack down on them as hard as my job and bosses would allow, including cutting them off from such information.
And as a former student of this institution, if I found out anyone was giving out my private information (that I had specifically requested be restricted), I would raise hell with Student Affairs and the office of the Provost. I'd also go after whoever was responsible for that information getting out.
In my personal opinion, screw this guy hiding behind tenure and free speech for violating someone else's rights. I wouldn't stand for a professor being attacked at home and someone else giving out restricted info on that address if the shoe were on the other side too, btw. This kind of debate should be an actual debate, not someone posting info to the world and disavowing what may be done with that information.
And to do this after others, including his department, has asked him to stop? Yeah... no.
Because most those people probably found her email listed on Marquette's website somewhere? Reading through his post again, he doesn't give out her email.
You don't have a right for people to not refer to you by name.
You seem to be fundamentally missing that he called her out for the harassment she received. Harassment he knew she would receive based on his past experience with his blog fan base. At this point it has to be deliberate on your part to do so.
pleasepaypreacher.net
In certain situations, you do. A patient has the right to privacy, to the point that a nurse who posts "Sam came in today for a checkup. He's just the nicest man!" on his Facebook page would be immediately fired and would be lucky not to face federal fines/charges for a HIPAA violation.
The Marquette professor is also brushing up really close to a FERPA violation when it comes to talking about the TA's actions in class. He's - quite probably knowingly - towing close to the line, but I wouldn't be shocked if a court looked at his history and agreed that he was knowingly violating the law since a TA position was part of a graduate student's education towards becoming a professor.
And that organization is obviously only supporting him because they agree with his politics. But that does raise an interesting question: would you be as opposed to the professors actions if the politics were reversed? If it was, e.g., a left-wing professor on a blog castigating a TA for being homophobic?
I mean, I still think it would be way out of line, but you have to admit that you'd see a different sort of reaction from the internet vox pop, you know?
I believe tenure is important, but there is a difference between controversial academic freedom and straight up misconduct. This seems to pretty clearly fall on the 'misconduct' side of the line. Had the same thing happened in the context of the classroom, or the student / TA's statements referenced without her identity, I would be on the professor's side. I'll even give him a first time 'my bad, won't happen again'.
But doing this repeatedly? Nope.
Yeah they likely found her email on the university site, but they found her name, department/university affiliation, and details of her political opinions on that professor's blog. This makes him responsible for them finding her. He didn't give the crowd the information on how to contact her, but he singled her out to them and gave them all the information they needed to quickly and easily find her contact information. Which they did, quickly and easily.
And he didn't simply "refer to her by name", he publicly smeared her on a right-wing blog to a fanatical audience for having left-wing opinions and riled them up to go after her. Private individuals do have a right not to be targeted in that way. And that goes double when the victim is a student and the attacker is a professor abusing his position to do it.
Yes if the situation was different it would be different. But since its not lets not engage in this kind of "both sides are bad" theory crafting when it only obscures the situation at hand.
pleasepaypreacher.net
PSN/Steam/NNID: SyphonBlue | BNet: SyphonBlue#1126
If he called the TA out by name? Yeah, I'd feel the same way.
In the hypothetical, if he truly felt the TA's actions / statements were so out of line as to be disruptive / discriminatory, that's a disciplinary or HR matter (depending on the student or employee duality hell).
Maybe - maybe - if it hasn't happened in the past. I mean, the IHB is pretty unpredictable. But the second or third time the same person does it? Fool me twice...
Like he did to the woman trying to put together a production of The Vagina Monologues on campus in 2011.
Fuck, "students' privacy extends even against their parents asking you about them" is the first thing HR tells profs the day they're hired. There is literally no excuse for him deciding it's acceptable to call a student's parents to complain about her.
This isn't really doxxing per se, in that it's not linking an online personality that's anonymous or pseudonymous to an actual name and address. Still shitty, but not doxxing.
Shitty Tumblr:lighthouse1138.tumblr.com
I can't say I'm surprised to learn this man is Harvard-educated either. The sense of entitlement clearly never left him.
Practically every university in the United States puts on a performance of The Vagina Monologues on V-Day. Without going into a critique of the play, its become a normal, routine and unexceptional part of student life. The professor might as well have singled out a student for the Internet Hate Squad for holding a sexual harassment awareness session in her dorm's common room.
Again, doesn't excuse the guy one bit, but fuck that play. Nothing feminist should ever have a segment espousing how lesbian child rape of is a "good rape".
Shitty Tumblr:lighthouse1138.tumblr.com
He didn't attack an undergraduate. He criticized a graduate student in a different department. She is not, in any interesting sense, either his student or his responsibility. I find some of the commentary on this case which focuses on professors' universal obligation to graduate students to foster a loving supportive environment overblown and kind of gross in an infantilizing way.
As far as I can tell, the problem here (if there is one) was that he released her name with the reasonable expectation (and perhaps in order so that?) she would be harassed. If he had omitted her name, then what he was doing would clearly be the sort of speech we want protected--commenting on a matter of both public and academic concern, aka the ideological climate and teaching performance in a discipline. This type of commentary should be allowed even when it condemns students, even when it condemns students at one's university. Suppose I were, as a hypothetical professor, to say Derrida is a charlatan and people studying him are wasting their lives and corrupting the youth; suppose I further pulled up some English department syllabi and excoriated them on the basis of their readings. If I said that, it would single out graduate student TAs and researchers, colleague professors, and so on, for criticism even if I did not explicitly include their name. But it is also part of the point of academia that I be so allowed. Does adding her name explicitly tip it over into a fireable offense?
I don't know--tinwhiskers is, I think, right to point out that you don't have a right not to be talked about by name (and as far as I can tell there is no way this is a FERPA violation: FERPA does not prevent students from talking about what their TAs do in the classroom, which is the source of the information being relaid on this blog). At the same time, the ease and volume of harassment that can be drummed up nowadays may require us to rethink things. All very murky.
But regardless of how those chips fall, Marquette is using to justify the attempted firing--“should at all times be accurate, should exercise appropriate restraint, should show respect for the opinions of others”--is completely indefensibly over-broad. Academic freedom is meaningless when it comes bundled within administrative tolerance for not just appropriate restraint (!), respect (!!), but accuracy (!!!). The administration gets to decide whether what I'm trying to say is true, and then let me know whether I can say it? Ok, cool story bro. So I think that there is absolutely an academic freedom issue with this firing--even if not with him being fired, at least with how they are firing him.
This guy is scummy, as was the student who surprise-recorded his TA. But I see that as somewhat tangential.
So you're defending doxxing as being a necessary part of academic freedom?
First off, I'd argue that you are very much wrong about her not being his responsibility. Yes, he may not be as obligated as he would be to a student in his own department. But he's still a professor at the university she was attending, and as such he does have some obligation from that position of power.
Second, there is a vast difference between mentioning someone's name in passing, and posting their information in a manner that you know will encourage abuse and threats. This is the point that tinwhiskers was called out on, and it's not something that can be dodged, especially considering that he has a track record of this behavior.
And third, academic freedom is not a "get out of defamation free" card. You don't get to slander someone and then claim that it's okay because of academic freedom. That's where the point on accuracy came up in this matter.
The undergraduate examples are in the letter. As for the comments about protecting students, that's the ethos of working in a university. And a graduate student in his university is very much his responsibility. He's an educator, and she's a student.
And yes, adding her name tips it into a fireable offense. As for the FERPA issue, students are not covered under FERPA rules. University employees are, which very much includes the professors.
That's the issue. Your hypotheticals are beside the point. Professors have a duty to the students, duties that are often outlined in both the university code of conduct and their employment contract. That's just as true if they aren't their direct students.
This is beneath you.
I think he's saying that the university's stated rationale for firing him is over-broad and they should have stated it in a narrower way that couldn't be misused so easily on future cases.
I also think you know this and are deliberately misrepresenting his argument.
I would have to agree with this in part, though really, reading the university's letter...they're actually quite narrow, pointing out specific instances where this guy either misrepresented the truth or outright lied about the events that occurred, and then expounding on the consequences of his actions. Basically in my mind they're establishing a consistent pattern of bad behavior.
This student obviously had ulterior motives and the professor clearly fell into the clickbait trap of naming names to generate readership.
Yes, the fact that "he released her name with the reasonable expectation (and perhaps in order so that?) she would be harassed" is exactly the problem, and is a fireable offence. No one cares about his opinion on gay marriage or on the place of the gay marriage debate in classroom discussions. We are inflamed by the fact that, when faced with a student who disagreed with his position on those issues, "he released her name with the reasonable expectation (and perhaps in order so that?) she would be harassed".
And to reiterate, the problem is not that he talked about her by name. It's that he talked about her by name "with the reasonable expectation (and perhaps in order so that?) she would be harassed".
And finally, no, no one said he has a responsibility to students, either his own or others, to "foster a loving supportive environment". We said that, as a professor, he has a responsibility not to release a student's name "with the reasonable expectation (and perhaps in order so that?) she would be harassed". There is no line in that context that differentiate between students in his department and those in other departments.
Well, yeah, if it was a single event it could be explained away as a fuckup, the professor not realizing the results of his actions or whatever (but still, that would likely be a career-ending fuckup outside of academia). As a pattern of behavior, at this point it looks like, if anything, they kept him around longer than they should have.
MrMr seems concerned that the administration would use this as precedent to make it easier to fire tenured staff. I think that's a reasonable concern, but they still have to fire this guy, obviously.
Your idea of 'you don't get to write about things that make people angry' - is far more problematic. I mean take that mindset and reverse it. What if she had posted the gist of the conversation to tumbler. The standard 'You won't believe what happens next'->'look as me set this person straight' crap, would she then be at fault if it gets linked on some right-wing forum and the IHB attacked her, since she you know "summoned" them?
We already have standards for incitement in speech, and nothing he wrote comes anywhere near it.
Unless people on the internet are literally demons you can summon. In that case time to start engraving pentagrams around me.
I see nothing here that suggests the university is trying to fire this guy for his ideas at all.