Debate Over Free Speech and Cyber Bullying at UChicago

[Langue_doc]

At UChicago, a Debate Over Free Speech and Cyber Bullying
A student objected to a class, "The Problem of Whiteness," and tweeted the lecturer's photo and email address. Hate mail poured in. What should the school do?

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/03/us/university-of-chicago-whiteness-free-speech.html

The first four paragraphs of a rather long article:

Rebecca Journey, a lecturer at the University of Chicago, thought little of calling her new undergraduate seminar "The Problem of Whiteness." Though provocatively titled, the anthropology course covered familiar academic territory: how the racial category "white" has changed over time.

She was surprised, then, when her inbox exploded in November with vitriolic messages from dozens of strangers. One wrote that she was "deeply evil." Another: "Blow your head clean off."

The instigator was Daniel Schmidt, a sophomore and conservative activist with tens of thousands of social media followers. He tweeted, "Anti-white hatred is now mainstream academic inquiry," along with the course description and Dr. Journey's photo and university email address.

Spooked, Dr. Journey, a newly minted Ph.D. preparing to hit the academic job market, postponed her class to the spring. Then she filed complaints with the university, accusing Mr. Schmidt of doxxing and harassing her.

Mr. Schmidt, 19, denied encouraging anyone to harass her. And university officials dismissed her claims. As far as they knew, they said, Mr. Schmidt did not personally send her any abusive emails. And under the university's longstanding, much-hailed commitment to academic freedom, speech was restricted only when it "constitutes a genuine threat or harassment."

[RatGuy]

IIRC, the student who posted the Journey's info was fired from his job on the student newspaper for an unrelated incident. He supposedly was harassing another student journalist. When I was in grad school, one of my classmates found her name/picture/info circulating on TV and online, including the name of her children's pre-school. I can imagine that the whole situation is terrifying, and "well, it's a free country" doesn't really hold water coming from UC. Even at my school, pretty sure this would be a violation of the student code of conduct.

[apl68]

If he was anything like as media-savvy as he appears to have been, he would have known full well that he was setting the instructor up for something like this.  There ought to be ways of dealing with people who encourage harassment like this while carefully remaining technically innocent of direct harassment.

That said, there's also something disturbing about an academic not thinking twice about giving a class a deliberately provocative and potentially offensive title like this.  It does kind of make the point that certain kinds of perspectives tend to be widely held and unquestioned in academic circles.

[kaysixteen]

What apl says is true, but the young punk should still be severely punished.

[Wahoo Redux]

Unless there is a specific clause in the UofC student code or a specific law against doxxing, what can they legally do?

Personally, dox the kid, see how he likes it.  That, and sue his ass off.

Doxxing is one of the ways that protestors deal with neoNazis.  There are a couple of examples, and doxxing is how neoNazis deal with the cops that arrest them.  It may just be a new reality.