Drexel Caves to Anonymous Internet Trolls, Places Tenured Professor on Administrative Leave

George Ciccariello-Maher, tenured associate professor of politics and global studies at Drexel University (my alma mater), in an op-ed for The Washington Post headlined “Conservatives Are the Real Campus Thought Police Squashing Academic Freedom”:

Caught in this wave of right-wing threats and provocations, many universities are scrambling to keep up with the coordinated onslaught. In the best of cases, university administrations and departments have publicly condemned threats against faculty and made clear that they do not cave to intimidation campaigns. The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) has even responded to our cases with new guidelines urging universities to resist the targeted online harassment of their faculty.

In response to such illegal threats of violence, Drexel has chosen to place me on administrative leave. Earlier in the week, I asked my students to explain the relation between white masculinity and mass killings, and they offered in a few short minutes of class discussion far more insight than any mainstream media outlet has offered all week. But now, their own academic freedom has been curtailed by their university, and they are unable to even attend the classes they registered for.

By bowing to pressure from racist internet trolls, Drexel has sent the wrong signal: That you can control a university’s curriculum with anonymous threats of violence.

Drexel is setting a cowardly, shameful example here. Ciccariello-Maher is not being placed on leave because of the content of his thread of tweets in response to last week’s gun massacre in Las Vegas, but simply because a bunch of anonymous white dudes sent threats — and, let’s face it, because of the bad PR of having Ciccariello-Maher unjustly vilified by Fox News.

★ Wednesday, 11 October 2017