IHE, in a very strangely written article (more on that in a moment), reports that the University of New Hampshire has put an assistant professor of chemistry on administrative leave and is investigating him because he posted pseudonymously (posing as a minority STEM professor) on Twitter in order to critique "woke" blather. I can't see how a public university can have any grounds for investigating or disciplining him, unless he engaged in some criminal misconduct under the pseudonym (and the article contains no suggestion of that). This is plainly extramural speech protected by academic freedom. And this is not like the case of the George Washington professor (Jessica Krug) who passed herself off in real life as a racial minority, which raises questions about fraudulent misrepresentations that affected her hiring.
The author of the article, Colleen Flaherty, perhaps realizes that the University has no case here, and that may account for some of the strange claims. Ms. Flaherty writes:
Three other white academics have been outed this year as posing as people of color, two in person and one only online. All three people -- historian Jessica Krug, graduate student CV Vitolo-Haddad and #MeTooSTEM founder BethAnn McLaughlin -- caused harm, especially to members of the communities they were imitating, but they also, to varying degrees, used their fake identities to advocate for those communities.
Notice that the article reports as fact that the imposters "caused harm, especially to members of the communities they were imitating." Really? What is the evidence? That people were upset? But being upset or offended is not being harmed. Recall the apt remarks of the late John Gardner (Oxford):
That something offends you, or more generally makes you feel bad, does not show that it does you any harm. We all feel bad about something most days and come out of it unscathed, just as we come out of most physical pain unscathed. Of course there may be harms that are consequences of offence and pain. Torture harms people by the use of pain. Upset may turn to depression and may then be disabling.
No evidence of any harm has been adduced, but Ms. Flaherty writes as though it were an established fact that there was harm. That is shoddy journalism.
And running together the pathetic case of Dr. McLaughlin with the New Hampshire chemistry professor is particularly ridiculous: Dr. McLaughlin, by her own subsequent admission, is suffering from psychological problems, while the chemistry professor was advocating for a clear political point of view, using the pseudonymous identity to his rhetorical advantage.
Ms. Flaherty's explanation of the difference between the cases is very different, however, and reads as advocacy, not reporting (indeed, I double-checked after reading this paragraph to see if this was really an op-ed, not a "news" item):
The New Hampshire case is different in that the alleged impostor there, Craig Chapman, apparently frequently used his fake account to troll people and political causes with which he disagreed. Science Femme essentially sought to operate as the nonideological conscience of the academic left by provoking people. In so doing, Science Femme disregarded the facts that nonideology is a kind of ideology and that the people the account was provoking had actual, lived experiences as women and people of color.
I would say my description of the difference, above, is a lot more objective than this bizarre characterization: "nonideology is a kind of ideology" is a position that can be defended, but it is not attributed to anyone here (is this now the official view of IHE?); and what could be relevant about the fact that the pseudonymous tweeter was "provoking" people with "actual, lived experiences" of any kind? IHE needs better editors, this is really slipshod.
The bottom line is that a public university has no grounds for disciplining this professor on the facts laid out in this article.
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