If you are a college/university administrator, and you don't have a detailed, specific plan for dealing with online campaigns and targeted harassment, you are failing as a leader. And this means educating your Boards on how all this works, too. Lead, don't crumble. Because they'll come for you, too. - ThreadSky

thetattooedprof.bsky.social • 426 days ago

If you are a college/university administrator, and you don't have a detailed, specific plan for dealing with online campaigns and targeted harassment, you are failing as a leader. And this means educating your Boards on how all this works, too. Lead, don't crumble. Because they'll come for you, too.

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admedievalist.bsky.social•426 days ago

Yep. Also, Faculty: think VERY carefully about whether you want to join in a social media dogpile without knowing all the facts & reading all relevant posts in context, & certainly don’t start contacting colleagues’ administrators because you are “concerned for students.”

burrata.bsky.social•426 days ago

Alas, and speaking from experience, if you are an administrator with a detailed plan for dealing with harassment, your boss is almost certainly telling you to turn your attention elsewhere, while also judging you negatively. University admin is thoroughly corporate and lower case-c conservative.

mitchellepner.bsky.social•426 days ago

At Dartmouth (I'm a '91), the fight against the targeted harassment goes back to 1980 & the founding of the Dartmouth Review. At its apogee, the Right got 2 of its own elected as a Trustee as "petition candidates" (Zywicki & Robinson) against the Trustee nominees (who split the vote for each seat).

alans9.bsky.social•426 days ago

Do you have a good example of one of these plans?

thetattooedprof.bsky.social•426 days ago

Not knowing how these bad-faith campaigns function, failing to understand social media and online harassment, believing it's just a few online cranks--these assumptions should disqualify a person from institutional leadership. In our current moment, there is no excuse for ignorance in these areas.

uridev.urieldana.com•425 days ago

Very insightful comment. Maybe you should run for…?

thetattooedprof.bsky.social•426 days ago

Admins: your faculty of color, your women faculty, have warned you FOR YEARS. Most of you haven't listened. And here we are, with the fascist right declaring open season on higher ed's caretakers. Now is the time for all that Bold, Innovative Leadership you're supposedly paid for. Step the fuck up.

librarinista.bsky.social•426 days ago

Okay but what if your board is all old, conservative, white men

thetattooedprof.bsky.social•426 days ago

Advocate and educate. Invite board members to student functions. Bring students and faculty to board meetings and special events. Harder to hold students in disdain when they're "your" students. Too many presidents just accept the hand they're dealt, rather than poke where they can, imo

shorterpearson.com•426 days ago

One of the hard parts of being a LEADER (not an administrator, but a LEADER) in this climate is hearing the voices and speaking on behalf of ALL MEMBERS of an academic community, not just the voices that fit into pre-assigned stereotypes.

The real work needs real voices, not cookie-cutters.

danichols.bsky.social•426 days ago

“Bold, Innovative Leadership” is shorthand for “Boldly Hiring Consultants and Paying Them Innovative Seven-Figure Stipends to Explain That Everything Is the Faculty’s Fault.”

chucktownrob.bsky.social•426 days ago

And the subheading reads something like, "Seven-Figure Stipends as 'Pre-Theft' From Uni Funds, AKA Fewer Tenure-Track Positions"

louwojcinski.bsky.social•426 days ago

Hoping the link works, but this, from Trevor Noah about American history and black women just seems so so true.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3zF8IdDBp8

ngage.bsky.social•400 days ago

It works and I thank you so much, very much 🙏♥️, for sharing.
❤️‍🔥🪄

drkarenlcox.bsky.social•426 days ago

Thank you for saying this.

thetattooedprof.bsky.social•426 days ago

I wish it didn't have to be said 😔

burnedprof.bsky.social•426 days ago

this is true. allyn walker was driven out by in part by a concerted, co-ordinated social media attack, incl. youngkin's interns, who bragged about it on twitter. it was definitely not understood as such & in some surprising places, still isn't.

clancyny.bsky.social•426 days ago

Academics *must* learn to fight. Individuals and institutions both.

icesheetmike.bsky.social•425 days ago

That’s an uphill battle, considering a majority (not all, but a majority) of academics are upper-middle-class white folks who got where they are through a lifetime of Looking Away and Pretending They Didn’t See That.

christinahulbe.bsky.social•425 days ago

I think this is an optimistic and forgiving take. It can be helpful tactically though.

shermandorn.com•425 days ago

Not an uphill battle in the Cal State system.

https://www.calfac.org/18110-2/

clancyny.bsky.social•425 days ago

Can't disagree.

They didn't have my advantage of starting on the bottom (even though white American-born). It's a lot easier to see the wrongs more clearly.

Some are educable though. We'll see who is willing to fight.

icesheetmike.bsky.social•425 days ago

100% agreed, it’s worth the work. Bright lights, no matter how lonely, keep the darkness at bay. And attract more lights. But after a slew of recent experiences in my own field (cryosphere), I’m very pessimistic right now. This is how a majority of the academy operates: https://bsky.app/profile/blackamazon.bsky.social/post/3ki3padzeuk2i

tridatta.bsky.social•425 days ago

This is a damn Fact.

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