At UChicago, a debate on freedom of speech and cyberbullying

Rebecca Journey, a lecturer at the University of Chicago, didn’t mind calling her new undergraduate seminar “The Problem of Whiteness.” Although the anthropology course was provocatively titled, it covered familiar academic territory: how the racial category of “white” has changed over time.

She was therefore surprised when her inbox exploded in November with vicious messages from dozens of strangers. One of them wrote that she was “deeply bad.” Another: “Blow your head off.”

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

Spooked Dr. Journey, a newly minted Ph.D. as she prepared for the academic job market, she postponed her class until the spring. She then filed a complaint with the university, accusing Mr. Schmidt of bullying 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 had not sent her personally abusive emails. And under the university’s long-standing, acclaimed commitment to academic freedom, expression was limited only if it “constituted a genuine threat or harassment.”

From the university 2014 Declaration of Principles of Freedom of ExpressionKnown as the Chicago Statement, it has become a touchstone and guide for colleges across the country that have struggled to manage on-campus controversies, especially when liberal students shout down conservative speakers. Dozens of schools have adopted it.

But what followed over the rest of the academic year at the University of Chicago tested whether its principles cater to a new, fast-moving environment where a single tweet can rain down vitriol and threats.

The Chicago statement assumes that what happens on campuses is “in good faith and that people have an interest in engaging with the ideas,” said Isaac A. Kamola of Faculty First Responders, who has criticized conservative attacks on academics in keeps an eye out. But, he added, “the ecosystem that Daniel Schmidt is a part of has no interest in conversation.”

Geoffrey R. Stone, a law professor, led the faculty committee that drafted the Chicago statement. He said the group was not thinking at the time about how online threats could harm free speech – let alone this situation where Mr Schmidt simply tweeted out publicly available information.

Posting repeatedly when you know the response can be harassment, said Erwin Chemerinsky, a state law scholar at the University of California, Berkeley.

But, he said, “The difficult question is, where is that line crossed?”

Mr. Schmidt seemed to understand that he was right on the dividing line.

“Any other school would probably have expelled me right now,” he tweeted in March. “UChicago is the only top school that cares about freedom of expression.”

A hostile activist

Lessons that explore whiteness are taught for decades in liberal arts departments. Students explore how white people are treated as the norm, which affects wealth and political power, among other things.

Dr. Journey’s syllabus contained lectures such as: “How did Jews become white people??” by Karen Brodkin and “The souls of white people”, a lesser-known essay by WEB Du Bois.

However, similar courses have come under scrutiny from conservatives for being divisive.

“Like, what does this say? That I’m a problem because I’m white?” Mr. Schmidt said in a TikTok video.

In an interview, Mr. Schmidt said his goal was to show Dr. Journey “what normal Americans think”. But he condemned anyone who threatened her with death or sent hateful messages. And, he said, even if he hadn’t posted her email address, “let’s face it, people would have found it.”

Mr. Schmidt has previously been in conflicting roles.

For the past year or so, he has supported Kanye West, the artist now known as Ye, running for president – work he promoted with Nick Fuentes, a Holocaust denier. Mr. Schmidt declined to comment on his political activism or his dealings with Mr. Fuentes.

In his freshman year at university, Mr. Schmidt was fired from The Chicago Maroon, the student newspaper, after his editors said he repeatedly antagonized another columnist on Instagram and encouraged others to spam her. Mr Schmidt said he was simply “calling out a public figure”.

After also being fired from a conservative campus publication, Mr. Schmidt turned to his own website, College Dissident, with articles like “Time to Fight Anti-White Hatred on Campus.”

His activism has helped fuel an industry dedicated to accusing universities of liberal orthodoxy. Websites like Campus Reform and The College Fix have been doing that for years educated students to report on campus controversies, hoping that conservative news outlets like Fox News, Breitbart, and The Daily Caller will get their own stories out there.

All three publications eventually wrote about Dr. Journey’s class.

And after the course catalog said class was canceled for the winter, Mr. Schmidt celebrated. “This is a huge win,” he tweeted.

A push for punishment

Two weeks after Mr. Schmidt’s initial tweets in November about the course, John W. Boyer, then dean of the university, sent an email to a handful of staff and faculty, describing the incident as “cyberbullying”, intended to intimidate the instructor by mobilizing anonymous threats and intimidation. The university, he added, would not allow it.

But in February, the university had dismissed Dr. Journey’s complaints. Officials declined to discuss the matter, citing privacy concerns, but said the school had “policies for addressing harassment, threats or other misconduct, including cases involving online communication,” which covers all students.

Doctor Journey was furious. “I don’t want disciplinary action against this student just for a sense of justice for me personally,” she told The Times. “By approving cyber abuse, there is no deterrent effect.”

Upon his resignation, Jeremy W. Inabinet, a fellow student counselor, acknowledged that becoming the target of online criticism could be distressing. His office, he said, would recommend that the college talk to the student.

That discussion has not taken place, Mr. Schmidt said.

In March, four days before the course was due to start, he posted again, this time on TikTok, complain about a column in December in The Maroon by Dr. Journey and a local news report in November, where she was quoted as saying, “We can’t let cyber-terrorists win.”

In the video, he said, “People have a right to know who is teaching these classes,” and re-shared her photo and email address. Dr. Inbox Journey was on fire again.

Administrators had already stepped up security. They had moved Dr. Journey’s class into a building that required key card access and the location was not publicly listed. Dr. Journey said the university has strengthened security patrols.

Officials also took important steps that academic freedom supporters say many colleges don’t: They affirmed Dr. Journey to teach the class and did not distance the institution from her.

But dr. Journey continued to receive a stream of emails, hundreds in all, as well as letters to her home and office. Someone signed her up for a Pornhub newsletter.

Dr. Journey filed another complaint with the university in April, this time also signed by Shannon Lee Dawdy, then the chair of the anthropology department.

“On a campus famously devoted to academic freedom,” they wrote, “students should not be allowed to launch public hate campaigns with the intent to intimidate faculty and stop teaching material they dislike. “

That complaint was also rejected.

Mary Anne Franks, a law professor at the University of Miami who studies civil rights and technology, said universities should pay more attention to the harassment of faculty members.

Cyberbullying “is much more deliberate, mean and threatening to a person than someone shouting unpleasant things at a person during a conversation,” she said, adding that Mr Schmidt’s behavior was “highly calculated to elicit exactly the reaction that it did.”

Professor Stone, who wrote the Chicago statement, agreed that the student’s actions can have a “chilling effect” on speech. But, he asked, who determines the difference between, say, a newspaper reporting on an individual and Mr. Schmidt’s actions? Both can lead to hate mail and threats, he said.

The university, as a private institution, could change its policy to say students, staff and faculty cannot post material intended to be harassing, Professor Stone said.

But such a move — which he doesn’t recommend — would violate the First Amendment if the university were public, and would have its own complications, he said.

“It’s very difficult for both the law and the institutions to control things like that,” he said. “Your admins may be biased in terms of who they do and don’t go after.”

And while a strong argument could be made that Mr. Schmidt intended to intimidate, Professor Stone said, “Do you really want to start trying to figure out what the purpose was?”

That explanation can be unsatisfactory for students who want a solution. Watson Lubin, a senior in Dr. Journey, said he chose the university in part because of its reputation for academic freedom. But over his four years, he said, he has been soured by free speech rhetoric.

“I’m afraid Daniel Schmidt has actually set some kind of precedent here,” he said, “where, under the auspices of freedom of speech, you can kind of intimidate and harass a professor, and sic your incredible following on TikTok and Twitter on them for the purpose of chilling speech.

A few weeks ago, as his sophomore year ended, Mr. Schmidt posted another TikTok video about the class and again complained about Dr. Journey.

“This is too far,” he said. “Kids at my school, what, they party. They’re having fun. And in the meantime I have to deal with this.”