Emails about Social Media Engagement Cause Faculty Concern over Free Speech

An email sent over the summer by the college’s Bias Incident Response Team (BIRT) to several faculty about a student-run Instagram meme account they were following sparked concerns about academic freedom, which continued into September. The email was sent to seven faculty, according to the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) — BIRT has said six — and referenced reports from “members of [the] Swarthmore College community” about the Instagram page @shartmorecollege. BIRT specifically referenced “posts comparing Israelis to pedophiles and, separately, to Nazi Germany as well as at least one post drawing negative attention to a Swarthmore student who represented Israel as part of an athletic competition.” The account did not respond to requests for comment. The referenced reports specifically named faculty members who were following the page. BIRT told the community members who submitted the reports that following does not equate to endorsement, and the college has no role in monitoring social media engagement. However, BIRT felt it was “important to convey [to the named faculty members] the harm felt by many members of the community.” Specifically, students expressed feeling unwelcome in certain faculty members’ classrooms because of their following @shartmorecollege.

BIRT did not take any direct disciplinary action, but emailed faculty and communicated that they could choose to continue following the account if they wished. Since then, BIRT has repeatedly clarified they do not monitor social media, and the emails were intended as “an act of transparency and goodwill,” according to Vice President for Communications and Marketing Andy Hirsch. But faculty members, represented by the Swarthmore chapter of the AAUP, felt the email produced a chilling effect and could be perceived as a threat. 

“Faculty freedom of speech and academic freedom are increasingly under fire, and the July email represents an unprecedented occurrence of Swarthmore administrators contacting faculty members to impose their views about faculty social media engagement,” said an AAUP email sent to faculty on Sept. 26. “This practice has a chilling effect on both faculty members’ own freedom of expression–to post on matters of public or professional concern–and on their academic freedom–to read and engage with diverse sources and viewpoints without fear of reprisal.”

In response to the July email, AAUP members met with BIRT in late August to share their concerns. Matt Zucker, associate engineering professor and vice president of Swarthmore AAUP, felt the meeting went as expected and that AAUP’s  main goal was to learn about why the emails were sent if there was not a violation of policy. He says that AAUP’s position is that the bar for contacting faculty over social media should be much higher so that the practice should only occur in the case of policy violations. He did not feel BIRT was convinced of that position during the meeting. 

“When you are going out and engaging online, you have some expectation that just like any other nature of your job, whether it’s the research papers that you write or the way that you teach your classes, as long as you are doing it in ways that otherwise respect the policies of the institution, the administration does not have an interest in micromanaging the ways that you do those things,” Professor Zucker said. “We would be very concerned if the administration came along and said, ‘Well, we don’t like who you’re co-authoring with or we don’t like the selection of books that you’re using for your syllabus for your course. That type of scrutiny really gets at the heart of what academic freedom is.”

According to Hirsch, AAUP and BIRT have agreed to follow-up steps and an agreement. A follow-up email — encouraged by AAUP during the meeting — from BIRT on Sept. 16 clarified their intent to share information with faculty despite no violation of policy. 

“Despite our intentions, we understand there were concerns that the email was implying faculty

were responsible for bias or were expected to take corrective action. So we want to be clear,” the email said. “The message we sent about the Instagram account was for your information only. The BIRT is not looking into these allegations further and there are no negative consequences resulting from these incident reports for the faculty named. We are not and have not monitored social media engagement of any member of the Swarthmore community.”

However, faculty felt the follow up was insufficient to address the hurt and larger concerns over academic freedom the email raised. Eugene M. Lang Research Professor of Anthropology and Swarthmore AAUP President Farha Ghannam sees the email as part of larger changes at Swarthmore concerning how the right to free speech is being upheld. 

“I’ve been here for 24 years, and I feel like this is a place that I hardly recognize,” Professor Ghannam said. “Historically, there was so much more space for students to articulate their thoughts. I never felt that I couldn’t speak my mind, but I think recently, that has definitely changed, and everybody is trying to be as careful as possible while doing the right thing.”

According to Professor Ghannam, in the meeting with AAUP and BIRT, faculty were told that four to five people had reported the account. Ghannam felt the email implied it was more of the community, by writing “harm felt by many members of the community.” Additionally, Ghannam pointed out that at least six of the emailed colleagues were faculty of color, one was a visiting professor, and another was pre-tenure, which she said made any perceived intimidation feel targeted. 

“I’m hoping BIRT has gotten the point that this is not the way that faculty should be treated,” Ghannam said. “In addition to the importance of freedom of expression, many of us [follow social media accounts] for our research, and therefore, if you say you can’t follow this because they are offensive, or this because they are conservative, that is really limiting what people can do, even their research.”

Professor Edwin Mayorga, who received an email from BIRT, was hurt by the tone of the email, but felt it was in line with a perceived shift at the institution. Additionally, he felt the follow-up was not intentional about doing restorative work and healing. In the eleven years since he joined the faculty, Mayorga has seen a decrease in the ability of students and faculty to be heard, namely through the ongoing charges against students for their participation in protest; the first time in the institution’s history it has charged students like this. 

“I strongly hope that charges [against students] will ultimately be dropped, but whether they’re dropped or not, I would like to know what the vision is for how to repair and heal this campus, or how to go about doing that,” Mayorga said. “Because right now it feels like there is no vision for that. We’re continuing to operate in a very divided, siloed-off way, which is something that has been an issue with us even long before this past year and everything that’s transpired. This has only fueled the flames of that.”

Zucker felt the cost of the chilling effect felt by affected faculty greatly outweighed any benefit of alerting faculty of the reports, and said the emails felt biased towards those making the reports. He also mentioned an email he received from faculty asking if perceived threats against students in the classroom count as actual threats in BIRT’s view. If faculty, in a similar vein, feel intimidated by the email, is it reasonable for them to conclude that they are at risk of retaliation, asked the email.

“I think that it’s hard to read the email that they sent and see it merely as conveying information,” Zucker said. “They say that they’re not trying to admonish and criticize faculty, but they come down so heavily against this account which faculty were following, and they use a lot of very values-laden language that would seem to be at odds with their stated goal of seeking only to inform faculty.”

Zucker additionally said there is no formal method of communication between BIRT and the faculty as a group, so only individual members are contacted about instances such as this. AAUP has been working on raising awareness of rights, and hope faculty representatives will be included in crafting any future BIRT policies. He points to these emails as part of broader national shifts towards a more professionalized administration and faculty, which he says makes it harder for admin and faculty to relate to each other. 

“This has not been a great moment nationally,” Zucker said. “It has also been my impression that Swarthmore tends to do better than the national picture in general, that things get worse in other places than [they do] here. I’m certainly concerned by the direction things are taking at the big picture, national level. And I’m concerned that we’re certainly at risk of continuing to mirror some of the worst developments.”