Targeted Harassment of Engineering Educators

Recently, there has been an increase in the number of STEM education scholars who have been the subject of harassment due to their scholarship. This harassment has included social media attacks, phone calls, hate emails, threats of violence, and more.

The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) considers targeted harassment of faculty one of its featured campaigns, describing the recent increase in the number of harassment reports, and movement beyond the communities who have been enduring such attacks for a long time (including climate change researchers, and scholars working in ethnic studies, gender studies, and LGBTQ+ studies).

Harassment differs from academic critique in its tone and content - it does not constitute well-reasoned if contentious debate on the technical, cognitive, logical, conceptual, or other points that scholars disagree on, but instead is mean, threatening, and even violent in tone, and designed to silence the researcher by making them afraid to state their claims aloud or in writing.

Targeted harassment threatens academic freedom, including in STEM diversity scholarship. Engineering education equity scholars have increasingly been targeted both by well-funded operations such as Campus Reform as well as by other engineering faculty. Organizations like AAUP have developed new resources to both support scholars who are targeted, and organize universities employing such scholars to stand in vigorous defense of academic freedom.  

In this webinar, Alice Pawley, and Donna Riley will present:

• Recent cases of harassment in the engineering education equity field;  

• Solicit more stories in order to connect with more scholars perhaps thinking they are alone and unsupported;

• Provide specific examples of how universities have responded or should respond when their scholars come under attack;

• Share resources and advice on how to support scholars under attack at their universities.

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