To help scholars and their employers prepare for and respond to intimidation and harassment from outside their institutions, two professors created the Researcher Support Consortium, which was unveiled last week.
Rebekah Tromble, director of George Washington University’s Institute for Data, Democracy and Politics, said she created the consortium alongside Kathleen Searles, the Olin D. Johnston Chair of Political Science at the University of South Carolina. Tromble, who’s also an associate professor in George Washington’s School of Media and Public Affairs, said she started the initiative partly “to take my power back” after she was targeted online herself for participating in research on Twitter discourse that was funded by—but not directed by—the social media company.
“The death threats began rolling in, the rape threats began rolling in, threats to my family, the worst of the worst claiming that I was there to censor,” Tromble said. She said she moved her office and had police patrols outside her home.
In creating the consortium, Tromble said she and Searles interviewed scholars of climate science, gender issues, race, chemistry, physics and other fields who’ve faced harassment, learning that online campaigns against researchers were quickly expanding into off-line spaces. Tromble said these off-line campaigns included lawsuits, lawmaker demands for information about research and “weaponized” Freedom of Information Act requests.
“What we’ve been hearing from those that we’ve interviewed throughout is the hardest part, the truly hardest part for almost everyone in dealing with these campaigns is that they feel isolated, they feel alone,” Tromble said.
She said she wants colleges and universities to prepare themselves for harassment and intimidation incidents rather than just react to them as individual crises, and she also wants these institutions to consult with the targeted researchers on how to respond.
Among the consortium’s online resources is a tool kit for institutions. Its recommendations include creating a form for researchers to report external intimidation and harassment. It also recommends institutions proactively form a “researcher support team” with representatives from IT, communications and other departments that can immediately respond when needed.
