From Video of Campus Forum, Virtual Venom Flows

After speaking at a forum on fascism last month, Lori M. Poloni-Staudinger was threatened, insulted, and demeaned in response to a video of the event that was posted online.

“Things like, ‘When are these professors going to understand that they’re going to pay for this with their lives? They’re going to become the hunted.’ Things like that,” said Ms. Poloni-Staudinger, chair of the department of politics and international affairs at Northern Arizona University.

“The Specters of Fascism?” was a popular forum, but it became better known through the website of the conservative advocacy group Campus Reform, which posted it online.

The accompanying text highlighted speakers’ suggestions of totalitarian themes in the Trump administration, including a comment by one professor, who called President Trump the “rapist in chief.”

Ms. Poloni-Staudinger was surprised at the vitriol directed at her — not least because the comments weren’t hers.

Mistaken Identity

The “Specters of Fascism?” event was put together by a handful of campus groups. Ms. Poloni-Staudinger, one of six speakers, knew she was being recorded. Still, she was surprised at the reaction, which began the next day.

“I started getting some emails in my university email account, and I didn’t know what they were about, so I went to the Campus Reform website and there was my name plastered all over Campus Reform,” she said.

Her name was attached to a video that featured two other speakers, including Kimberley Curtis, a lecturer in the sustainable-communities program.

“That went up the 17th [of February], and it was in the first 24, 36 hours that it had been shared over 800 times just off the Campus Reform website alone,” Ms. Poloni-Staudinger said.

After discussing the matter with her colleagues, Ms. Poloni-Staudinger decided to take screenshots of the various comments made under the article, on Facebook, and other places the article appeared. She also set about trying to get the account corrected, which she said took some time. By the time the post was fixed, she’d already had lawsuits, relocation to Iran, and death wished upon her. Some of the comments were antifeminist, she said, including repeated objections to her hyphenated last name. She took a few days off work.

Conservative groups like Campus Reform and Turning Point USA encourage students to record their professors when they feel that liberal bias is being displayed. At Northern Arizona, the videotaped professors say they’ve been threatened online.

But Melissa Miller, the student who recorded them at the forum, said she had been threatened online and called nasty names, too. Like Ms. Poloni-Staudinger, she spent a few days away from the campus.

“I have felt unsafe on campus since that video came out,” said Ms. Miller, who added that she now carries pepper spray.

Ms. Miller, a member of Turning Point USA, said she had gone to the event even though she “figured I wasn’t going to agree with everything that was said.” But “I am a political-science major, so I went.”

As she usually does, Ms. Miller said, she recorded the event “for notes and in case something silly happens.”

The speakers recorded their own video as well, concerned about “a history of taking videos and putting them up out of context.”

The forum had to do mostly with fascism in Europe, past and present, and whether or not there are similar signs in the United States. Ms. Poloni-Staudinger discussed far-right groups in Europe, and other professors addressed various elements of fascism. The video clip posted on the conservative website featured Ms. Curtis and Raymond Michalowski, a professor of criminology and criminal justice.

The video, a little over six minutes long, features two of the professors speaking. Most of it has the tone of a traditional lecture, although at one point, Mr. Michalowski jokingly makes the “rapist in chief” comment. (It got a few laughs.)

“Nobody said he [Mr. Trump] was a fascist. Nobody called him Hitler,” Ms. Poloni-Staudinger said.

But Ms. Miller felt otherwise. “I listened to an hour and a half of teachers saying that President Trump is the ‘rapist in chief,’ that patriarchy is fascism, all this really ridiculous commentary with really no backing,” she said.

She posted online about the event, and a Facebook friend, Shanna Nelson at the University of Arizona, asked if she could use it in an article for Campus Reform.

“She sent me that video, and I pitched it to Campus Reform, and they really liked it,” Ms. Nelson said.

Blowback

Ms. Curtis, a scholar of the political theorist Hannah Arendt who made the comments first attributed to Ms. Poloni-Staudinger, said she hadn’t gotten the same heat that her colleague has. But the issue has raised larger worries among faculty members.

“There have been several faculty who have essentially caught students surreptitiously taping or recording lectures, and that has made people very uneasy,” Ms. Curtis said. Faculty members have discussed concerns that whatever they might say could be taken out of context, she said.

Ms. Poloni-Staudinger said it would continue to be a concern, because “we don’t have really good laws in Arizona for dealing with this sort of thing. You’re allowed to videotape.”

Meanwhile, Ms. Miller said she’d been called a racist and made to feel uneasy based on comments she’s seen online and the perception of her that has been created on the campus. Some people, including university staff members, she said, have characterized her as a member of the “alt-right,” which expresses views far more radical than hers.

“Honestly, it’s full-on bullying from the university,” she said.

Heidi Toth, assistant director of communications at Northern Arizona, said in an email that “NAU respects the right to free speech of all participants in the educational experience. We also expect that individuals exercise their rights with integrity, honesty, and respect for other participants.”

Ms. Nelson said contributors to the Campus Reform website sometimes collaborate to avoid pushback. “We have to be really careful about what we write on our specific campuses,” she said.

Sterling Beard, Campus Reform’s editor in chief, said complaints “galvanize our writers.” Mistakes are rare there, he said; the group’s leaders “impress the importance of getting the facts right” onto contributors. But when there is a mistake, he said, it’s fixed, and a notice is added, as it was in this case.

Faculty members at Northern Arizona have met with campus leaders and campus police officials. Ms. Poloni-Staudinger said she was still getting messages weeks later. One of the most recent emails, she said, was from someone in Connecticut who, she learned, faced multiple felony charges.

Ms. Miller acknowledged that campus discourse can result in upset for all parties involved, but that the virtual venom is to be expected.

“Teachers and students really need to be strong in their opinions, but they also need to realize this is going to happen,” Ms. Miller said. “Every opinion is going to offend somebody, no matter how nice it is. That’s just how we are today.”