Russian-Linked Account That Targeted Professor Also Posted About Berkeley and DeVos

This month Drexel University placed George Ciccariello-Maher, a political-science professor with a history of controversial tweets, on leave after he faced increasing threats based on the posts. On Friday the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education uncovered an interesting detail of the controversy, reporting that a Twitter account run by a Russian troll farm helped one of the professor’s most controversial tweets go viral, helping to ramp up the pressure to condemn the professor.

In December 2016, Mr. Ciccariello-Maher posted “All I Want for Christmas Is White Genocide” on Twitter, prompting an outcry. One of the accounts to share the tweet was “Tennessee GOP,” which shared a screenshot of the tweet that drew 2,100 retweets, and reached mainstream news-media outlets. The Tennessee GOP account, masquerading as run by the state’s Republican Party, was actually operated by the Internet Research Agency, a “troll farm” linked to the Russian government.

That wasn’t the only time the now-suspended account, whose tweets can be accessed at various points in time via the Internet Archive’s “Wayback Machine,” has mentioned higher ed. When Ann Coulter, the conservative commentator, canceled a speaking event last spring at the University of California at Berkeley, the account spoke up in support of Ms. Coulter. The account also resurfaced President Trump’s tweet calling for the denial of federal funding to Berkeley. That tweet got 1,100 retweets.

The account also fired off tweets in a Berkeley-fueled outrage, drawing inspiration from other political happenings like conflicts with North Korea and the debate over a wall at the Mexico-U.S. border.

The account also retweeted other people who were demanding that Berkeley administrators let Ms. Coulter speak.

When Bethune-Cookman University students protested Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’s commencement address, in May, the account fired off a tweet that called the demonstrations “unbelievable idiocy.”

A few weird tweets also appear on the timeline of the troll account. Ironically it frequently tweeted about Democrats’ paranoia over Russian influence on American politics. And it tweeted condolences when two actresses, Debbie Reynolds and her daughter, Carrie Fisher, passed away within a day of each other, in December 2016.

Fernanda Zamudio-Suaréz is a breaking-news reporter. Follow her on Twitter @FernandaZamudio, or email her at fzamudiosuarez@chronicle.com.