These Scholars Denounced the Police. Do Their Universities Have Their Backs?

Nathan J. Jun is familiar with harassment. Over his 12 years of teaching at Midwestern State University, in Wichita Falls, Tex., fliers for his courses about race and racism and Africana philosophy have repeatedly been defaced. Recently he found a swastika scrawled across his office nameplate and, taped beneath it, a Hitler quote.

Still, this summer, Jun realized he was still capable of being surprised.

After the killing of George Floyd ignited nationwide protests against police brutality, Jun, a professor of philosophy, changed his Facebook cover photo to a black banner that read, “Abolish the police.” What followed was a coordinated harassment campaign, mounted by local activists who circulated screenshots of the banner and sent Jun 400 to 500 death threats via voicemail, texts, and Facebook messages.

Even though academics calling for the abolition of the police are getting a warmer reception than they used to, at least in academic circles, Jun and another scholar, Jesse A. Goldberg, at Auburn University, have been subjected to harassment for their support of that proposal — and have received differing degrees of support from their institutions.

The vitriol lobbed at them makes clear that American political divisions and right-wing disdain for academics will continue to test faculty members and college leaders as they enter an already challenging fall.

Local Outrage

Jun’s troubles began when screenshots of his Facebook profile circulated among local residents. Mark A. Beauchamp, an elected county commissioner, wrote on Facebook that Jun “needs to be put out of his misery asap ... preferably at the barrel of a gun.”

Jun was called a “terrorist"; one commenter warned that the scholar “will act out ... like serial killers and other psychopathic narcissists.” (The original posts appear to have been deleted, but Jun provided screenshots to The Chronicle.) His personal information was disseminated, as was that of his parents and sisters.

Jun emailed his provost, James Johnston, writing that he “wanted to let MSU know what’s going on so it will not be blindsided.”

“I want to make it absolutely clear that I have NOT made any statement (publicly or otherwise) on any online platform that advocates violence, whether explicitly or implicitly,” he wrote. “Having unpopular opinions and sharing them publicly is obviously consistent with my duties and responsibilities as an MSU employee and as a citizen.”

The next day, Johnston replied that Midwestern State had indeed fielded “numerous calls, emails, and social media responses to your Facebook page and posts.” Johnston assured Jun that the university “conveyed that you have the right to express your views as a citizen,” and that “we as an institution respect people’s right to speak freely within the confines of the law.”

“Should you experience any threats while on campus or as a part of our campus community,” the provost concluded, “please let us know.”

Jun was relieved to know that the university was defending his First Amendment rights, but he thought the response fell short. His detractors were accusing him of being a criminal and a terrorist, he said in an interview, so “why is the university saying that ‘we’ll look into it,’ essentially?” Such a boilerplate response, he worried, “was at least implicitly giving credence to the allegations.”

And, he wondered, why couldn’t the university do more to defend him — say, put out a public statement affirming his First Amendment rights, or reply to people who were posting derogatory remarks about him on Midwestern State’s public Facebook page? (Initially, he said, he was told that the university couldn’t do anything about those posts, but he noted that they were deleted some time after he received that response.) It felt, to Jun, as if campus officials thought it wasn’t their problem.

Days later, Jun received an email “out of the blue” from Suzanne Shipley, Midwestern State’s president, that was even more disturbing to him.

Shipley held Jun and his work in high regard, it began, and she would continue to do so, “just as I will continue to support some of your values, particularly in regard to anti-Semitism and our shared interest in the historical and ongoing plight of Jews across the world.” But his Facebook posts, she wrote, violated Midwestern State’s policies on academic freedom and responsibility, which are derived from the foundational 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure, endorsed by the Association of American Colleges and Universities and the American Association of University Professors.

“When faculty members speak or write as citizens, they are free from institutional censorship or discipline,” Shipley wrote, quoting the guidelines. But “they must remember that the public will judge their profession and MSU by their utterances. Hence, they shall at all times be accurate, shall exercise appropriate restraint, shall show respect for the opinions of others, and shall make every effort to indicate that they are not spokespersons for Midwestern State University.”

Shipley wrote that Jun’s Facebook posts “do not meet the requirements of this policy.” She concluded, “I trust that you will subsequently, as required by policy, ‘make every effort to indicate that you are not a spokesperson for MSU,’ ‘exercise appropriate restraint,’ and ‘show respect for the opinions of others.”

In Jun’s view, Shipley was “issuing an implicit warning or threat that I needed to knock it off, or that there would be some kind of repercussion.”

In an email to The Chronicle, Shipley declined to elaborate on what she termed a personnel matter. “Midwestern State University remains firm in our commitment to First Amendment rights and our role as a public university in the open exchange of ideas,” she wrote. Johnston, the provost, did not respond to a request for comment.

A Defense of Speech Rights

As the harassment escalated, Jun sought outside support. One open letter, written by a colleague in Britain in early June, got 512 signatures, nearly 100 of which were from Midwestern State students, faculty members, and alumni. A second letter was signed by 573 people.

Jun also contacted the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, where Adam Steinbaugh, director of the individual-rights defense program, agreed to take on the case. To Steinbaugh, Midwestern State’s handling of the situation contradicted both Jun’s First Amendment rights and the university’s own obligations.

Johnston’s initial response to Jun “got it right,” Steinbaugh said. “That’s where it should have stayed.”

Shipley’s email to Jun, he said, was the problem. Colleges can ask their employees to “exercise appropriate restraint” in their public comments, but they can’t enforce such a request in policy.

Midwestern State might be able to require civility “in the context of classroom discussions,” Steinbaugh said, “but that is far different than what a faculty member says on their own time on Facebook,” which, no matter how uncivil, is protected by the First Amendment.

Even without a disclaimer like the one on Jun’s Facebook profile — that his expressed views do not represent those of his employer — Steinbaugh said, “I don’t think anyone would fairly interpret his comments as speaking on behalf of the university.”

Jun pointed out that in addition to the death threats, his home had been vandalized four times in a two-month span. Most recently, a swastika and a racial slur were spray-painted in his garage.

“Even if the university believes that I have have acted out of line, that I’ve violated some university policy, surely they don’t think that it’s OK that there are people breaking into my garage and spray-painting a swastika and a racial slur on the wall of my garage,” Jun said. That administrators had no response “is just so profoundly hurtful.”

‘Gunning for Middle America’

Steinbaugh’s organization, FIRE, also came to the defense of Jesse Goldberg after Auburn issued a statement to say that his comments criticizing the role of the police were “inexcusable,” and that the university was “considering options.” Auburn’s subsequent statement, noting that Goldberg is a temporary hire, strongly implied that the university would “terminate, discipline, or decline to renew the contracts of faculty members whose speech catches the attention of off-campus critics or state legislators,” Steinbaugh wrote.

Goldberg, a scholar of Black studies and American literature, had reacted in horror to a video tweeted on July 28 by the American Civil Liberties Union of a protester — later identified as Nikki Stone, an 18-year-old transgender woman — being grabbed off a New York City street by plainclothes police officers and forced into an unmarked van. He shared the tweet and wrote, “This is kidnapping. Fuck every single cop. Every single one.”

Newly hired as a lecturer in the English department at Auburn, Goldberg continued: “The only ethical choice for any cop to make at this point is to refuse to do their job and to quit. The police do not protect people. They protect capital. They are instruments of violence on behalf of capital.”

He was angry and wanted to show it. It can be useful, Goldberg later told The Chronicle, to be a white person who expresses outrage at white supremacy and systems of oppression in public, to show other white people that “we don’t have to be complacent.”

His tweet — along with a Facebook post he wrote on the subject — took off on social media and was quickly picked up by right-wing news sites. “He should be fired before the sun sets today!” Brett Easterbrook, a Republican state legislator in Alabama, wrote on Facebook. “You wonder how our society raised a bunch of communist [sic] that hate our country? Here is one of the main sources of the problems in our society. Universities!”

Donald Trump Jr. shared an article about Goldberg with his 5.4 million Twitter followers and wrote that “liberal, anti-American-values egg heads already took over the Ivy League.” Now, he said, “they’re gunning for middle America.”

After that tweet, the harassment and intimidating messages became a cascade, Goldberg said, much of it explicitly violent, anti-Semitic, and homophobic. (Goldberg, who is Jewish, identifies as queer.) He says he didn’t hear anything from Auburn’s administration about his tweet. Then he read a statement sent to news media by Brian Keeter, executive director of public affairs at Auburn, who called Goldberg’s comments “inexcusable and completely counter to Auburn values.”

“Hate speech of any kind is simply wrong,” Keeter wrote. Officials were “considering options available to the university.”

At that point, Goldberg thought, “I’m a lowly lecturer. They’re going to fire me.”

Then, on July 31, after Goldberg had alerted his department chair to both a death threat and a rape threat, he says the university offered to change his title from lecturer to visiting research fellow, and to relieve him of teaching duties. He’d be reassigned to only writing and research. That suited Goldberg, who says that he loves teaching, but that given the circumstances, “I genuinely feel much safer with this option.” He agreed on Monday, he said. (Auburn “agreed to Dr. Goldberg’s request that his role transition to a research-focused assignment,” the university said in a statement.)

By that point, support had mounted for Goldberg. The president of the campus’s Gay-Straight Alliance criticized the university’s characterization of his tweet as “hate speech,” because police officers are not considered a protected class. FIRE told Auburn’s president that penalizing or terminating Goldberg would violate the First Amendment as well as Auburn’s own policies. An associate professor of economics wrote in the student newspaper that the administration’s response was “self-serving, embarrassing, and revealing.”

Mitchell Brown, president of the Auburn chapter of the American Association of University Professors, told the president’s office that it would actively oppose any actions taken against Goldberg for his speech.

Jay Gogue, Auburn’s president, affirmed in a letter to FIRE that Auburn “will not take adverse action against Dr. Goldberg or any member of the Auburn community based on that person’s engagement in individual speech or conduct protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States or the State of Alabama.”

By last Friday morning, when Goldberg spoke with The Chronicle, the harassment had waned. He knew he’d be employed for this year. But it still feels devastating, he said, that instead of outrage being directed at an abuse of power displayed by the police, it was directed toward him for saying, “Fuck every single cop.” He’s asking himself to what degree he had obscured the real issue by allowing his language to become what people talked about.

And even though he didn’t get fired, Goldberg said, “I’ve been trouble for the university.” He’s untenured, on a one-year contract.

That status was noted in a university statement, which said that Goldberg had originally been hired “on a temporary, non-tenure-track assignment” and that officials would “continue to assess the situation” to ensure that Auburn remains a place where “mutual respect and understanding is paramount.”