Your Career

Tips on helping faculty and staff members who become the object of internet trolls and outrage addicts.

What do you do when one of your history or climate-change experts becomes Public Enemy No. 1 in the latest online controversy? It is a sign of the times that campuses need a detailed policy on how to aid faculty and staff members caught up in a social-media maelstrom. Here a few suggestions from a new campus guide at Pennsylvania State University:

• “Before all else, work with the faculty member to address their on-campus and off-campus safety and security concerns. Be aware that the identity of the faculty member may influence their individualized needs (e.g., parental status, faculty rank, minoritized identity).”
• “It is possible that social-media and phone intimidation and harassment will be received by multiple offices. Inform the unit administrative staff on a need-to-know basis. Ensure that unit staff members whose responsibilities may include answering harassing phone calls are supported and informed about strategies for being on the front line (e.g., a script or template response, instructions for preserving phone messages to aid future investigations). The college’s or campus’s communications director can help with messaging.”
• “Facilitate the physical movement of assigned classrooms and/or workspace, if feasible and if the affected faculty member requests it.”

Continue reading: “How to Deal With the Dark Side of Social Media,” by Michael Bérubé

Share your suggestions on the newsletter with Denise Magner, an editor at The Chronicle, at denise.magner@chronicle.com. If you’d like to opt out, you can log in to our website and manage your newsletter preferences here.

What we’re reading.

Here’s more on career issues and trends from around the web. See something we should include? Let me know.

• In Slate, an interview with The Chronicle’s Lindsay Ellis on her stories about faculty and staff disillusionment with working in higher education.
• An essay in the Harvard Business Review attempts to answer a big question: “Who Is Driving the Great Resignation?”
• A CNN poll finds that more than half of Americans support vaccine mandates in classrooms, workplaces, and sporting events.