Dear Tell All: I’ve been puzzling over the case of Sara Goldrick-Rab, the University of Wisconsin-Madison professor who caused a firestorm by tweeting at incoming high school students with doom and gloom about attending the UW.
On the one hand, I think Goldrick-Rab overstepped her bounds by accosting the students on Twitter with “bad news” about Republican politicians wrecking the university. When the students pushed back with their own skeptical tweets, she sarcastically retorted, “I thought you want a degree of value. Too bad.”
On the other hand, nothing Goldrick-Rab said was untrue. She linked to a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article about the UW mission being at risk because of changes to tenure and shared governance. Part of me thinks the university overstepped its bounds by criticizing her behavior. Whatever happened to academic freedom?
Please help me make sense of this train wreck, Tell All.
@confused
Dear @confused: To me, the issue is not academic freedom. UW-Madison affirmed that it would not fire Goldrick-Rab, nor would it discipline her. True, a university committee expressed disapproval of her tweets, but that’s entirely justified. Why should Goldrick-Rab be the only one who gets to say what she thinks?
From my advice columnist’s perspective, the most interesting issue here is manners and mores as they apply to social media. Twitter is like the Wild West, a lawless territory not yet tamed by civilization. By what standards should we judge Goldrick-Rab’s behavior in this space? Should any standards apply, or should she be free to do whatever she wants as a kind of 21st century Billy the Kid?
Maybe I’ve been reading too much Emily Post, but I believe most of the rules we hold dear in the real world should also apply in the virtual world. Let me run them down for you.
Should you glibly compare your ideological opponents to Adolf Hitler? No, you shouldn’t. You didn’t mention that part of the controversy, @confused. Goldrick-Rab recently tweeted: “My grandfather, a psychologist, just walked me through similarities between Walker and Hitler. There are so many — it’s terrifying.” If Goldrick-Rab wants to write a well-reasoned essay about parallels between a Republican governor and a genocidal dictator, I’ll read it. But throwing out a half-baked opinion in 140 characters puts her in the company of right-wing zealots who compare Barack Obama to Hitler. It’s not worthy of a university professor.
Should you actively undermine your employer while continuing to work there? No, you shouldn’t. Criticizing an institution is one thing, but Goldrick-Rab made a public display of discouraging students from coming to UW-Madison. She should have had the decency to stop picking up her publicly financed paycheck before trying to torpedo the place.
As a mature adult, should you crash a high school party and start hectoring the unsuspecting teenagers? No, you shouldn’t. Goldrick-Rab burst in on the kids’ celebration of becoming UW-Madison students to rain on their parade. True, she had a right to do so, under the guise of academic freedom. But acting this way — either on Twitter or in person — is the very definition of boorish behavior, isn’t it?
Goldrick-Rab did express regret about her tweets after the controversy blew up nationally, but she also rejected the notion that she should be more careful in the future.
"That's not what Twitter was created for and it's not how I use it.... I don't mean that I don't think before I tweet. I just don't subject it to editing.”
That’s exactly where Goldrick-Rab goes wrong, @confused. “Editing” is what will finally bring civilization to social media.
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