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What someone does legally, without harming or threatening anyone else, in their private life outside of their job, should have little to zero impact on their ab

What someone does legally, without harming or threatening anyone else, in their private life outside of their job, should have little to zero impact on their ability to maintain employment. I hope her lawsuit is very successful. She was clearly targeted, ostracized, and fired for speaking her mind. I don’t agree with her statement, but academia is poisoning free speech under the guise of righteousness.

forgingahead 5y ago
Like all other religious extremists, their worldview is that heretics and non-believers are not just sinning, they are condemned to an eternity of hellish suffering. It's ironic that supposedly liberal arts universities and "4th estate" journalists are the newest converts to this type of extremism.
warent 5y ago
I would agree if she didn't exhibit racism. Keeping her in a workplace after learning about that would be sending a signal that they care little about how hostile the workplace is.
- mikeyouse 5y ago
  Right - if she just said dumb nonsense, the school wouldn't have fired her. She was racist against a protected class under Federal employment law, who she certainly interacts with -- how could they possibly keep her on staff? And suing the website for exposing your racism? Why would she think she has any right to anonymity while spewing trash on someone else's platform?
cryptoz 5y ago
According to the linked article, her speech was definitely threatening harm to specific groups of people, not at all what you describe in your first sentence.
- adolph 5y ago
  Temple’s own student news site backed Viola’s right to say what she thought: “We don’t believe she should be removed for her alleged comments, although we condemn them.” And Benton’s actions seemed at odds with Disqus’s own policies, which state that “user information is for moderation purposes only” and adds that “distribution of personal identifiable information is prohibited.”
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afavour 5y ago
But her lawsuit is against the Neiman Lab, not her employer, so it wouldn’t have any bearing on what you’re saying? If anything it feels kind of telling that she’s suing the organisation that named her instead of the organisation that fired her. IMO at the very least the case is a lot more nuanced than you're making it out to be. For example: the fired professor was propagating conspiracy theories about Seth Rich. From the free speech angle, sure, she's free to say whatever she wants. But if you're a journalism professor and you aren't able to tell when something being propagated in the media is a baseless conspiracy theory, what does that say about your ability at your job? And as a teacher? It is not flat out wrong to fire someone for engaging in actions that cast doubt on their professionalism. At the very least it's open for debate. I think there's an interesting debate to be had over her having done this anonymously: if she separated it from her professional persona is she less culpable in a professional sense? Personally I'd still argue no, but I think this is why she's targeting the Lab and not her employer: it's a lot easier to argue that unmasking her (thus combining her anonymous and professional identities) was wrong than to argue that firing her was wrong. It seems their argument is going to be centered around one particular post expressing an anti-Muslim sentiment. Benton said she wrote it, she said she did not, thus he defamed her. All the posts were made under the same Disqus account so she might have a hill to climb in proving that it wasn't her. I'm very far from a lawyer but this feels like a case designed to set the professor up as a cause célèbre on the right rather than one designed to win.
- nostromo 5y ago
  She's suing Nieman Lab because she claimed they lied about what she actually said. Yes, I'm sure she would love to sue the university too. However she likely doesn't have a case there. I hope she wins the lawsuit because they sloppily doxxed her and broke the terms of service of Disqus in doing so. > Viola acknowledged writing most of the posts. But she denied being behind the anti-Muslim screed. That was critical to Sorokin’s decision to allow the libel and defamation part of Viola’s suit to proceed. The former professor “has plausibly alleged that Benton may have been negligent in his failure to verify that she was the author,” the judge wrote. He also took note of how Benton managed to discover and reveal her identity. Viola wrote her comments “based on the promise that her user information would be used for ‘moderation purposes only,’ which was violated when Benton posted her information on Twitter,” Sorokin wrote.
duxup 5y ago
Generally, I think it depends on WHAT they say. If someone says they don't trust / like people of a particular race, and they're in a position where they are expected to work with those folks. That certainly has something to do with their job. That's not threatening or violent, but as an employer I don't think you can ignore it / tell everyone at that workplace "well she didn't say it here so guess you have to ignore it...". Ultimately almost every job involves working with people, and you don't get to pick and choose who that is.
- Swizec 5y ago
  > Generally, I think it depends on WHAT they say. This argument used to be used to fire gay people from engineering jobs. Because being gay was obviously very bad and you can’t possibly have good judgement if you’re gay. Being gay and racist have obviously different implications on your workplace behavior and biases. The issue is that precedent is precedenty. If we normalize firing people for their personal life issues, where do we stop?
  - cortesoft 5y ago
    You quoted someone saying it depends on WHAT they say, then posted an example of someone being fired for who they are. That isn't the same.
  - duxup 5y ago
    I'm not sure what you mean, actually focusing on what someone said isn't an argument... it's a thing they actually said.
    - dandellion 5y ago
      I don't agree with him, but his post seems pretty straightforward and easy to understand. You're reasoning that we should fire people based on WHAT they say, that's an argument you're making about how to go about firing people.
      - 5y ago
renewiltord 5y ago
Well, obviously the disagreement in this whole space seems to be around what “harming or threatening anyone else” means. Some people, for instance, would find (making up a hypothetical) it “harming” if a large strong person spent spare time drawing incredibly graphic representations of smaller weaker coworkers being sexually assaulted by him. Others believe that no harm has been caused. Hopefully, in that situation you can see both sides of the argument. Now you can weaken that to whether referring to Muslims as people who should be deported is similarly a point where people can disagree. For my part, I believe in the freedom and liberty. No one has the right to have their stuff bought by someone. Temple doesn’t have the right to have students go to them. If they feel like they have to fire people in order to appeal to people, they should be permitted to. If they feel like they would rather lose customers than professors, that’s fine too. Unlike California, which believes that political opinion should be a protected class, I prefer the federal system.
csours 5y ago
> but academia is poisoning free speech under the guise of righteousness. No. "Free speech" is not a get out of jail free card. I think there may some narrow grounds for a lawsuit here, but it's not about free speech, it's about piercing pseudo-anonymity.
- shadowgovt 5y ago
  The lawsuit is purely a claim that the doxxing false-positived some posts that didn't originate from the doxxed individual. The suit itself isn't purporting to make any claims about the ethical or legal dimensions of using the information available to find someone in the way it was used, only that statements were attributed which the plaintiff did not make.
jasonlotito 5y ago
> What someone does legally, without harming or threatening anyone else, in their private life outside of their job, should have little to zero impact on their ability to maintain employment. Except this has always been the case. What you do outside your work has always affected your ability to maintain employment. The difference is that now those who benefited from this in the past are now suffering from it. > She was clearly targeted, ostracized, and fired for speaking her mind. No, this is literally not what happened. I can point to numerous cases of people speaking their mind without suffering from repercussions. Pretending this was about someone "speaking their mind" ignores the reality and nuances of what is actually happening.
colechristensen 5y ago
I think it highly depends on the content and relation to the profession. You indeed can post things outside of a professional setting which demonstrate that you aren't appropriate for your job. A journalism professor commenting on the news isn't exactly unrelated activity. This is indeed close to the edge of what would be appropriate but it would seem that what she said went beyond opinion and perspective and well into a questionable relationship with the truth and hate speech. A professor should be held to a high standard of rationality and posting things online, even anonymously, should be able to be taken into consideration.
- mc32 5y ago
  We’ve had journalists claim that all journalism is (should be) activism --that in itself is an oxymoron. but that's "journalism" in the States, today. So we have journalists who see it in their purview to frame things to fit their objectives as they envision them. We also had someone at the NYT who said what is in this age called hate speech against a majority “color” but wasn’t fired for those comments. So it’s indeed one sided.
mc32 5y ago
Also, it’s been known that people with normal accounts also have alternate provocateur social media counts where they gauge reaction to what they say. Sometimes they egg their own accounts for sympathy, etc. Imagine if we discovered all those accounts…
TOMDM 5y ago
Lets be explicit about what happened here. A) A journalist brought light to the comments made by a journalism professor. B) Said journalism professor's employer chose to fire her for those comments. Now, I think there is little room for taking issue with point A. If we're at the point where Journalists can't discuss the views of people in their own space, I have very little hope for a future environment of open and honest discourse. On point B, I think there are many views people can hold which justify firing someone. The only question is where you draw the line. If an employee was actively spreading hateful messaging concerning a coworker in their own time, away from work, I think most people would agree firing that person is an acceptable course of action (I understand that wasn't the case here). I also think there are a great number of people that believe pushing hateful discourse, even on your own time means that you are unfit for the workplace given that those views aren't conducive to a healthy work environment. In this case they were pushing some rather racist discourse. They said in response to an article about Muslims "Scum. Deport them. They hate us. Get rid of them." Obviously the point where you draw the line on acceptable discourse is in degrees, with active harrassment/hate of coworkers on one end, active hate towards a general group in the middle, and some kinds of conspiracism on the other. Where you draw the line is open for discussion, but lets not pretend it's not acceptable to have a line at all. EDIT: Other people are pointing out that Joshua doxxed Francesca using priveleged information from their Disqus platform. While I think that's condemnable, I find it largely immaterial to how Francesca's employer chooses how to react.
- mikeyouse 5y ago
  I'd argue that someone who talks like that needs to be fired from their position. She was a professor at a State owned college, there are certainly muslim students, professors and staff there. What kind of horrible hostile work environment would you be engendering if you let someone like that stay on staff?
  - fennecfoxen 5y ago
    She is a professor at a state college. The state is obligated to follow the law, including the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, declaring that "Congress shall make now law... abridging the freedom of speech." Yes, this is incorporated against the states. Yes, it applies to state-run colleges. The firing MAY be legal if this speech is "disruptive" to the university or "subversive" of their goals; if so, the firing must satisfy a balancing test as to whether: • the employee's speech addresses a matter of public concern. • their free-speech interests outweigh their employer’s efficiency interests. The comments do seem to be on a matter of public concern, which is typically interpreted quite broadly. The criteria used to assess these efficiency interests include whether the speech: • Impairs discipline or harmony among co-workers. • Has a detrimental impact on close working relationships for which personal loyalty and confidence are necessary • Interferes with the normal operation of the employer’s business. Any litigation over this firing would focus on whether these are real factors that would disrupt teaching, or whether the university officials are just punishing her for her politics. The specific tweets are presumably not directed against any individuals who are at the college, and do not involve the college's normal operations. This does undermine the case somewhat.
Hermitian909 5y ago
I'm sympathetic to this point of view, but the effect of social media is that people are effectively speaking into a bullhorn for the whole world to hear. Once they've done so it's hard to keep that out of work. Let's say someone, call them Frank, expresses on twitter that he thinks women aren't fit for work outside the home and his coworkers discover he said this. At the very least, Frank's female coworkers will almost certainly not feel comfortable working with him anymore knowing his opinions. They're unlikely to believe he respects them, and since they don't believe that they likely won't want to collaborate with him. If Frank's work requires collaboration (as most does), he's now hamstrung himself at work. From the employer's perspective: Frank is now less effective at work. Frank's coworkers who are uncomfortable may try to leave teams Frank is on, or avoid work that might force them to collaborate with Frank. The result is organizational chaos and Frank becomes a drag on the company. The natural response here, I think, is to let Frank go. It's hard to avoid it because there aren't just social pressures to fire him, but economic ones. The above isn't a thought experiment, I've watched more than one version of the above happen. I just don't really see how this separation can be maintained.
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- RememberTheFtr 5y ago
  This is maybe a fallacy since very few men actually think women shouldn’t work outside the house. A lot of men (and women) think women would be happier in the home than working. There’s also psychological and sexual dynamics in play with submissiveness vs assertiveness required to be competitive. And that our culture of 2 income households and every woman wants to be in STEM to build ad products is a flawed concept. We want all genders to be technically competent but we want a resilient, self sufficient world, that doesn’t have to ‘capitalize’ on every human ambition/potential. Except we live in a world where me saying that makes me sexist. And worthy of doxxing.
  - TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
    You’re completely missing his point. Think in generalities, the specifics of his example.
devwastaken 5y ago
"One truthseeker comment that Benton found, responding to a 2017 Gateway Pundit piece about a Muslim protest at Trump Tower, was especially abhorrent: “Scum. Deport them. They hate us. Get rid of them.” Calling an ethnicity of people "scum" and to "deport" them is harmful behavior. Every time something like this comes up the actual matter gets downplayed as if it were "just a comment". When this individual quite literally is being 100% racist with intent to cause harm. Perhaps were all too young to remember what happens when people like that group together.
- underseacables 5y ago
  Which she denies saying. In fact the article goes on to state that the journalist never actually verified or even asked her if she made that statement. Just assumed.
  - TOMDM 5y ago
    Are you implying that if it were verified that she made that comment that you would change your mind about her firing?
    - underseacables 5y ago
      Good question. I think yes, if you disparage publicly a persons race or religion, that would be justification for termination from a job. I would put that under hate speech, and it would apply equally to everyone. Here what troubles me is that she denies it, and there’s no proof that she said it, but she’s being made to be accountable for it. With the depositions and everything I’m sure that she is going to be asked did you write this, and she will be required to answer under oath. I think that will be a very telling moment and all of this. The Internet makes it far too easy to attribute things to people. I could create an account on a multitude of services call “TOMDM” Top of your bio, and say some truly horrible things. Your job or employer comes to you and says why would you say these things and you say hey that wasn’t me, someone took a name that I was using on another service. Well I’m sorry, we have to let you go. Now it’s up to you to pursue civil litigation probably in order to identify the person who was actually using that handle, so you could then go back to your former employee and say your termination of me was unjustified. That’s what I’m seeing here, a claim without proof Which has led to someone’s loss of employment. I’m bothered by that and I think we all should be.
threatofrain 5y ago
A professor is someone who speaks with the authority of their associated institution, whether they or the institution wants it that way. In that respect, a professor can drain the credibility of an institution faster than they can repair it, as is typically the case with credibility anywhere. And in this case, then-professor Francesca Viola logged in with her official institutional email. Speaking her mind was the not the issue. The issue is draining the credibility of the institution. The academic institution she hails from, Temple University, has their own interests to watch out for, she did not sue them.
yumraj 5y ago
> in their private life outside of their job Sure, I'll agree if the comments were stated in a private setting and limited to a group which knew each other. Unfortunately this is not that. This is analogous to a person standing in the middle of a market square with a megaphone and a hood over them to hide their identity. Given that, it is only natural for the people who are opposed to the person's views to want to know who that person is in case that is a person who they interact in real-life and might be in a position of influence. This applies to any kind of opinion and not just right leaning. BTW, if we want to allow them to have their free speech, doesn't free speech protect the other side too, Neiman Lab in this case? If the opinions expressed by the person deserve protection, the right of others to investigate and present their findings should also be preserved.
- jtbayly 5y ago
  Investigate? He wasn't investigating. He was canceling somebody who criticized him. In violation of his own promises both to Disqus and to the woman whose job he destroyed.
jlarocco 5y ago
It's a little more complicated than that, though. The underlying issue for the university is whether she can effectively teach Muslim students when she thinks they're "scum" who should be deported. And, will Muslim students be comfortable signing up for her class now, or has she effectively steered them away with her racism? Regardless of how it came to their attention, the university undoutedly has some kind of zero-tolerance policy against racism. Generally I agree with your sentiment, but I think this case squeezes into that small "little to zero" impact section.
- AutumnCurtain 5y ago
  She is not pursuing a lawsuit against the university itself (at least at this point) for exactly the reason you point out here - a university cannot reasonably trust someone with those views to treat Muslim students fairly.
  - pwdisswordfish8 5y ago
    > for exactly the reason Do you have insider information about the case, or is this your synthesis? The former strikes me as being unlikely, because you seem to have missed that the cornerstone of the suit is the claim that she's not actually the one responsible for the anti-Muslim comment, which is what makes this defamation.
    - ceejayoz 5y ago
      "Someone hacked my account to post that one comment that's in line with the other sorts of comments I've been posting for years... and they managed to use my IP address" is gonna have an uphill battle for credibility in court.
      - munk-a 5y ago
        It certainly will, but she's got every right to pursue it in court because sometimes that does happen.
      - 5y ago
N1H1L 5y ago
> She was clearly targeted, ostracized, and fired for speaking her mind. I don’t agree with her statement, but academia is poisoning free speech under the guise of righteousness. Big claims, iff true.
fatbird 5y ago
There's a large body of established case law that organizations do not have to bear the consequences of their employee's private lives, or continue their association with an individual when that association is harmful to the organization. You're proposing an appealing ideal, but it's already contrary to a lot of existing decisions on the first amendment and balancing the competing rights of the different parties. In other words, you're stripping the rights of some to enhance the rights of others, which is rarely intended, but still something that has to be recognized.
3637383 5y ago
I'll never understand how people can respect academia. It's a thoroughly shitty environment for people who at best got gaslighted into not valuing their time. The only reason the hard sciences are more credible than the soft sciences or the humanities is because the hard sciences are forced to tackle reality in a manner where it can tell them they're wrong without room for simply inventing a new critical framework and attacking the topic instead of the question.
Causality1 5y ago
How is any of it defamation, though? Defamation is the telling of lies about someone in order to damage their reputation. If anything, Nieman violated laws against doxxing.
getlawgdon 5y ago
I would say that aggressively disseminating hate speech and generally forwarding crazy conspiracy theories and racism qualifies as "harming and threatening" others.
ciupicri 5y ago
What about the freedom to hire/fire whomever you want to?
lhorie 5y ago
FTA: > In her suit, Viola acknowledged writing most of the posts I'm as pro-free-speech as the next person, but looking at the evidence[0] I frankly don't understand on what leg Viola is hoping to stand. If I understand this right, she's claiming she is the person behind the truthseeker username on Gateway Pundit, but that she didn't write a specific comment that was entered into evidence as being written by truthseeker? How does that not scream lying to evade responsibility? Also, IMHO, the repercussions on her job are not really relevant to the suit. Had Benton outed her for spamming pictures of unicorns, her job would've been just fine. It's her own alleged content that got her into hot water with her employer. Benton has no control over her employer's actions. [0] https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/59725194/8/4/viola-v-benton/ https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/59725194/8/4/viola-v-be... (page 5)
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bastardoperator 5y ago
She can't maintain employment because she can't be taken seriously anymore. She is not a victim, she ruined her own reputation through her own actions and words. This literally has nothing to do with free speech which is why she isn't making the claim.
jbluepolarbear 5y ago
She did harm and admitted as much. She’s being petty because she got let go. She has said that she made no anti Semitic comments against Muslims and that’s what the case is about.

forgingahead 5y ago

Like all other religious extremists, their worldview is that heretics and non-believers are not just sinning, they are condemned to an eternity of hellish suffering. It's ironic that supposedly liberal arts universities and "4th estate" journalists are the newest converts to this type of extremism.

warent 5y ago

I would agree if she didn't exhibit racism. Keeping her in a workplace after learning about that would be sending a signal that they care little about how hostile the workplace is.

mikeyouse 5y ago
Right - if she just said dumb nonsense, the school wouldn't have fired her. She was racist against a protected class under Federal employment law, who she certainly interacts with -- how could they possibly keep her on staff? And suing the website for exposing your racism? Why would she think she has any right to anonymity while spewing trash on someone else's platform?

cryptoz 5y ago

According to the linked article, her speech was definitely threatening harm to specific groups of people, not at all what you describe in your first sentence.

adolph 5y ago
Temple’s own student news site backed Viola’s right to say what she thought: “We don’t believe she should be removed for her alleged comments, although we condemn them.” And Benton’s actions seemed at odds with Disqus’s own policies, which state that “user information is for moderation purposes only” and adds that “distribution of personal identifiable information is prohibited.”
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afavour 5y ago

But her lawsuit is against the Neiman Lab, not her employer, so it wouldn’t have any bearing on what you’re saying? If anything it feels kind of telling that she’s suing the organisation that named her instead of the organisation that fired her. IMO at the very least the case is a lot more nuanced than you're making it out to be. For example: the fired professor was propagating conspiracy theories about Seth Rich. From the free speech angle, sure, she's free to say whatever she wants. But if you're a journalism professor and you aren't able to tell when something being propagated in the media is a baseless conspiracy theory, what does that say about your ability at your job? And as a teacher? It is not flat out wrong to fire someone for engaging in actions that cast doubt on their professionalism. At the very least it's open for debate. I think there's an interesting debate to be had over her having done this anonymously: if she separated it from her professional persona is she less culpable in a professional sense? Personally I'd still argue no, but I think this is why she's targeting the Lab and not her employer: it's a lot easier to argue that unmasking her (thus combining her anonymous and professional identities) was wrong than to argue that firing her was wrong. It seems their argument is going to be centered around one particular post expressing an anti-Muslim sentiment. Benton said she wrote it, she said she did not, thus he defamed her. All the posts were made under the same Disqus account so she might have a hill to climb in proving that it wasn't her. I'm very far from a lawyer but this feels like a case designed to set the professor up as a cause célèbre on the right rather than one designed to win.

nostromo 5y ago
She's suing Nieman Lab because she claimed they lied about what she actually said. Yes, I'm sure she would love to sue the university too. However she likely doesn't have a case there. I hope she wins the lawsuit because they sloppily doxxed her and broke the terms of service of Disqus in doing so. > Viola acknowledged writing most of the posts. But she denied being behind the anti-Muslim screed. That was critical to Sorokin’s decision to allow the libel and defamation part of Viola’s suit to proceed. The former professor “has plausibly alleged that Benton may have been negligent in his failure to verify that she was the author,” the judge wrote. He also took note of how Benton managed to discover and reveal her identity. Viola wrote her comments “based on the promise that her user information would be used for ‘moderation purposes only,’ which was violated when Benton posted her information on Twitter,” Sorokin wrote.

duxup 5y ago

Generally, I think it depends on WHAT they say. If someone says they don't trust / like people of a particular race, and they're in a position where they are expected to work with those folks. That certainly has something to do with their job. That's not threatening or violent, but as an employer I don't think you can ignore it / tell everyone at that workplace "well she didn't say it here so guess you have to ignore it...". Ultimately almost every job involves working with people, and you don't get to pick and choose who that is.

Swizec 5y ago
> Generally, I think it depends on WHAT they say. This argument used to be used to fire gay people from engineering jobs. Because being gay was obviously very bad and you can’t possibly have good judgement if you’re gay. Being gay and racist have obviously different implications on your workplace behavior and biases. The issue is that precedent is precedenty. If we normalize firing people for their personal life issues, where do we stop?
- cortesoft 5y ago
  You quoted someone saying it depends on WHAT they say, then posted an example of someone being fired for who they are. That isn't the same.
- duxup 5y ago
  I'm not sure what you mean, actually focusing on what someone said isn't an argument... it's a thing they actually said.
  - dandellion 5y ago
    I don't agree with him, but his post seems pretty straightforward and easy to understand. You're reasoning that we should fire people based on WHAT they say, that's an argument you're making about how to go about firing people.
    - 5y ago

renewiltord 5y ago

Well, obviously the disagreement in this whole space seems to be around what “harming or threatening anyone else” means. Some people, for instance, would find (making up a hypothetical) it “harming” if a large strong person spent spare time drawing incredibly graphic representations of smaller weaker coworkers being sexually assaulted by him. Others believe that no harm has been caused. Hopefully, in that situation you can see both sides of the argument. Now you can weaken that to whether referring to Muslims as people who should be deported is similarly a point where people can disagree. For my part, I believe in the freedom and liberty. No one has the right to have their stuff bought by someone. Temple doesn’t have the right to have students go to them. If they feel like they have to fire people in order to appeal to people, they should be permitted to. If they feel like they would rather lose customers than professors, that’s fine too. Unlike California, which believes that political opinion should be a protected class, I prefer the federal system.

csours 5y ago

> but academia is poisoning free speech under the guise of righteousness. No. "Free speech" is not a get out of jail free card. I think there may some narrow grounds for a lawsuit here, but it's not about free speech, it's about piercing pseudo-anonymity.

shadowgovt 5y ago
The lawsuit is purely a claim that the doxxing false-positived some posts that didn't originate from the doxxed individual. The suit itself isn't purporting to make any claims about the ethical or legal dimensions of using the information available to find someone in the way it was used, only that statements were attributed which the plaintiff did not make.

jasonlotito 5y ago

> What someone does legally, without harming or threatening anyone else, in their private life outside of their job, should have little to zero impact on their ability to maintain employment. Except this has always been the case. What you do outside your work has always affected your ability to maintain employment. The difference is that now those who benefited from this in the past are now suffering from it. > She was clearly targeted, ostracized, and fired for speaking her mind. No, this is literally not what happened. I can point to numerous cases of people speaking their mind without suffering from repercussions. Pretending this was about someone "speaking their mind" ignores the reality and nuances of what is actually happening.

colechristensen 5y ago

I think it highly depends on the content and relation to the profession. You indeed can post things outside of a professional setting which demonstrate that you aren't appropriate for your job. A journalism professor commenting on the news isn't exactly unrelated activity. This is indeed close to the edge of what would be appropriate but it would seem that what she said went beyond opinion and perspective and well into a questionable relationship with the truth and hate speech. A professor should be held to a high standard of rationality and posting things online, even anonymously, should be able to be taken into consideration.

mc32 5y ago
We’ve had journalists claim that all journalism is (should be) activism --that in itself is an oxymoron. but that's "journalism" in the States, today. So we have journalists who see it in their purview to frame things to fit their objectives as they envision them. We also had someone at the NYT who said what is in this age called hate speech against a majority “color” but wasn’t fired for those comments. So it’s indeed one sided.

mc32 5y ago

Also, it’s been known that people with normal accounts also have alternate provocateur social media counts where they gauge reaction to what they say. Sometimes they egg their own accounts for sympathy, etc. Imagine if we discovered all those accounts…

TOMDM 5y ago

Lets be explicit about what happened here. A) A journalist brought light to the comments made by a journalism professor. B) Said journalism professor's employer chose to fire her for those comments. Now, I think there is little room for taking issue with point A. If we're at the point where Journalists can't discuss the views of people in their own space, I have very little hope for a future environment of open and honest discourse. On point B, I think there are many views people can hold which justify firing someone. The only question is where you draw the line. If an employee was actively spreading hateful messaging concerning a coworker in their own time, away from work, I think most people would agree firing that person is an acceptable course of action (I understand that wasn't the case here). I also think there are a great number of people that believe pushing hateful discourse, even on your own time means that you are unfit for the workplace given that those views aren't conducive to a healthy work environment. In this case they were pushing some rather racist discourse. They said in response to an article about Muslims "Scum. Deport them. They hate us. Get rid of them." Obviously the point where you draw the line on acceptable discourse is in degrees, with active harrassment/hate of coworkers on one end, active hate towards a general group in the middle, and some kinds of conspiracism on the other. Where you draw the line is open for discussion, but lets not pretend it's not acceptable to have a line at all. EDIT: Other people are pointing out that Joshua doxxed Francesca using priveleged information from their Disqus platform. While I think that's condemnable, I find it largely immaterial to how Francesca's employer chooses how to react.

mikeyouse 5y ago
I'd argue that someone who talks like that needs to be fired from their position. She was a professor at a State owned college, there are certainly muslim students, professors and staff there. What kind of horrible hostile work environment would you be engendering if you let someone like that stay on staff?
- fennecfoxen 5y ago
  She is a professor at a state college. The state is obligated to follow the law, including the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, declaring that "Congress shall make now law... abridging the freedom of speech." Yes, this is incorporated against the states. Yes, it applies to state-run colleges. The firing MAY be legal if this speech is "disruptive" to the university or "subversive" of their goals; if so, the firing must satisfy a balancing test as to whether: • the employee's speech addresses a matter of public concern. • their free-speech interests outweigh their employer’s efficiency interests. The comments do seem to be on a matter of public concern, which is typically interpreted quite broadly. The criteria used to assess these efficiency interests include whether the speech: • Impairs discipline or harmony among co-workers. • Has a detrimental impact on close working relationships for which personal loyalty and confidence are necessary • Interferes with the normal operation of the employer’s business. Any litigation over this firing would focus on whether these are real factors that would disrupt teaching, or whether the university officials are just punishing her for her politics. The specific tweets are presumably not directed against any individuals who are at the college, and do not involve the college's normal operations. This does undermine the case somewhat.

Hermitian909 5y ago

I'm sympathetic to this point of view, but the effect of social media is that people are effectively speaking into a bullhorn for the whole world to hear. Once they've done so it's hard to keep that out of work. Let's say someone, call them Frank, expresses on twitter that he thinks women aren't fit for work outside the home and his coworkers discover he said this. At the very least, Frank's female coworkers will almost certainly not feel comfortable working with him anymore knowing his opinions. They're unlikely to believe he respects them, and since they don't believe that they likely won't want to collaborate with him. If Frank's work requires collaboration (as most does), he's now hamstrung himself at work. From the employer's perspective: Frank is now less effective at work. Frank's coworkers who are uncomfortable may try to leave teams Frank is on, or avoid work that might force them to collaborate with Frank. The result is organizational chaos and Frank becomes a drag on the company. The natural response here, I think, is to let Frank go. It's hard to avoid it because there aren't just social pressures to fire him, but economic ones. The above isn't a thought experiment, I've watched more than one version of the above happen. I just don't really see how this separation can be maintained.

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RememberTheFtr 5y ago
This is maybe a fallacy since very few men actually think women shouldn’t work outside the house. A lot of men (and women) think women would be happier in the home than working. There’s also psychological and sexual dynamics in play with submissiveness vs assertiveness required to be competitive. And that our culture of 2 income households and every woman wants to be in STEM to build ad products is a flawed concept. We want all genders to be technically competent but we want a resilient, self sufficient world, that doesn’t have to ‘capitalize’ on every human ambition/potential. Except we live in a world where me saying that makes me sexist. And worthy of doxxing.
- TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
  You’re completely missing his point. Think in generalities, the specifics of his example.

devwastaken 5y ago

"One truthseeker comment that Benton found, responding to a 2017 Gateway Pundit piece about a Muslim protest at Trump Tower, was especially abhorrent: “Scum. Deport them. They hate us. Get rid of them.” Calling an ethnicity of people "scum" and to "deport" them is harmful behavior. Every time something like this comes up the actual matter gets downplayed as if it were "just a comment". When this individual quite literally is being 100% racist with intent to cause harm. Perhaps were all too young to remember what happens when people like that group together.

underseacables 5y ago
Which she denies saying. In fact the article goes on to state that the journalist never actually verified or even asked her if she made that statement. Just assumed.
- TOMDM 5y ago
  Are you implying that if it were verified that she made that comment that you would change your mind about her firing?
  - underseacables 5y ago
    Good question. I think yes, if you disparage publicly a persons race or religion, that would be justification for termination from a job. I would put that under hate speech, and it would apply equally to everyone. Here what troubles me is that she denies it, and there’s no proof that she said it, but she’s being made to be accountable for it. With the depositions and everything I’m sure that she is going to be asked did you write this, and she will be required to answer under oath. I think that will be a very telling moment and all of this. The Internet makes it far too easy to attribute things to people. I could create an account on a multitude of services call “TOMDM” Top of your bio, and say some truly horrible things. Your job or employer comes to you and says why would you say these things and you say hey that wasn’t me, someone took a name that I was using on another service. Well I’m sorry, we have to let you go. Now it’s up to you to pursue civil litigation probably in order to identify the person who was actually using that handle, so you could then go back to your former employee and say your termination of me was unjustified. That’s what I’m seeing here, a claim without proof Which has led to someone’s loss of employment. I’m bothered by that and I think we all should be.

threatofrain 5y ago

A professor is someone who speaks with the authority of their associated institution, whether they or the institution wants it that way. In that respect, a professor can drain the credibility of an institution faster than they can repair it, as is typically the case with credibility anywhere. And in this case, then-professor Francesca Viola logged in with her official institutional email. Speaking her mind was the not the issue. The issue is draining the credibility of the institution. The academic institution she hails from, Temple University, has their own interests to watch out for, she did not sue them.

yumraj 5y ago

> in their private life outside of their job Sure, I'll agree if the comments were stated in a private setting and limited to a group which knew each other. Unfortunately this is not that. This is analogous to a person standing in the middle of a market square with a megaphone and a hood over them to hide their identity. Given that, it is only natural for the people who are opposed to the person's views to want to know who that person is in case that is a person who they interact in real-life and might be in a position of influence. This applies to any kind of opinion and not just right leaning. BTW, if we want to allow them to have their free speech, doesn't free speech protect the other side too, Neiman Lab in this case? If the opinions expressed by the person deserve protection, the right of others to investigate and present their findings should also be preserved.

jtbayly 5y ago
Investigate? He wasn't investigating. He was canceling somebody who criticized him. In violation of his own promises both to Disqus and to the woman whose job he destroyed.

jlarocco 5y ago

It's a little more complicated than that, though. The underlying issue for the university is whether she can effectively teach Muslim students when she thinks they're "scum" who should be deported. And, will Muslim students be comfortable signing up for her class now, or has she effectively steered them away with her racism? Regardless of how it came to their attention, the university undoutedly has some kind of zero-tolerance policy against racism. Generally I agree with your sentiment, but I think this case squeezes into that small "little to zero" impact section.

AutumnCurtain 5y ago
She is not pursuing a lawsuit against the university itself (at least at this point) for exactly the reason you point out here - a university cannot reasonably trust someone with those views to treat Muslim students fairly.
- pwdisswordfish8 5y ago
  > for exactly the reason Do you have insider information about the case, or is this your synthesis? The former strikes me as being unlikely, because you seem to have missed that the cornerstone of the suit is the claim that she's not actually the one responsible for the anti-Muslim comment, which is what makes this defamation.
  - ceejayoz 5y ago
    "Someone hacked my account to post that one comment that's in line with the other sorts of comments I've been posting for years... and they managed to use my IP address" is gonna have an uphill battle for credibility in court.
    - munk-a 5y ago
      It certainly will, but she's got every right to pursue it in court because sometimes that does happen.
    - 5y ago

N1H1L 5y ago

> She was clearly targeted, ostracized, and fired for speaking her mind. I don’t agree with her statement, but academia is poisoning free speech under the guise of righteousness. Big claims, iff true.

fatbird 5y ago

There's a large body of established case law that organizations do not have to bear the consequences of their employee's private lives, or continue their association with an individual when that association is harmful to the organization. You're proposing an appealing ideal, but it's already contrary to a lot of existing decisions on the first amendment and balancing the competing rights of the different parties. In other words, you're stripping the rights of some to enhance the rights of others, which is rarely intended, but still something that has to be recognized.

3637383 5y ago

I'll never understand how people can respect academia. It's a thoroughly shitty environment for people who at best got gaslighted into not valuing their time. The only reason the hard sciences are more credible than the soft sciences or the humanities is because the hard sciences are forced to tackle reality in a manner where it can tell them they're wrong without room for simply inventing a new critical framework and attacking the topic instead of the question.

Causality1 5y ago

How is any of it defamation, though? Defamation is the telling of lies about someone in order to damage their reputation. If anything, Nieman violated laws against doxxing.

getlawgdon 5y ago

I would say that aggressively disseminating hate speech and generally forwarding crazy conspiracy theories and racism qualifies as "harming and threatening" others.

ciupicri 5y ago

What about the freedom to hire/fire whomever you want to?

lhorie 5y ago

FTA: > In her suit, Viola acknowledged writing most of the posts I'm as pro-free-speech as the next person, but looking at the evidence[0] I frankly don't understand on what leg Viola is hoping to stand. If I understand this right, she's claiming she is the person behind the truthseeker username on Gateway Pundit, but that she didn't write a specific comment that was entered into evidence as being written by truthseeker? How does that not scream lying to evade responsibility? Also, IMHO, the repercussions on her job are not really relevant to the suit. Had Benton outed her for spamming pictures of unicorns, her job would've been just fine. It's her own alleged content that got her into hot water with her employer. Benton has no control over her employer's actions. [0] https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/59725194/8/4/viola-v-benton/ https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/59725194/8/4/viola-v-be... (page 5)

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bastardoperator 5y ago

She can't maintain employment because she can't be taken seriously anymore. She is not a victim, she ruined her own reputation through her own actions and words. This literally has nothing to do with free speech which is why she isn't making the claim.

jbluepolarbear 5y ago

She did harm and admitted as much. She’s being petty because she got let go. She has said that she made no anti Semitic comments against Muslims and that’s what the case is about.