Thread by @studentactivism

If this story is as described, it's an attempt to suppress free speech on campus and faculty academic freedom.

Also, jeez. Imagine being a NYT columnist and being so entitled and thin-skinned as to threaten someone's job over THIS.

Also also, hi Bret Stephens! My email's in my bio.

Also also also: Ahem.

The thing about this kind of bullying is that it doesn't just harm—often doesn't most harm—its direct target.

When you threaten someone's job because you don't like that they said something mean about you, and you're the kind of person whose threats carry a punch, you make other people scared.

For a New York Times columnist to email the provost of a university to complain about a faculty member's snotty tweet is an act of bullying. It's an attempt to stifle criticism of a public figure. It's an attempt to make his critics afraid.

Dave Karpf has tenure, so Bret Stephens' decision to whine to his provost is mostly just pathetic. But I (to pick a name at random) don't have tenure. A lot of us don't.

And so I'm taking a risk by tweeting this. It's a small risk, and a calculated risk, but it's a risk. And it's a risk whether Stephens reaches out to my administration or not. It's a risk because I don't know whether he will.

It's a risk I'm happy to take, for a bunch of reasons. But there are people reading this who would like to tweet about it, but won't, because they don't need the hassle. Because they don't want to take that risk. Because their jobs are precarious and they're scared.

If the incident went down as @davekarpf describes it, he's owed an apology and we're all owed an explanation. An apology from @BretStephensNYT, and an explanation from @nytimes of why this happened and how they're going to make sure it doesn't happen again.

And here's the email. The story is as described.

The email is astonishingly thin-skinned, of course, and ridiculously histrionic. But cc'ing the provost makes it an attempt to interfere with Karpf's employment and his career.