Thread by @biblioracle

Surprise, surprise the FIRE database on campus speech threats defines threats in a way that excludes coordinate right wing campaigns threatening scholars from sources like College Fix or Campus Reform. insidehighered.com/news/2021/08/3…

You know what's not covered by @TheFIREorg's database? The kind of harassment that @hakeemjefferson has been facing over public comments.

https://twitter.com/hakeemjefferson/status/1432356434302291975

As an @AAUP survey showed, scholars who are targeted by outlets like Campus Reform are highly likely to face significant harassment. None of this counts as a threat to speech according to @TheFIREorg aaup.org/article/data-s…

FIRE and Campus Reform (via their connection to the Leadership Institute) share funders like Koch and Donor's Trust. FIRE has also been funded by the Bradley Foundation, which is the main source of support for the Big Lie. newyorker.com/magazine/2021/…

In 2017, FIRE was a sponsor of a Turning Point USA conference. They are funded by the same right wing organizations that are actively trying to tear down our democracy. sourcewatch.org/index.php/Foun…

The kind of harassment that Fox News and Tucker Carlson direct at scholars is largely not captured by their database, unless that harassment directly results in investigation or sanction. FIRE defined their criteria in a way to deliberately exclude those threats.

In the write-up @ColleenFlahert1 does a nice job outlining some of the shortcomings of the database, but there's even more. For # of "incidents" they count by the number of faculty involved, so if it's one event, but about 10 faculty. That's 10 incidents.

Ex. You may recall a letter sent by Stanford faculty that was basically WTF with this coronavirus misinformation coming out of Hoover Institute people like Scott Atlas and others. That's logged as 10 incidents in FIRE's database. thefire.org/research/schol…

Atlas et al. retaliated against the writers of the report with an actual call for censorship of the Stanford student newspaper, attacking the scholars who wrote the report critical of the Hoover Institute academeblog.org/2021/02/24/fla…

This results in an additional 4 incidents in FIRE's database, these threats coming from the right, though one is mislabeled in the database. Stephen Monismith was one of the authors of the report critical of Hoover.

The report that is considered a threat to speech against the Hoover Fellows is properly read as an attempt to engage in a discussion about institutional values around scholarship and accuracy. It is a response to a previous report from Hoover on their activity.

Recall, in addition to Scott Atlas who was advising President Trump, Hoover had sponsored the work of Richard Epstein, one of the earliest clown show embarrassments of the pandemic. Criticism of these folks is classified as a threat to speech by FIRE newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/t…

FIRE's database also doesn't include incidents such as the suspension of diversity courses at the University of Idaho triggered by a made up incident. Perhaps because it doesn't target a specific individual, they think it's not a concern. chronicle.com/article/a-univ…

The FIRE database does capture many incidents we should be concerned about, but the narrative they attach to it, that threats are coming from the left more than the right is entirely an artifact of the choices they make around what "counts."

Ex. The recent (thankfully failed) attempt by some University of Nebraska regents to ban the teaching of CRT is not counted by @TheFIREorg's database. If the goal is to fully understand the threats to free expression on campus, wouldn't this be important? wowt.com/2021/08/13/neb…