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Addressing Harassment

Resources for Academics Targeted by Online Harassment

Protecting academic freedom is at the core of UC Merced’s mission. This guide highlights the resources available tosupport academics who are confronting provocative and inflammatory online rhetoric. Facing toxic speech can bedemoralizing and depleting, and we are committed to providing university faculty with assistance.

 

What to do if you are targeted

  • Ensure Your Safety
    • If you have received a threat to your safety, or if your physical safety is a concern, contact UC Merced Police Department and/or your local law enforcement for immediate help and safety planning, both in the workplace and at home.

 

  • Report the Incident
    • Notify your Department Chair.
    • Notify the Academic Personnel Office via your school’s assistant dean/director for academic personnel, or by contacting the Associate Vice Provost for Academic Personnel, Anna Song.  
    • If you believe you are being targeted because of one or more of your Protected Categories, contact UC Merced’s Office for the Prevention of Harassment and Discrimination (OPHD) at ophd@ucmerced.edu or 209-413-4652 to understand your options.
    • Extreme online harassment, such as doxing, is illegal in the state of California and can be charged as a criminal offense. One solution to deter and stop harassment is to file a report with local authorities, such as the UC Merced Police Department

 

  • Collect and Preserve Evidence
    • Take and archive screenshots that show the message, the sender/poster, the online location, and the date andtime of comments. If email, save all emails; do not delete. 
      • If it is too difficult to do it yourself, ask someone else to assist or do it for you.
      • Store this material in a secure location like encrypted cloud storage or a password-protected folder.  
      • Consider establishing an incident log.
    • UC Merced's Information Security Office can assist in collecting and removing offensive material. To get started with that process, Report a Cyber Security Incident via the OIT Service Hub.

 

  • Quiet the Noise
    • Limit your exposure to harassment by muting the source(s), as possible. Strategies include asking someoneelse to vet your voicemail messages, set up an email filter to direct messages from a particular sender, or that contain a particular term, to a special folder; unfollow or block someone on social media, temporarily disable social media profiles or set your account to private, report the behavior to the platform, and disengage from social media. For detailed advice about the implications of different approaches and guidance on different platforms consider reviewing PEN America’s Online Harassment Field Manual .
    • Take steps to protect your professional and personal cyber-identity. To get started, Report a Cyber Security Incident via the OIT Service Hub.

 

  • Decide Whether to Respond
    • Consult with the Associate Vice Chancellor for Strategic Communications, Josh Morgan, and others about the advantages and disadvantages of responding, given your specific circumstances.  Consider reviewing PEN America’s Online Harassment Field Manual. Considerations may include whether responses from you or others who supportyou may:
      • Further inflame the online situation.  
      • Increase the offline, physical risk to you.

 

This resource was informed by the University of California, Irvine, Penn State, and University of Iowa. As well as UC Merced’s Office of Information Technology guidance - https://it.ucmerced.edu/Online_Harassment.