Harassment and Academia: Old Battles and New Frontiers

Last year, I became the target for a campaign of anti-Semitic, misogynistic harassment by email and on social media for an article written for an online publication. That negative attention was a direct result of the work I do in studying classical reception in online antifeminist communities. Although many perceive online harassment by trolls to be an entirely distinct problem from harassment in a professional setting, my experience has been that being harassed online directly impacted my interactions with my colleagues.

This paper explores examples of bullying and harassment in the Classics workplace at a moment in which various groups are coming together internationally to discuss this important topic and to seek solutions for it. Examples are drawn from contributions made by a range of colleagues, from PhD students to professors who have come together to discuss possible solutions within our discipline. The contributions include examples involving intersections of gender, race, sexuality, age, and disability, and it is suggested that so-called ‘double discrimination’ (cf.

I have been in the field of Classics for over 20 years as both a faculty member and an administrator and, as a result, have had broad experiences with issues associated with harassment. Harassment is a broad umbrella that includes not only sexual harassment and bullying, but what have been called “micro-aggressions”, defined as “brief, everyday exchanges that send denigrating messages to certain individuals because of their group membership” (Sue 2010, xvi). Micro-aggressions cause work-related stresses that over time can impact one’s ability to function in the workplace.