Extramural Speech is Free, but Schadenfreude is Expensive:
When Academics Trash Talk on Social Media
Last week, GOP chief Terry Lathan, called on the University of Alabama to condemn Archaeology Professor Sarah Parcak for her tweet referring to recently deceased conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh as a “terrible piece of scum,” whom she wished to have “suffered” in his death from cancer. Frustrated that the UAB President had merely described the tweet as “disgusting” and called for a “review” of the statement, the GOP party boss tweeted:
So @UABNews how many times will you be “disgusted” over her antics? Blazers deserve better. You should be making national news for your good things. Other than another “we are appalled” statement what are you going to do?
When a political party leader asks a university president “what are you going to do?” they mean investigate, censor, and perhaps even fire the person in question. Such public calls to action against a faculty member elicit both chuckles and cringes from university communities. Academics laugh because they enjoy “academic freedom” to explore potentially unpopular ideas without threat of job loss and harassment. But they also fear the limits to such freedoms, especially in the differing cases of intramural and extramural speech.
Intramural speech refers to an utterance academics make as part of their professional work that represents their institution in some way: What they say in the classroom, a journal article, conference presentation, or when drawing on disciplinary expertise. Here, there are real limits to academic freedom and freedom of speech if a teacher says or writes something false, misleading, or abusive. University employee handbooks provide clear direction on such limits with extensive lists of types of offenses, taking guidance from the American Association of University Professors (AAUP)’s “1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure,” which confirms a tenured professor may be fired for “moral turpitude” or incompetence and/or refusal to do their job. Cause for firing requires an investigation and proof, e.g. evidence of misconduct or abuse of intramural speech.
Meanwhile, an extramural utterance can be anything academics say as private individuals in public, whether on social media, at public meetings, in letters to the editor and etc. The AAUP asserts that academic freedom includes the right to extramural utterances. University teachers and researchers enjoy the freedom to express their opinions outside the workplace free from punishment. This right has constraints, but the bar for transgression remains high as long as scholars are speaking for themselves and not their institutions.
Anyone hoping to investigate an academic’s extramural speech they find distasteful will be disappointed. Professor Parcak remains protected both by academic freedom and the First Amendment. There is nothing for the University of Alabama to investigate in her case. She cannot be fired for her extramural speech, and, as a tenured professor, she enjoys more security than junior or non-tenure-track faculty, who while granted academic freedom in principle, have less protection.
As a frequent user of social media, however, Professor Parcak understands the wider often unintended consequences of sharing her opinions. Followers and fans cheer her and share her words, while detractors object loudly and often maliciously, as she well knows since she has been extensively doxed and harassed online to the point of hiding her twitter recently. The personal costs of such harassment are high. Moreover, Professor Parcak’s extramural speech is fair game for future opportunities who might judge her character in their decision-making whether to hire or to offer awards or anything else.
Expressing public ill-will is tricky and deliciously tempting since it is the dominant ethos of social media these days. Consider what Aristotle has to say in his Rhetoric about the pleasure of wishing someone ill in a slight or insult:
The cause of the pleasure felt by those who insult is the idea that, in ill-treating others, they are more fully showing superiority. 1378b
Someone who insults the late trash talking Limbaugh might feel superior to him, but their words will get them dragged through the mud in brutal effort to teach them otherwise. Social media reserves taking pleasure at an other’s demise, what German-speakers call Schadenfreude, only for the most malicious. Rush Limbaugh was a pioneer of online Schadenfreude and his fans jealously guard this type of speech for themselves. Indeed, Limbaugh’s ad hominem style of attack on his political opponents enabled much of the caustic divisive speech we have today. It would be no exaggeration to say his rhetorical choices enabled other bullies and misogynists like Donald Trump.
This is why Sarah Parcak’s Schadenfreude is troubling. On the one hand, it seems only fair that she might enjoy turning the bully’s tactics on him and she’d have been no more tasteless than he in his lifetime. Whatever one might think of Parcak’s tweet, she is legally and professionally free to do so, and is merely participating in the established social media ethos. On the other, Schadenfeude is a rhetorical mode better left underused. It is expensive for everyone: the person who laughs at the other’s pain becomes morally suspect as “cruel;” their community, if they celebrate this cruelty also stoop to unkindess, and all future communities, wherever the person may hope to go will evaluate their actions and speech.
The temptation to Schadenfreude has always been palpable and lead to divisive climates. Rabbi Meir, a Jewish sage who lived in the time of the Mishna somewhere between 536 BCE – 70 CE, once cursed his enemies and wished ill upon them, promising to celebrate their demise. His wife, Buriah, knew better, reminding him that downfall of evil doers brings no joy for they missed their chance to do otherwise.
Schadenfreude is a conversation stopper. Academics can choose other rhetorical modes. No one has ever imagined academics drive cultural change, nor is the public staking their hopes to end cultural polarization on the denizens of the ivory tower, whose mawkishness remains legendary. But academics can model better forms of communication, especially, since so much of their work requires taking responsibility for their words.