Increasingly, Professors Are Being Stalked

The problem of stalking on college campuses is a disturbingly common one. As Erika Hayasaki writes in the Verge, 17% of students have reported being victims in some fashion, with the reported stalkers running the gamut from classmates to strangers and even nonstudents. The story, though, looks at a different aspect of the problem, about which far less is known: when faculty members are the ones being stalked. It focuses on the case of Janani Umamaheswar, who first noticed some bizarre and false—and easily disprovable—accusations showing up about her on public site Rate My Professors in 2019, when she was teaching sociology at Southern Connecticut State University (she's now at George Mason University). Umamaheswar also learned around this time, through the web hosting company for her professional website, that the same IP address was showing up repeatedly as a visitor, and also on her husband's separate website.

The story tracks how the situation escalated in alarming fashion, including violent, racist posts against Umamaheswar on Twitter and Instagram—attacks that escalated to include her husband and a colleague. There were also false accusations mailed to employers: "Reporting Asians for sexual harassment is a new hobby of mine," read one of the tweets captured by Umamaheswar's husband. The stalker, identified as "S" in the story, is described to be a "mild and unobtrusive" young white woman who took one of Umamaheswar's classes. The piece details the futile efforts to stop the abuse, and it examines the broader issue of faculty harassment in general. Workplace policies are seen as behind the curve on how to protect professors. "A lot of the people we talk to have their hands in the air," says Victoria O'Meara, a postdoctoral research fellow at Royal Roads University who's studying the issue. Read the full story. (Or read other Longforms.)