The rules will likely be enforced unfairly because Harvard has a long record of deeming insufficiently progressive speech as harmful.
The rules will likely be enforced unfairly because Harvard has a long record of deeming insufficiently progressive speech as harmful.
I n early September, Harvard University announced changes to its “doxing” policies, stating that “doxing occurs . . . when a community member publicly shares an individual’s personal information without their permission with the intention and effect of intense harassment.” Unfortunately, the new guidelines provide yet another avenue to censor speech on campus by establishing a framework for a hypersensitive student to punish a university member who publicly stated what that student had done.
The policies are dangerous in part because they are imprecise and overly broad. At Harvard, “personal information” may include “a community member’s (or their immediate family member’s) personal or business address, email, cell or telephone number, class schedule, photo or video likeness, or similar information.” Furthermore, “publicly sharing” personal information includes “publishing it, posting or reposting it on social media, emailing it, hyperlinking it, or making it available for download.”
Obviously, it is unreasonable to release someone’s home address or telephone number. But under the new guidelines, private information is basically any identifying information, like a photo, and the nebulous addendum about “similar information” can be interpreted expansively to mean any personal details, sensitive or not, that an individual doesn’t want known widely. Even worse, a Harvard community member can be guilty of doxing without being personally responsible for releasing the supposedly private information, since merely reposting what an external actor released on social media qualifies as “publicly sharing.”
Still, the policies have the qualification that doxing requires “the intention and effect of intense harassment.” The university states in unhelpful legalese that “the intention and effect of intense harassment means publicly sharing such information in circumstances that a reasonable person would expect to, and does, result in ‘harmful interpersonal aggression’ by third parties” that (1) humiliates, degrades, demeans, intimidates, or threatens the targeted individual and (2) “is ‘sufficiently severe or pervasive, and objectively offensive’ that it creates an environment ‘that a reasonable person would consider intimidating, hostile, or abusive and denies the [targeted] individual an equal opportunity’ to work or to educational opportunities.”
Such a definition for “the intention and effect of intense harassment” has many problems; “demeaning” speech is an absurdly low threshold, and there is hardly a consensus on what speech qualifies as “objectively offensive.” But, more important, the flawed definition will likely allow the doxing policies to be enforced unfairly against right-wing students because Harvard has a long record of deeming insufficiently left-leaning speech as harmful and punishable; Harvard operates on progressive ideology, not a “reasonable person” standard. For example, the university told undergraduates in a mandatory Title IX training that “using the wrong pronouns” constitutes “abuse,” and “any words used to lower a person’s self-worth” are “verbal abuse,” both of which may be subject to disciplinary action. According to the school, “sizeism, “fatphobia,” “cisheterosexism,” “racism,” “transphobia,” “ageism,” and “ableism” are “attitudes, beliefs, and systems” that “contribute to an environment that perpetuates violence.” At an institution that warns against using the “wrong pronouns,” we can expect that speech that is perceived as right-wing is more likely to be considered harassment.
Although Harvard’s new policies threaten the free-speech rights of every individual on campus, they can easily be weaponized against student journalists in particular because a person who incurs reputational damage from an article can now claim to be a victim of doxing. Hypothetically, a Harvard affiliate might agree to an interview with a student publication and consent to being photographed for an article; such a case wouldn’t qualify as doxing because the person had given permission. But what if, say, a student journalist publishes a critical opinion article about a protest on campus and includes a photograph of the demonstration without getting express permission from each person pictured? And what if, for some reason, that article goes viral, and social-media users respond with supposedly demeaning comments about the protesting students? That journalist may have committed an act of doxing.
Although Harvard’s doxing policies are facially neutral, there isn’t much reason to believe that they will be enforced neutrally. I suspect that at the university, right-wing speech criticizing an identifiable left-wing affiliate will be regarded as doxing because its campus culture is inclined to perceive nonprogressive speech as harmful; the new guidelines will stifle conservative-leaning speech in particular and provide a degree of immunity to left-wingers for their conduct by discouraging public criticism.
Harvard has effectively endorsed the following untenable standard: A community member can publicly declare a personal position by attending a protest on campus, but another community member may be punished for publishing a photo of the protest with a disapproving remark that attracts support on social media.