By Project Censored

Since January 2024, female law school professors, deans, and students across the country have been subjected to anonymous online harassment based on their gender, according to a report for Inside Higher Ed by Ryan Quinn. Text messages, addressed individually to the personal cell phones of  specific professors, deans, and students, complain that law school “isn’t fair” for men, men are losing “the battle of the sexes,” and women are “taking over the world.” Some women received messages that were sexual and taunting, one asking, “May I please buy a dirty pair of your work socks after a long day for $250?” The angry sender of the messages, whose identity has yet to be determined, has harassed female professors from at least nine law schools in multiple states around the country, including California, Nebraska, and Maryland.

Alison Guernsey, a clinical law professor at the University of Iowa who was among those texted, described the targeting of law school faculty and students as “incredibly troubling” and said that the message’s “particular focus” on female faculty and students “if not a threat, is certainly intimidating and silencing.” The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) encouraged recipients to report the messages through its electronic tip form, but would “neither confirm nor deny that it’s investigating” the case, Inside Higher Education reported.

The scope of the campaign became known when another of the sender’s targets, Victoria J. Haneman, a senior member of the law faculty and an associate dean at Creighton University, in Nebraska, called attention to the issue on her X (Twitter) account, warning other women in law to be wary of similar communications they might receive. A number of the women who spoke with Inside Higher Education said Haneman’s posts made them realize they were not alone and alerted them to “the breadth of the issue.”

Although the sender’s disapproval of women’s success in law school likely reflects broader societal tensions over women holding positions of power, especially in workplaces, as of October 2024, there appears to have been no corporate media coverage of this story.