This is how the story starts:
“NEW YORK (AP) — Columbia University said Monday that it has removed three administrators from their positions and will keep them on leave indefinitely after finding that text messages they exchanged during a campus discussion about Jewish life ‘disturbingly touched on ancient antisemitic tropes.'”
Do not mistake what I’m about to write as exonerating the admins. I am not shedding any tears over their dismissals. Be prejudiced and stupid at your own risk.
That said, there’s a troubling story within the larger troubling story. I’ll leave it to you to decide which is more troubling.
The story is that none of the reporting I’ve seen raises a single question about the method used to bust the admins. Someone sitting behind them used their phone to take pics of one of the dismissed admins’ phone on which a group text was running amok.
You may have seen the recent story of some guy on an airplane wearing a wedding ring who allegedly hit on and hooked up with a fellow passenger. A nearby busy body passenger filmed the whole shady thing and then uploaded it to her socials. It went viral, people found his wife, and I don’t know how it turned out. I don’t even know if the vid was edited with the hope of going viral.
Way more interesting than the actual case study was the difference in how the story was told. Specifically, there was lots of conversation about what might be referred to as “electronic etiquette”. More to the point, whose actions were more egregious, the alleged philander or the budding movie maker? That’s an issue upon which reasonable people can disagree, but the point is her total ignoring of his privacy was a part of how the story was written up.
But not in the case of the Columbia grouptexters.
The larger question is whether we want to live in a world where everything we think and write—whether in public, semi-private, or private even—is subject to public approval or disapproval or not?
I can’t help but conclude, based on the complete non-questioning of the surreptitious phone texting photographer’s methods, that few people are sweating the end of privacy.
Maybe all that’s left of the privacy crowd is a sad sack Boomer with a humble blog.
Harden has an informative twitter thread on how to “teach on-line” and you can see her and a colleague in action here:**
Pressing Pause 