Female Law Deans, Faculty, And Students Across The Country Are Getting Unsettling Texts

Inside Higher Ed, Female Law Faculty, Students Across the Country Are Getting Unsettling Texts:

Since the start of the year, women law professors, deans and students have received messages on their personal cellphones saying things like, “Law school isn’t fair for us men.” The FBI is reportedly investigating.

It’s not fair, you women are taking over the world now.”

That was one of the texts Shanta Trivedi, an assistant law professor at the University of Baltimore, told Inside Higher Ed she received from an unknown number on Jan. 30. More texts arrived the same day, she said, including, “Law school isn’t fair for us men anymore. The women always outperform us now.”

She didn’t respond. “I was terrified, because it sounded like a student who was upset,” Trivedi said. “I also was teaching at night and my class happened to be all female, and I just felt very unnerved by the whole thing.” ...

In late February, Victoria J. Haneman, the Frank J. Kellegher Professor of Trusts and Estates at Nebraska’s Creighton University, posted a warning message on X: “Attn law professors I received these texts from an unknown number this morning.” She followed her message with screenshots. Multiple women interviewed by Inside Higher Ed said they became aware of the breadth of the issue through Haneman’s posts.

The screenshots suggested the sender knew whom he was texting. “Professor Haneman?” he asked. “Yes,” Haneman replied. “Law school isn’t fair for us men anymore, women always outperform us nowadays,” the unknown sender responded. Haneman asked him to identify himself or be blocked. He responded with “I admit you women have clearly won the battle of the sexes, us men are the losers” and “It’s not fair.”

In her February X post, Haneman wrote that she had “discovered that many other” women law professors, in at least three law schools, had received identical messages from two different numbers. Since then, she’s written that she’s continued receiving similar texts as they spread elsewhere. “I have been texted three separate times, and I know of women law professors at more than 30 law schools also contacted,” she wrote last week.

Among those who’ve been texted on their personal cellphones is Franita Tolson, Carl Mason Franklin Chair in Law and dean of the University of Southern California Gould School of Law.

“Dean Tolson?” the sender texted, according to copies of the texts Tolson provided. “Yes?” Tolson responded. The sender then identified himself as “Tyler” and posted statements similar to what other women received, writing, “Women are outperforming us in all fields of education, not just law school.”

“I am not adverse to hearing all viewpoints,” Tolson responded. “This is my cell though. Do you mind sharing how you got my info?” The sender responded, “I believe I saw it on a [sic] old CV or syllabus.” Tolson had a back-and-forth conversation with “Tyler” over text; when he referenced losing the “battle of the sexes,” Tolson responded, “It’s not a battle. I think accepting that is the first step.”

“I found it very strange and not threatening but definitely concerning, because he was reaching out to me on my personal cellphone,” Tolson told Inside Higher Ed. “I engaged because I didn’t want to antagonize this person who might know where I live.”

Tolson said the situation “became alarming” when she saw in Haneman’s X posts that others had received messages. “I don’t know how he got the personal information of so many different women,” she said. “It’s just odd as hell.”

The sender—if it is just one person—isn’t exclusively texting faculty members. Haneman, who didn’t provide Inside Higher Ed an interview for this article, wrote on X that she began receiving emails last week from female law school students saying they were also receiving the texts.

Alison Guernsey, a clinical law professor at the University of Iowa who was also texted, said, “The specific targeting of law faculty and now students is incredibly troubling.” She said that the “particular focus on women law professors and now apparently women law students, if not a threat, is certainly intimidating and silencing.”

(Hat Tip: Jack Chin.)

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