BY HANK REICHMAN

You may recall the case of Courtney Lawton, a part-time lecturer and doctoral student at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, who in August 2017 received threats after a video recording of her participation in a demonstration protesting an on-campus recruitment table for Turning Point USA was disseminated on the internet.  The university suspended her—initially, for stated safety concerns—and subsequently extended her suspension through the end of her term of appointment, for stated reasons of misconduct but without affording her an appropriate hearing. The AAUP investigated and in June 2018 added the administration of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln to our list of administrations censured for violations of academic freedom.

Sen. Steve Erdman

At the time a number of faculty members came to Ms. Lawton’s defense and to the defense of tenured professor Amanda Gailey, who also participated in the demonstration and was harassed, but did not face disciplinary action.  Among those faculty members was Gerard Harbison, a chemistry professor who has served as an adviser of conservative campus groups, like the College Republicans and Young Americans for Freedom.  After state Senator Steve Erdman and several other Republican lawmakers criticized the university for not taking harsher and more immediate disciplinary action against Lawton and Gailey, in comments to the media, Harbison said the lawmakers’ actions were part of a spreading, nationwide “hostility” toward academia and academics.

“She’s entirely within her rights and this is a witch hunt,” Harbison told the Lincoln Journal Star about Gailey. In an August 2018 column in the Omaha World-Herald he labeled Erdman’s assertion that UNL was hostile to right-wing professors and their viewpoints “nonsense.”

Fourteen months after the initial incident, Erdman wrote on his state legislative blog a post titled “Straight Talk from Steve,” claiming that the “behavior of extremist, left-wing professors” was worsening at UNL. He then shared examples of what he called the loss of civility.  He charged that leftist professors were continuing to harass Kaitlyn Mullen, the Turning Point member who had been the target of Lawton’s and Gailey’s demonstration, and specifically named Harbison, who he labeled a “left-wing extremist” and a “troll.”

According to the World-Herald,

Harbison, Erdman wrote, “continuously trolls Mullen online, leaving creepy and negative messages on her social media pages” and using an online alias of a “Canaanite god known for child sacrifice.”

“To be sure, Mullen’s death is exactly what he wants,” said Erdman, who also posted a photograph of Harbison on the blog.

“So,” Erdman wrote, “Harbison made a death threat against Mullen, and yet nothing has ever been done to confront him or to reign in this kind of behavior, yet it has been going on for over a year.”

Harbison, who once had a blog called The Right-Wing Professor, denied that he follows the UNL student on social media, and stated that he’s never met her. He said that Erdman’s claim that he threatened Mullen amounts to an allegation of a felony crime as well as a violation of the UNL code of conduct.