A Personal Story

How to Make Enemies and Ruin your Academic Career

In April 2019, I wrote a thread on Twitter about the importance of a sex-based definition of woman in international law. It was a very tame thread, simply pointing out all the instances in which women suffer oppression, exploitation and discrimination on the basis of their sex.

Little did I know what that thread would cause, like a butterfly flapping her wings over my life. I will not recount here what happened with my Twitter account (you can find a summary here). Certainly the initial reaction to that thread (abuse and threats started almost immediately) made me want to dig deeper and become both more knowledgeable and I guess more radical.

Speaking out about sex based rights had repercussions on my academic career, some of which I have evidence for, all the way to the lack of renewal of my contract as a Junior Professor and also the termination of my contract to teach online courses. I cannot prove these last two events were caused by my opinions, and I have no intention here to draw a direct, causal relation between the two events.

I do know that my life was made very difficult though. In September 2020, I was supposed to chair an online conference organised by the students of the Human Rights Master Programme of which I was Programme Director and in which I taught one of the fundamental courses.

Some students had complained about my ‘transphobia’ and decided to disrupt the conference at the very last minute, demanding the day before the start that I would not be allowed to chair any panel. The student organisers were thrown into a panic, and in their interest, I withdrew from my chairing duties. None of the complaints were put into writing, and I was informed of the crisis over the phone, but the email I received from the organising committee at the end of the conference hints to the problems and thanks me for being accomodating:

Dear Prof. Asteriti,

On behalf of the entire organizing team, I would like to thank you very much for your participation and moderation of our GaHR conference on Human Rights in Cyberspace. We are very glad that you supported us in facilitating the first panel discussion and we greatly appreciate your flexibility regarding the last-minute changes. Your valuable and interesting contribution has enriched the discussion and without you we could not have realized this conference so successfully.

In late 2019, the emails to my university asking them to fire me or discipline me started. In total the university received four emails. Three of them were not sent to me, so I had to do a subject access request to see them (the university was most uncooperative). One of them was sent also to me in November 2020. This is the beginning of it:

Es scheint, dass einer Ihrer Professoren misandristische und transphobe Ansichten hat. Wenn keine Maßnahmen ergriffen werden, werde ich mich an die deutschen Polizeibehörden wenden.

It seems that one of your professors has misandric and transphobic views. If no action is taken I will contact the German police authorities.

The email is signed Sophia B, I believe a transwoman who had been pestering me on Twitter as well and the same person I think who had threatened me there by sending me a DM that said ‘I know where you live’. Although I was almost sure this was not true, I found it extremely upsetting and I de-activated my account. Almost immediately I received an email in my university account:

Du bist ein Stück Scheiße und niemand hat dich bedroht.  Hör auf zu lügen, du verrückte alte Frau.  Sie sind wie eine schreckliche Version eines Nazis, ich hoffe, Gott hilft Ihnen.

-The person who got you to shut down your twitter. 

You are a piece of shit and noone threatened you. Stop lying you crazy old woman. You are like a horrible version of a Nazi, I hope God help you.

The first complaint that I could see when finally my SAR was answered in December 2021 was from December 2019 and it was in English, clearly coming from the UK;

Dear XXXXXXX, Please forgive my unsolicited email. I'm writing to you to express concerns about one of your colleagues, Alessandra Asteriti. She has been spreading harmful anti-trans rhetoric all over her Twitter, and while she says she is tweeting in a personal capacity, I find it hard to imagine these views to not translate to her work. If I were a student considering the Leuphana University of Lüneberg, and I came across these harmful and violent views from a prominent colleague, I would not choose to study there as I would fear for my safety and mental health. I would strongly urge you to reconsider Alessandra's employment, or at least take her on an Equality and Diversity training course. Failing that, I would ask that she not be in contact with any students, as I fear to think what the impact of her words could do to any trans students at your institution. I understand these are strong claims I am making, but I would hope that the safety of your students comes before any bigoted colleagues.

All the while the attacks and threats on Twitter continued, until I got my account suspended for a tweet in Italian, this one

There are only men and women. We are all free to express our personality, but I do not have to believe that a man is a woman because he wears nail polish. Those who undergo mutilating surgery clearly have mental health issues.

This was considered deserving of a permanent suspension in December 2020. At least one of the persons who sent me death threats on Twitter had written to my university email address. A list of his emails is in the image at the top of the page.

I asked the university to protect me. All they did was to delete my email address from my profile page. When I said I had received threats and I feared going to campus where I would be alone in my office, they told me I could file a criminal complaint to the local police.

On 8 December 2020 the student union at my university together with LGBT rights organisation in my university's town released a statement in support of gender diversity. The statement included the following request of action by the University President:

Eine öffentliche Distanzierung von den transfeindlichen Äußerungen der Junior Professorin Alessandra Asteriti, wie es beispielsweise auch an der Uni Leipzig im Falle der rassistischen Äußerungen von Professor Thomas Rauscher geschehen ist (https://www.uni-leipzig.de/newsdetail/artikel/stellungnahme-der-universitaet-leipzig-zu-aeusserungen-von-prof-rauscher-2017-11-15/).

A public distancing from the anti-trans statement by Junior Professor Alessandra Asteriti as happend for example at the University of Leipzig in the case of racist statements by Professor Thomas Rauscher.

The President of the University, having heard of the problems with the conference, and having been contacted by the group of students who issued the statement about me, asked for a meeting. The meeting was friendly but cold. I told him that I had told the students I was willing to meet them to speak about their concerns. He seemed relieved to hear this and a meeting was arranged.

The meeting took place on 26 February 2021 with four students and a representative from the Equal Opportunities Office. This was appended to her email signature: Mein Pronomen: sie/ihr.

Let’s just say the meeting did not go well, with the students accusing me of being a terf and of dehumanising trans people within the first five minutes of the meeting. In retrospect, I should have stopped it immediately but I was keen to hear their reasons and present my point of view. It was, to be honest, a scary experience. I felt I was talking to members of a cult. Prompted by my question, the only girl in the group of four (but one was a NB male, so that’s ok) stated that if she walked alone at night, she would have been just as afraid of a middle age woman as of a middle age man, because she could not tell their sex anyway, and women rape too. I felt so worried about this young woman feeling she could not use her instinct to keep safe, because her ideology had brainwashed her into thinking her instinct was transphobic.

All through July 2021, when my contract ended, and after in my online course, students kept complaining about me in chat groups, as reported to me by a student who shared my gender critical views.

I know there are women who suffered much worse abuse. I know that I cannot prove I lost my contract and my online teaching because of my views.

I also know that I loved teaching, and tried to do it to the best of my abilities. I know I never discriminated against any student, and I went out of my way to help them when they needed my support with their immigration status, or funding, or references for work or their academic career.

I know I wanted students to be fearless in their thinking and critical in their approach to intellectual work. In this I clearly failed.

But would I do it again? Yes, absolutely.