More frequent, more severe, more personal – An intersectional analysis of political scientists’ experiences of threats and harassment

Scholars have warned that academic freedom is increasingly under pressure in a growing number of liberal democratic societies. One of the numerous factors driving the decrease in academic freedom is the rising prevalence of threats and harassment directed at scholars. In response to these developments, research on academics’ experiences of such threats and harassment has steadily increased. Importantly, studies suggests that some groups of academics are disproportionally targeted, namely women and minority scholars. This paper extends current scholarship on threats and harassment by systematically mapping the scope, nature, and impact of threats and harassment among political scientists, a group of scholars whose work is closely tied to governance and power. Our paper is based on a survey (N=700, data collection is ongoing) distributed to political scientists working at universities in 29 liberal democratic countries across five continents. The study employs an intersectional analysis that asks which scholars are more likely to be targeted and why, hereby exploring different intersecting dimensions of their positionality related to gender and sexuality, ethnicity, religiosity, and social class. Findings confirm that women and minority scholars are not only more likely to experience harassment, but also face more severe forms of threats and harassment, are more often targeted because of their identity, and are more negatively impacted by these experiences compared to their majority peers. Results also confirm that researchers studying politicized topics, such as climate change, public health, immigration, or gender, are much more likely to be targeted by threats and harassment. In a broader context where institutional support for targeted researchers is often lacking, our results raise important questions about the ways in which patterns of threats and harassment may contribute to perpetuating existing inequalities in academia.