Last USC Weekender ever...

[scoobdog]

... and our good friends at the University of California at Berkeley sent us off with a win and this: AP News - Protest delays start of No. 24 Southern California vs. California.

For a little bit of background, this might the end of a relatively continuous series that started in 1912 as USC bolts for the B1G and Cal is relegated to the ACC.  It's stirred up resentment from Cal given USC gets most of the blame for destroying the Pac-12, so when I was standing at the top of California Memorial Stadium watching a protest going during the coin toss, I somewhat egotistically thought to myself that the protestors were going to let us know how they felt about it.  That or maybe someone was going to cut down a tree, 'cause Cal students are tools like that.  Was I ever wrong.

They were actually protesting the suspension of a professor.  I had noticed a bunch of people walking around the concourse handing out some kind of flyer and saying "Justice for Ivonne," but I didn't really put two and two until word came up from the field.  Apparently, they sneaked on to the field wearing Media bibs and, just after the coin toss, they pulled off the bibs and locked arms on the 50-y-l.  So, now I'm thinking this must be one hell of an injustice to get such a passionate response.  Cal students are known for standing up to injustice, so the tendency is to assume that this professor was speaking on social injustice and the the university was cracking down unfairly.  That's even more the case now, given the complex layers of horror in Israel on both sides and the ongoing catastrophe.  As it turned out, the situation was the opposite, to the extremely tawdry, and raising a whole different set of questions.

The local PBS and NPR affiliate, KQED, has a fairly thorough primer on the situation, but the basic synopsis is that the professor in question accused another professor on a sister campus of hacking her computer, then proceeded to engage in a borderline terroristic campaign of retaliation.  The initial complaint centered on the targeted professor from UC Davis, a Joshua Clover, supposedly hacking into Ivonne del Valle's computer an monitoring her personal correspondence and devolved into increasingly problematic tactics.  She confronted him on Twitter; when he didn't respond, she started calling his office phone and leaving messages.  Then, she showed up at his apartment to ambush him, ending up pushing a threatening note under his door.  The voicemails got more threatening, at some point she keyed his car.  That triggered an investigation lead to an order to stop contacting Mr. Clover, but she ignored it and left messages out in front of his mom's home, including "I raised a psycopath."  A second investigation led to a nine-month suspension, and she continued to go after him - this time posting a picture of his partner publicly and asking for the police to investigate.  This time the suspension was indefinite.

There's always more to such conflicts.  Women, particularly women of color, are regularly victims of gaslighting and smear campaigns when they raise the alarm about being harassed.  While none of the three investigations can't substantiate any deliberate attempt to hack and harass Ivonne, it nonetheless holds true that, as a POC, she has every right to express concern when coincidences raise the specter of voyeurism and abuse.  That doesn't give her license to go after family and friends of the target, or to make public displays that border on violence.  What's truly problematic is the response it's eliciting in her students - they're going to increasingly extreme lengths to get her reinstated, including going on a hunger strike if the university doesn't comply.  That's the beginnings of the kind of behavior we see out of Trump's unhinged fan base, even if there is no indication these students are doing anything unreasonable by exposing the controversy for all of us to see.  It's more a window into the basic mechanics behind cult of personality and how it spurs people to act for someone who is exhibiting problematic behavior.  It's also a warning for how cults of personality can enable behavior that would otherwise trigger disapproval in open society.