Anonymous comments with racist, sexist and abusive messages that were posted for years on an an obscure, anonymous jobs-related website for economists originated from numerous leading U.S. universities, according to research released Thursday.
Some economists have long condemned the website, Economics Job Market Rumors, for its toxic content. The site, known by its acronym EJMR, is run by an anonymous individual and is not connected to a university or other institution. That fact had fed speculation that those who posted hateful messages on it were mostly online cranks who might not be economists.
A spokeswoman for Harvard declined to comment. Stanford and the University of Chicago did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Nearly 2,000 people watched a livestream of the paper's presentation Thursday on YouTube. That was far more than the 100 or so who watched other NBER presentations the same day, suggesting widespread interest in the topic among academic economists.
The researchers used publicly available data to determine the internet addresses for about two-thirds of the more than 7 million posts that have been made on the site since 2010. They classified about 10% of those posts as"toxic" because of their racist or sexist content. These posts included the use of racial slurs and assertions that women have smaller brains than men.
Anya Samek, an economics professor who was first attacked on the site in 2009, said the site persists because there has been no way to hold it accountable. She said she hopes the universities that are being identified as sources of some of the posts will take steps to prevent future abuse.
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