2023-07-21 18:12:02
WASHINGTON (AP) — Anonymous racist, sexist and abusive messages have appeared on a jobs website for economists for years. Many originate from institutions such as Harvard, Stanford and the University of Chicago, according to research results released Thursday.
Some economists have condemned the Economists Labor Market Rumors (EJMR) site due to its toxic content. It is run by an anonymous person and is not connected with any university or institution. That is why it is conjectured that the authors of the intolerant messages were Internet maniacs who are not economists.
Even so, research indicates that among the users there are people from universities of the highest category.
“Our analysis reveals that the users who publish on EJMR are mostly economists and work at the highest levels of academia, government and the private sector,” the document concludes. Its authors are Florian Ederer, Professor of Administration at Boston University; Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham, Professor of Finance at the Yale School of Business Administration, and Kyle Jensen, an Associate Dean at Yale.
A spokeswoman for Harvard University declined to comment. Stanford and the University of Chicago did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
“This is not a couple of bad apples,” Ederer said at a conference sponsored by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “It is very, very widespread. And the toxicity is widespread.”
The revelations have sparked debates among economists on social media regarding privacy, free speech and online abuse. Some economists, particularly women who have been attacked on the site, expressed hope that universities would investigate the messages. Others have expressed fear that the inquiry might spark a “witch hunt” among those who post on the site.
Speaking to The Associated Press, Goldsmith-Pinkham tried to allay those fears by assuring that the group does not plan to “publish anything that identifies” the individuals.
Nearly 2,000 people watched a live stream of the document launch Thursday on YouTube. That was far more than the 100 who watched other NBER presentations on the same day, suggesting widespread interest in the topic among academic economists.
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