Threat Throws UCLA Campus Back Online Today (with an editorial comment)

If you have BruinAlert on your smartphone, you will have started to get alerts about a threat to the UCLA campus around midnight. The alerts indicated that the campus has moved all classes back to online today (Feb. 1) "out of an abundance of caution." Emails also came in, with the most recent one (as of this posting) indicating that the individual involved - a former Dept. of Philosophy lecturer - is not in fact in the UCLA area.

Yesterday, there were threats by someone to various HBCUs (Historically Black Colleges and Universities) that caused shutdowns of those campuses.

According to an account in the Bruin posted around midnight, at least one class is going to be held in-person despite the warnings and the campus decision to go back to remote learning today.* It is possibly, however, that the decision to stay in-person in that course was later reversed. 

Editorial Comment: There will need to be some after-the-fact discussion concerning the "abundance of caution" standard and how specific a threat needs to be before campus instruction is disrupted. Note that the midnight decision seems premature, since classes are not held at that hour. Many students and faculty would not have become aware of the alert - even though it was sent at midnight - until waking up in the morning. By that time, it had been determined that there was not an immediate threat. Yet apparently, the decision to go online could not then be reversed. The ability to disrupt campus life has now been highly publicized, possibly inducing future threats by unbalanced individuals.

As we noted in prior posts related to the coronavirus surge, flipping between online and in-person instruction is potentially highly disruptive and advanced notice - if such a switch has to occur - is advisable. Advance notice is more like a week and not a day or a morning.

From the LA Times: UCLA canceled in-person classes Tuesday after a former lecturer and postdoctoral fellow sent a video referencing a mass shooting and an 800-page manifesto with “specific threats” to members of the university’s philosophy department Monday. Several emails from department leaders and obtained by The Times inform students and faculty that Matthew Harris made threats toward the philosophy department and people in it. In some of the emails, sent over the course of Monday evening, department heads recommend moving to virtual learning, and multiple instructors did so, alerting students that in-person classes would be canceled...

Harris

According to one email sent by a philosophy instructor to students, Harris’ messages included “a video entitled ‘UCLA Philosophy Mass Shooting’ and an 800-page manifesto with specific threats towards some members of our department.”... Harris makes references to race and uses several profanities. He included links to his manifesto and videos, including the video that appeared to threaten a mass shooting. “da war is comin,” he wrote. “forward dis [expletive] to our tha goldhead caucasoid princess.” ...

A philosophy department newsletter from spring 2019 stated Harris would join the university as a postdoctoral fellow in philosophy after completing his dissertation at Duke University.“He works on philosophy of race, personal identity, and related issues in philosophy of mind,” the newsletter stated. Harris was placed on leave last year while campus officials investigated reports that he sent a video with pornographic content to a student...

Full story at https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-01-31/former-ucla-lecturer-mass-shooting-video-800-page-manifesto.

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*https://dailybruin.com/2022/01/31/ucpd-investigates-threats-against-students-faculty-from-former-ucla-philosophy-researcher.