My friend Ari Kohen is (once again) being harassed by conservative activists. This time a conservative lawyer made a request to search his computer under Nebraska’s Public Records Act – nominally because he called out interns serving a Republican member of Congress for being photographed while displaying the 👌 hand gesture in the winking way of white supremacy which has become popular amongst a certain set of young right-wingers. As it turns out, one of the interns happened to be a student at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln where Ari is a professor of Political Science and Judaic Studies.

Of course since Ari’s criticism of the photographed pose was unrelated to the student-as-a-student and additionally it seems the student was never a student of his, as expected the search of his university computers didn’t turn up anything interesting related to the request for data containing the student’s name or “Turning Point USA” a conservative organization that the student seems to be associated with.

But as Ari says:

The point of this search wasn’t to inquire into matters of public record. It was to harass several university personnel into silence. This is the FOURTH such search for one of my colleagues in under two years. It’s designed to chill speech…so I’m committed to be loud about it.

It’s both incredibly depressing and not at all surprising that conservative activists are choosing to spend their time attacking academics these days. It’s much easier than confronting the rot within the Republican Party.