Bond said that shortly after the essay went live last week, conservative media platforms including Campus Watch, The Blaze, and the National Review published articles that included quotes from her piece, taken out of context, under headlines such as “College Professor Says White Marble Statue Promotes Racism.”
“What they want to believe is that there is a liberal professor that is so sensitive to race issues that she will make race issues out of anything,” Bond said. “They want to make me an example of the hyper-liberalization of the academy.”
Bond began receiving dozens of hateful emails threatening violence, calling her derogatory names, and saying she ought to be fired. Some assailants made anti-Semitic remarks after learning that she partially identifies as ethnically Jewish. She became a target for internet trolls almost overnight. Joe Pags Pagliarulo, a conservative radio talk show host, even mentioned the article while on air, inciting people to harass the professor even more. “Hyperallergic fielded most of the death threats, but it’s hard. I thought I was speaking to a group of artists.” Bond added, “I don’t believe that a lot of the people that wrote to me are white supremacists, I believe a lot of them never read the original article, the primary source, and that is really what I want them to do.”
