During the last few weeks an unusual quarrel between a Cambridge Classics professor and her anonymous online critics has highlighted the shortcomings of debate in a digital public sphere. An opinion that was originally only somewhat controversial was made to sound inflammatory and used to provoke a hysterical response. Had it not been for the target’s unflappable composure, another voice would have been silenced by the vituperation that is so easily manufactured online.
Mary Beard, a fellow of Newnham College and the Classics editor of the highly regarded Times Literary Supplement, is one of the UK’s better known “television dons” and probably the only Classics professor alive that can be identified by more than a fraction of the public. Famously careless of her appearance, Ms Beard is an attractively free spirit who blogs and tweets in a charming colloquial style. In addition to a formidable record of scholarly work on art, architecture and religion in Ancient Greece and Rome, she is a public intellectual in the best sense, producing accessible documentaries on the Greeks and Romans and appearing on current affairs programmes like BBC’s Question Time.
On January 17, during an episode of Question Time, Ms Beard was unfashionably sceptical about fears that Britain’s social services would be overwhelmed when the European Union permitted Bulgarian and Romanian citizens free movement within its borders. Afterwards her email and Twitter accounts were overwhelmed what the New York Times describes as “a torrent of unusually vicious, personal and degrading online attacks, many targeting her deliberately unpolished style and her long, unkempt gray hair.” During the course of these attacks, Internet “trolls” also “[seized on] her reputation as an outspoken feminist, offered crude speculation about her genitals and circulated an image of her face superimposed on a vagina.”
Ms Beard’s response was to republish the attacks, uncensored, on her blog and to recount the background reading she had done prior to her appearance on the show − to counter claims that she had spoken about immigration with little or no knowledge. Shortly afterwards public opinion began to shift from her remarks towards the ferocious condemnation they had attracted. Shamed by the sheer vitriol of these comments, Richard White, the co-owner of an online forum which had incubated some of the worst attacks, closed his site and wrote Ms Beard a personal apology. Meanwhile, traffic to Ms Beard’s blog quadrupled to well over 80,000 visitors a week and her scholarly writing gained new prominence. There were even reports that the trolls’ forums had been overwhelmed by Latin poetry sent in by people outraged at the attacks on Ms Beard.
Ms Beard has never shied away from an unpopular opinion. She famously wrote after September 11 attacks that “when the shock had faded, more hard-headed reaction set in … [not just] the feeling that, however tactfully you dress it up, the United States had it coming. That is, of course, what many people openly or privately think. World bullies, even if their heart is in the right place, will in the end pay the price.”
On her blog, reflecting on the strange twist to the latest furore, Ms Beard asks her readers: “[D]oesn’t democracy need voices other than the professional political class to be heard? If professional politicians won’t put their heads above the parapets (which they won’t on immigration), doesn’t public debate benefit from others doing exactly that?” It is a question that can’t easily be set aside. Last week the British tabloids pounced on a lecture in which the prize-winning novelist Hilary Mantel supposedly “attacked” the Duchess of Cambridge. (Even a cursory reading of Ms Mantel’s subtle and thoughtful remarks will show that she did no such thing.) But in the age of instant communication too many of us rush to judgment on unpopular or unorthodox opinions and condemn views that we don’t agree with rather than taking the time to consider them and to respond in good faith. In Ms Beard’s unusual case, a dissenting voice was allowed to have its day in court, but the unlikeliness of her victory should remind us how often summary online judgements needlessly polarize public debate and silence minority viewpoints without offering them any further recourse to the court of public opinion.
