Open and constructive dialogue

The past couple of years have placed unique strains on everyone in our world. The pandemic and its associated impacts to the way we all live, learn and work have changed so much about how we interact with the people around us, and with people we've only met virtually on video, by email or on social media. In many circumstances, discussions about pandemic public health measures have been very passionately charged - understandably so, when life and liberty are the issues at hand. But sometimes passion has translated into personal attacks or has reached levels of harassment or abuse. It's not just pandemic pressure that has elicited passionate responses between people in recent times - also crossing the line from discussion to abuse. Researchers working in a variety of areas across the University have had to endure some abusive treatment by email and on social media recently. Increasingly, as we seek to bring our research to more audiences, our people are subject to deeply troubling conduct from individuals around the world - and sometimes from people here on our campus and community.