A conservative commentator is pressuring the University of California, Santa Cruz, to respond to his complaints about a Ph.D. candidate and trans activist there. And he’s asking his more than a million followers to do the same, sparking concerns about the intended harassment of graduate student Eli Erlick.
Specifically, commentator Matt Walsh says he’s concerned that Erlick is an “admitted drug dealer” who targets children. This is based on a since-deleted Instagram post by Erlick in which she proposed combining over-the-counter, doctor-prescribed hormone therapies for trans people who are experiencing difficulty accessing this type of care.
‘Time to Escalate’
“There are over 20 states trying to criminalize hormone therapy, especially for trans youth,” Erlick wrote in the post. “So my friends and I came up with an idea: shipping our extra prescriptions across the country. If you need hormones, I am working with a distributor network to give you access. Everything is free, no questions asked. We have hundreds of doses of testosterone, estradiol and spironolactone available now.”
She continued, “Each package comes with information on dosage, blood draw, etc. I realize this is only a band-aid solution: we need full access to affirmative care from professionals immediately. However, missing a single dose of hormones can be devastating (especially for trans teens and those new to hormones)!”
Erlick, a longtime trans youth activist and founder of the group Trans Student Educational Resources, is no stranger to the far right. Earlier this year, for example, she accused Walsh’s production team of misrepresenting themselves in order to recruit trans people to interview for his online documentary. What is a woman? (Erlick wasn’t the only trans person or ally to make this accusation.) In any case, Walsh and other conservative commentators took notice of Erlick’s post and began calling him a drug dealer. Some reported him to federal authorities, including the US Drug Enforcement Administration.
Erlick’s proposal for hormone delivery certainly raises legal, medical, and ethical questions. (Such questions must of course be weighed alongside the legal, medical, and ethical implications of political efforts to make gender dysphoria treatment harder to access or even illegal.) But concern among many of Erlick’s supporters is that Walsh didn’t just report Erlick to UCSC, he called his followers to force a public response and gave the university an ultimatum.
“We gave the leadership there a day to respond and tell us what steps they would take to address this before I started giving out their contact information. Well, they never addressed it,” Walsh said in his show named in Daily wire streaming service earlier this week. “Now is the time to escalate. The University of California, Santa Cruz, is a public university. These officials have no right to ignore this matter. They just don’t have the right to do that.”
After sharing contact information for various leaders at the university, including Chancellor Cynthia Larive, Walsh said on his show, “Next I’m going to find the Board of Trustees and I’m going to find donors at the school. After that I will appear there with a crowd of people. I will come there in person.”
The university said in a statement that “as a campus constantly working in pursuit of social justice,” it “strongly supports transgender members of our community. Transgender rights are human rights. Transphobia, homophobia, and bullying have no place in our society.” . We at UC Santa Cruz are committed to building a society that values and respects everyone, encouraging and supporting individuals to be all of themselves, enabling them to thrive.”
Regarding Erlick, the statement continued, “The University is aware of social media posts by one of our graduate students regarding gender-affirming medical care being outlawed in certain states. The University takes allegations of illegal activity, including harassment, seriously.”
UCSC declined to answer additional questions about the case.
Asked about the status of her proposal, Erlick said via email that “trans people have been sharing hormone replacement therapy treatments for more than 80 years. This is nothing new or unique. It is important to add that no one is offering hormone replacement therapy to children and the accusations that I am are false and absurd.”
Targeted harassment
Erlick shared with Inside the High Ed a number of messages she said she received on social media following Walsh’s comments about her. They include anti-LGBTQ slurs (Erlick is a trans woman) and various threats of physical violence.
“Matt Walsh doesn’t care about trans people,” Erlick said. “He is profiting from the moral panic about transness through new followers, advertisers and page views. Money, fame and power are his only goals.”
Erlick and some of her followers have accused Walsh of stochastic terrorism, an academic term used (in one sense) to describe the incitement of violence against a target, via the mass media and with plausible deniability.
Boston Children’s Hospital, which Walsh has repeatedly accused of “mutilating” children seeking gender-based care, also issued a declaration this week saying its workers are being harassed and facing threats of violence. Contrary to some reports, the hospital also said, it “does not perform genital surgery as part of gender affirmation care for a patient under the age of 18.”
Walsh has disputed the claim that he is a terrorist, arguing that sharing people’s publicly available contact information is not harassment and that criticizing someone is not terrorism. However, Walsh’s actions toward Erlick may fit into a larger pattern that groups, including the American Association of University Professors, call targeted harassment. Concerns about this dynamic in academia have grown with the rise of websites such as Professor Watchlista project by Turning Point USA that seeks to expose “radical behavior among college professors.”
A small AAUP 2020 survey of professors who were the subject of articles in the Campus reforma news website with goals similar to those of Professor Watchlist, found that 40 percent were then threatened with harm, including physical violence or death. Another 10 percent received hateful or harassing messages, often via email.
Since targeted harassment has the potential to silence free expression, the AAUP views it as a threat to academic freedom. And while Erlick is a graduate student, the AAUP has long held that graduate students — not just faculty members — have a right to academic freedom.
Erlick said Inside the High Ed that “Walsh is not only attacking trans people, but free speech itself. He is trying to silence those who support trans youth. Claiming that the university has the power to punish me for online activities opens up an environment of opportunities to suppress the speech of academics. Walsh is sending a clear message by trying to talk me out of my Ph.D. program: those who support trans people in academia are fair game for attack.”
The graduate director for Erlick’s department, feminist studies, responded to an interview request but said he needed Erlick’s consent before an on-the-record conversation. He did not respond to a subsequent request for comment.
Erlick’s research focuses on transgender politics. Asked about this, she said: “My dissertation project, ‘The Politics of Disrespect’ discusses groups that reject moralistic appeals to power in favor of undermining authority. Many of the groups I study are trans people finding ways to autonomously support each other.”
