After Campus Reform reported on both hers and Schalk’s tweets calling Pence a “racist f**king piece of s**t” and a “scumbag lying sonofab***h,” Burnett accused Campus Reform of exposing these tweets due to them being “women, and we both work for public institutions.”
“This will blow over for our institution because there will be a fresh, coordinated campaign of outrage targeting somebody else," Burnett said.
Immediately after, she said their goal as professors is to "change" students.
“I mean, I think it’s ironic, right? that you send your kid to college and they come home with these new ideas as if education is a thing that changes people. Like yes, of course, that’s what we want to do," Schalk said.
Later in the discussion, Schalk admitted that UW-Madison’s spokeswoman, Meredith Mcglone, messages her when Campus Reform sends media inquiries and added that the IT department scrubs information from their websites when the school is contacted.
“Meredith Mcglone, who's one of the communications folks like she just has my cell phone number, and she'll text me and be like, Oop! Campus Reform emailed me about you again today -- like just a heads up,’ and then we have a plan... The IT folks know how to handle it when we need to remove all my information from the websites for a little while," Schalk said.
Jonathan Friedman, the director of free expression and education for PEN America, sided with the professors over the controversy, stating that universities should "do the right thing to stand up for faculty unequivocally."
After defending the current state of academia, Burnett said that Campus Reform “brought us together” for the meeting.
“In terms of the particular outlet that has brought us together today, Campus Reform. This is an outlet that grows out of a conservative effort to discredit and defund higher education,” Burnett said.
She then made light of "right-wing" students who feel "disrespected" for their views.
“Campus Reform didn’t come up because some poor, you know, right-wing students felt disrespected. You know, it is a top-down heavily funded, disinformation organization and for a bunch of people who cry about cancel-culture and political correctness, they spend an awful lot of time trying to get people canceled for their free speech," Burnett said.
Friedman followed these comments by insisting that there is a "parallel" to the "organized nature" on the right.
“The organized nature of it also, which doesn't exactly really doesn't have a parallel on the other side of the political spectrum currently, not that there aren't actors there. But the in terms of its organization in terms of its funding, it doesn't," Friedman said.
Burnett then took aim at Campus Reform correspondent Haley Worth, saying, “Believe me, I know way more about [Haley] than she knows about me.”
At the end of the Zoom call, Schalk chimed in on Burnett’s comments regarding Worth, saying they need to “give them a taste of their own medicine.”
“Haley Worth, I don’t like her. I don’t like that little girl. So I’m gonna go ahead and say that publicly, because she is creating harassment for me and she knows it. So yes, the journalists that are journalists in scare quotes that are participating in this, absolutely, and if I do have someone who is dumb enough to send me an email from their actual account with their actual name, dumb, brave, whatever, um yeah, I will go ahead and make that real public too because I would love for people to have their, like, family and friends know the kind of things they are saying to me… Give them a taste of their own medicine," Schalk said.
