As a school that espouses zero tolerance for harassment and discrimination, the Rutgers School of Public Health has made the decision to leave Twitter based on recent events. While our school’s account will remain a digital relic, we will no longer be active on the micro-blogging social media platform.
Our active presence on several major social media platforms, including Twitter, has been an essential part of our communications strategy, supporting our school’s mission and vision. We’ve used platforms like Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter to reach the people and populations with whom we collaborate and whose health we work to promote. These digital meeting spaces have also been where we’ve shared faculty research, student successes, and alumni achievements, among other exciting news.
Over the course of the last few weeks, it has become clear to us that the issues afflicting Twitter continue to grow in magnitude. As a school that is rooted in the tenets of social justice and health equity, we will not be part of a digital community that is rife with unrestricted and unmitigated hate speech and discrimination. We know that hate and discrimination – including ableism, ageism, homophobia, misogyny, racism, sexism, transphobia, xenophobia, and myriad other oppressive prejudices – undermine the health of people and populations, which goes against our ethos as a leading public health institution. Simply put, we will not contribute to an entity that actively jeopardizes people’s health by propagating false information and elevating hateful voices.
As the Rutgers School of Public Health continues to lead from the intersection of innovation and strategy, we are focusing our efforts on improving and increasing our presence on our other social media channels.
