To the President, President-Elect, and the Executive Committee of the American Economics Association:

As professional economists, we are increasingly frustrated and disappointed by the racist, sexist and generally negative content that is posted daily on Economics Job Market Rumors (EJMR). EJMR reflects and contributes to a hostile environment in the economics profession and disproportionately hurts women and minorities. 

The content violates the AEA Statement on Harassment and Discrimination, since it is at times intimidating, threatening or harassing. Due to the privileged nature of content, it is clear that many posters are AEA members.

Attempts have been made over the past decade to reduce the influence of EJMR. These include creating an alternative site for job-related information, statements from the AEA condemning online harassment, as well as calls by some to boycott or ignore EJMR. This site continues to receive between 700,000 and 2m visits per month. It is clear that these attempts have fallen short and a new approach is needed.

Importantly, EJMR is a source of personal threats and libelous statements, which cause professional and personal damages. However, because the site masks user information and deletes the most egregious content after a period, it is impossible for individuals to pursue legal action. At best, individuals can contact the site and ask moderators to take down harassing posts. This is not a suitable long-term solution since it requires constant vigilance that disproportionately burdens women and minorities. 

We call on the AEA to form a committee of AEA members and commit funds to hire consultants (technical and legal) to formulate a plan of action to help the AEA: 1) develop the technological capability to allow individual victims to flag topics in real time so that they can be addressed;  2) identify and collaborate with victims of libelous and threatening content to formulate a plan to pursue collective legal action against individual posters; and 3) explore ways to identify posters of such content (e.g., through IPs) and to obtain deleted posts, which are typically the most egregious.

Now is the time for collective action. We cannot continue to stand by and allow individual victims to suffer professional damages from this website.

Respectfully,

Anya Samek, UC San Diego // Initial signatures are in randomized order.
Timothy N. Cason, Purdue University
Steven Levitt, University of Chicago
Ricardo Serrano-Padial, Drexel University
Linda Babcock, Carnegie Mellon University
Judd Benjamin Kessler, The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania
Lise Vesterlund, University of Pittsburgh
Olivia S. Mitchell, The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania
Sally Sadoff, UC San Diego
Daniel Hungerman, University of Notre Dame
Jennifer Pate, Loyola Marymount University
Yan Chen, University of Michigan
Shakun Mago, University of Richmond
Dan Benjamin, UCLA
Maya Rossin-Slater, Stanford University
Laura Razzolini, The University of Alabama
Justin Wolfers, University of Michigan
Amanda Agan, Rutgers University
Laura Gee, Tufts University
Anat Bracha, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
David Reiley, UC Berkeley 
Martha J. Bailey, UCLA
Jeffrey Livingston, Bentley University
Emanuel Vespa, UC San Diego
Danila Serra, Texas A&M University
Olga Shurchkov, Wellesley College