I had been planning to spend my Semester 1 (first half of the calendar year) 2024 sabbatical as a visitor at a philosophy department in the U.S. — a good department, with plenty of political philosophers and with a reputation for being open-minded as to libertarian and conservative positions, in a swing state. After following-up about arrangements, I received the following response:

“I have had a chance to talk to my colleagues in _____ and many philosophers around the US and Europe over the last few weeks, and I have received the nearly unanimous advice that a sabbatical visit at this time would not be in the best interests of the department.  We are all pretty spooked by the events of March at the Parliament house in Melbourne.  We do not think we can afford to risk anything like that happening here.  I am sorry for this and hope we will be able to move past this in the future.”

(The text is verbatim except that I have removed the name of the department, because that is not really the point).

The events of March at the Parliament house in Melbourne refers to the Let Women Speak rally and the counter-counterprotest by members of the National Socialist Network. At the time, in large part due to media misinformation, many people believed in the preposterous idea that there was a feminist/neo-Nazi alliance. (One taregt of this misinformation later won a defamation suit). I think what this philosopher meant was, we can’t risk neo-Nazis following you to _____? But I’m not sure.