Ratemyprofessors.com(RMP) is a website where students rate their professors on the measures of difficulty and quality. It is also a place that, for years, has allowed professors to be bullied, harassed, defamed, and even threatened. Below I am going to discuss my own story, but I am not alone in my experience. In fact, Medium wrote a great article about biased, sexist, racist and inaccurate content in 2020, entitled “Rate My Professors: Inaccurate, Unreliable, and Sexist.” You can find it here: https://the-professor.medium.com/rate-my-professors-inaccurate-unreliable-sexist-and-probably-racist-81a2f06047cd I have also started to post examples of problematic posts on Instagram under the name @ToxicRateMyProfessor. 

RMP has been around for two and a half decades, and it has changed ownership multiple times. Currently run by Cheddar, which is owned by Altice USA, the website allows any person to post any content without moderation prior to posting. Unlike other review sites like Yelp, RMP does not require a log in of any sort. For accuracy alone, this is problematic, given that any poster can claim to have taken a class they did not take, and people can post two, five, or in my case, 50 times per class. These things are against the “rules” of the site but are never enforced. This is one reason why I am calling for the website to require registration using a student email. Provided this email is not made public, the actual reviews would still remain blinded, however, there would be some sort of verification of identity and enrollment.

While there are many who use this site in its designated fashion, there are also people who use it to abuse professors. This often occurs as retaliation for a poor grade that they do not want to take accountability for, or in response to the professor’s identity or personality. There is a different between valid critique and bullying and defamation, and I believe my story illustrates that. I began receiving hateful posts more than a year and a half ago. The first ones started by referencing my sexual orientation and stating that the poster “did not like” that I was “a homosexual.” Once I had the site delete this post, another went up with very similar language, again refencing “homosexual urges” and also accusing me of bias toward attractive male students — an unfounded and verifiably untrue claim based upon age-old stereotypes about gay men. (The person I suspect is not a male, for the record.)

RMP deleted these posts, but they continued to come for months. Each time, I had to go to my page and flag them and while some were deleted upon “review,” others were not. In those instances, I was forced to e-mail the website, sometimes multiple times. The person continued to post these comments as well as other more general negative reviews for a while and then disappeared. They re-emerged at a later date with the claim that I do not respect disability accommodations, which is a serious charge that goes against the law. Again, this is 100% untrue, as I am very committed to ensuring accommodations are made, as well directing students to disability services. 

The next set of posts continued for some time, died off, and then started again. In total, I received more than 50 negative posts from this one student, despite the website claiming students can only post once per class. All of these posts have been deleted, but RMP has never offered me any help despite my clear distress and the affect this harassment has had on my mental health and job performance. Because they do not moderate content and will not remove people from their website, RMP allows a space where professors can be bullied and where hatred can be posted. Therefore, it is not surprising that my own situation has escalated. In December 2023, I received a post about Hitler and the master race on my RMP page. While I am a Jewish professor, I have not discussed my views about the Israel/Palestine conflict online or in person (and am not even on campus this semester), so this post was based purely off of my identity.

In total, I have now received four posts about Hitler within the span of a week and a half. The lates one reads: “Hitler killed everything that wasn't perfect the Master Race. High Fashion Sex Traffic my brother.” I have e-mailed RMP five times and have gotten no responses, although they have deleted each post. Knowing that this student comes back time and again, I have asked they help me deal with this proactively. Not only will they not provide me with IP information, but they will also not block IPs. When I noted this on Reddit, a fellow user detailed how they received threats and had their addressed posted and still RMP refused to block the person’s access. This is unacceptable. 

Professors are humans first and foremost. We do not deserve to be harassed, be racially profiled, receive sexist/homophobic/ableist/transphobic/etc. comments, be threatened, or have hurtful and potentially damaging lies made up about us. Knowing any student sitting in front of me could be posting about Hitler under my name on the Internet (though I have a suspect, this is not confirmed) does not allow me to feel comfortable in the classroom, or even safe. This then impacts the quality of education my students get, and that is not fair to anyone. As a public website, RMP has no legal liability for what is posted there but they should have a moral one. 

Society speaks often about students being bullied, but professors deserve the same care and consideration when they are targeted. It is not enough to simply tell us not to visit RMP when our profiles are attached to our names, utilized by students on a frequent basis, show up when you Google us, and can have real, tangible effects on our reputation, class enrollment, and our mental health. I ask that you please support this petition calling for RMP to institute identity verification through student emails, thus ensuring they are collecting user data (for when professors are targeted, as will inevitably keep happening). The website also needs to use these logins to ensure that posters are actually students, that they only post once per class, and that they are reported to the authorities when they post defamatory or threatening content. 

Being a professor has its perks, but the job is becoming harder and harder as our culture becomes more politically and socially divided. It is my hope that all humane and rational individuals can see the issues with allowing a non-moderated, fully anonymous forum to serve as a mouthpiece for disgruntled — and sometimes unstable — students. Requiring student emails upon login would not change the blinded nature of the reviews, but it would offer professors some added protection that we very much deserve. It would also provide for more accurate ratings by decreasing filler positive and negative reviews, so there is no clear downside. Please help me in trying to make this happen. Thank you.