On Friday morning, University of Pennsylvania alumni, students, staff and community affiliates received multiple emails from hackers purporting to represent the university’s Graduate School of Education (GSE).
“We have terrible security practices and are completely undemocratic,” the email read. “We love breaking federal rules like FERPA (all your data will be leaked).”
This message was sent from a variety of different email accounts associated with Penn, such as GSE, as well as several senior university officials.
Other Penn affiliates have received the email multiple times from different official senders @upenn.edu email addresses. (Disclosure: As a graduate and former university employee, I have received the message three times so far in my personal email.)
Penn spokesman Ron Ozio told TechCrunch in an email Friday that the school’s incident response team is “actively addressing” the situation.
“A fraudulent email has been released that appears to come from the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education. This is patently false, and nothing in the highly offensive, offensive message reflects the mission or actions of Penn or Penn GSE,” Ozio said.
As the hackers made clear in their message (“Please stop giving us money”), this breach appears to be motivated by suppressing alumni donations. The breach also comes right after university publicly rebuffed the White House’s offer to make commitments aligned with the Trump administration’s policy agenda in exchange for federal funding. Even six other schools rejected the White House proposal.
The White House’s “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” calls on universities to end affirmative action in recruitment and admissions and to discipline departments that “punish, denigrate and even incite violence against conservative ideas.”
The signatories would also freeze tuition for five years, offer tuition-free education to students pursuing “hard sciences,” cap international undergraduate enrollment at 15 percent, and require standardized tests like the SAT for admission.
The compact also requires schools to implement policies that marginalize transgender and gender non-conforming students.
“[The compact] preferences and protective orders only for the communication of conservative thought,” Penn President J. Larry Jameson wrote in answer to Education Secretary Linda McMahon, which was posted on the university’s website.
“One-sided conditions conflict with the diversity of opinion and freedom of expression that are central to how universities contribute to democracy and society,” Jameson wrote.
