Cambridge Legend Mary Beard Faces Twitter Bomb Threats

Professor Beard was subjected to multiple Tweets last week threatening to bomb her home in Cambridge.

Caitlin Moran mary beard Newnham scotland yard social media tweeting twitter

Cambridge Fellow Mary Beard received multiple bomb threats through Twitter after speaking out against violent threats made towards women on the social media site.

These threats came just hours after Twitter boss, Tony Wang, apologised to her and other women who had faced abuse on the social network, calling the threats simply not acceptable” and pledging to take further action to curb future attacks. Beard, a Newnham Fellow, has been vocal about her ordeal with the Twitter trolls, speaking out against misogynistic and violent tweets on several news programmes.

Other well known Tweeters, including journalist Grace Dent and writer Catlin Moran, have received similar threats. While Professor Beard previously responded to threatening and harassing tweets by naming and shaming Twitter trolls, she has since begun reporting them to police as the threats escalated in scale.

One threat, sent in various guises from several accounts to other high-profile women, read: “A bomb has been placed outside your home. It will go off at exactly 10:47pm and destroy everything.”

In a statement to the press, Scotland Yard claimed they were investigating a total of 8 allegations of people who have been subject to “harassment, malicious communication or bomb threats.”

Professor Beard has previously supported a petition for the inclusion of an easy-to-use ‘report abuse’ button on Twitter in order to tackle threatening tweets, and claimed this week that the company had been ‘slow off the mark’ with its response. In support of the ‘abuse button,’ other users took part in a 24-hour Twitter boycott.