Trending across the United States and, apparently, parts of Canada too, is a connection between New York Times columnist Bret Stephens and bedbugs. It’s all thanks to an interaction with a George Washington University professor.

So how did this happen?

The news that the New York Times had a bedbug infestation seemed like a perfect opportunity for Dave Karpf to poke fun at one of the paper’s columnists.

“The bedbugs are a metaphor,” Karpf, an associate professor in the School of Media and Public Affairs, tweeted early Monday evening. “The bedbugs are Bret Stephens.”

Karpf doesn’t particularly have it out for Stephens, he tells DCist, “but every time Bret Stephens writes a column, my Twitter feed is full of people complaining about Bret Stephens, complaining about how annoying he is, how you can never get rid of Bret Stephens.” Hence, the comparison to a bedbug.

Stephens joined the Times in 2017, and the paper cited his “profound intellectual depth, honesty, and bravery” in the hiring decision. The news prompted some people to publicly unsubscribe from the Times, citing Stephens’s questioning of the science behind climate change (he called global warming a “mass neurosis,” among other things). Since taking up the mantle at the Grey Lady, Stephens has carved out a beat decrying left-leaning campus activism and millennials, who he writes “have figured out that, in today’s culture, the quickest way to acquire and exercise power is to take offense.”

Karpf’s tweet received nine likes and zero retweets, not exactly viral material. But it did get some #engagement from one key player: Stephens himself. A few hours after the tweet went out, Karpf received a scolding email from Stephens that said the professor “set a new standard” for Twitter vitriolity with his joke.

“I would welcome the opportunity for you to come to my home, meet my wife and kids, talk to us for a few minutes, and then call me a ‘bedbug’ to my face,” Stephens wrote. “Please consider this a standing invitation. You are more than welcome to bring your significant other.”

https://twitter.com/davekarpf/status/1166171837082079232

Karpf’s first reaction? “My god, this is bizarre,” he says he thought at the time. “Why don’t you have a hobby, Bret Stephens?” Because the original tweet had so little interaction, Karpf assumes that Stephens must have found it by manually searching for it.

But what bothered him about it was that Stephens included GW’s provost in the email: “That means he’s not actually bemoaning the loss of civility,” Karpf says. “That means he is trying to enact a social penalty for me saying mean things about him online. And that’s an abuse of his position of authority.”

While speaking with DCist on the phone, Karpf says the GW provost replied to Stephens’ email, saying that the school backed him entirely, and was committed to academic freedom and free speech.

Forrest Maltzman, GW’s provost and executive vice president for academic affairs, reiterated this in an emailed statement to DCist. “”As an academic, Professor Karpf speaks for himself and does not take direction from me. His opinions are his own. Our commitment to academic freedom and free speech are integral to GW’s mission,” the statement says.

On Monday, Karpf tweeted about Stephens’ email. And this time, the retweets started rolling in. “This is the biggest Streisand effect since Streisand,” Karpf says. And he would know—his areas of expertise include internet politics, political communication, and political blogs.

“It matters just how milquetoast the joke was and how over-the-top his response has been,” says Karpf. “Every woman and every person of color deals with far worse than this on Twitter on every single day.”

For his part, Stephens has deactivated his Twitter account, but continues to defend his decision to email Karpf. “I think that kind of rhetoric is dehumanizing and totally unacceptable, no matter where it comes from,” he said on MSNBC Tuesday morning. “I had no intention whatsoever to get him in any kind of professional trouble, but it is the case that the New York Times and other institutions that people should be aware, managers should be aware, of the way in which their people, their professors or their journalists interact with the rest of the world.”

Karpf, a tenured professor at GW, doesn’t buy it. “If I was pre-tenure I would be terrified right now, even though I don’t think I did anything wrong,” he says. “That is pretty obviously the whole point of him sending that email.” He adds that if he had been actively trolling users, writing white supremacist content, or calling for violence online, for example, getting the provost involved would have been appropriate.

Karpf notes the hypocrisy in Stephens writing about how “college campuses don’t promote and allow speech that is going to make people uncomfortable, then hes cc’ing the provost about some tweet that made him uncomfortable.”

This incident follows one in which New York Times editor Jonathan Weisman was demoted, in part for demanding an “enormous apology” from author Roxane Gay over her critical tweet about him. In addition to emailing Gay, he also sent notes to her publisher and assistant.

So will Karpf take up Stephens on an offer to call him a bedbug to his face? “It wasn’t an earnest offer,” he says. He would be game for Stephens coming to GW for a public conversation about civility in the internet age.

Maltzman, GW’s provost, echoed the invitation in his statement: “We welcome Mr. Stephens to visit our campus to speak about civil discourse in the digital age.”

“This is what I teach and study for a living,” Karpf says, adding that his class will be discussing this event on Wednesday. “I appreciate him writing my lesson plan for tomorrow.”

But he doesn’t plan on taking the train up to New York to speak with the columnist. “I have a job that keeps me busy,” Karpf says.

This story has been updated with comment from Forrest Maltzman, GW’s provost.