The Many Apologies of Hank Smith

When you've been on Twitter as long as I have, you see online kerfuffles come and go. Because it's a platform that rewards the airing of grievances like an ongoing digital Festivus, it's all but guaranteed that everyone will have the wrong take in a situation and spend some time as the Twitter Villain of the Day.

However, there's one character on Mormon Twitter that seems to end up in that position more often than anyone else. And that person is Hank Smith, a BYU professor in the religious education department and public speaker who tweets under the handle @hankrsmith.

I've been on Mormon Twitter since 2009, and in the Mormon blogosphere since 2007. And I'll be honest with you. It's rare for someone to have to apologize for what they say as often as Hank Smith does. In fact, the only person I can think of off the top of my head who has the same reputation online as a troublemaker is John Dehlin. And I'd still go out on a limb and say that Hank Smith has still issued more apologies in less time than John Dehlin has ever had to do.

 

My goal here is to provide context for some of the situations in which my friends and I have found ourselves in our interactions with him. For those who are trying to engage in the community of Latter-day Saints and adjacent folks online, the decision about whether, when, and how to engage with Hank Smith is one that will come up. Because I value the safety and well-being of the people who engage and participate in that community, I want to assist people who want to protect themselves from harm online. And unfortunately, whether he wants to admit it or not, Hank Smith has a habit of hurting people he doesn't know on the internet.

Why I Blocked Hank Smith

Twitter has several functions that people can use to select the content they choose to see and engage with. There are keyword filters, where you can filter out words, topics, and hashtags you no longer want to see on your timeline. There's the mute function, which allows you to remove a specific user from your timeline without restricting them from seeing your content. And then there's the block feature, which prevents you from seeing a user's content, and keeps that user from seeing or interacting with your content at all.

These strategies aren't perfect, especially when folks you follow take screenshots of that users tweets to repost them with responses. Sometimes, this is necessary because the user will delete the problematic things they've said, thinking they can erase all evidence that they ever happened. But using these tools is a skill you have to develop over time by watching the behavior of other users. You get really good at seeing how people carry themselves online and recognizing when someone is going to become a problem.

When did I remove Hank Smith's access to me because I knew he was going to become a problem?

It was six years ago today, actually. (A coincidence, I assure you.) And it was the only conversation I've personally had with him.

He was making fun of a student for coming to him and asking for help to salvage a failing grade. He said that students come to him saying they'll do anything to improve their grades, except of course to attend class and study for exams all semester. It's a complaint, a chorus we have all seen and heard from post-secondary educators, at the beginning of every December.

But as someone who has been in this position at the institution where Hank Smith teaches, there's more to the story than that. This complaint coming from a BYU professor, especially in the religion department, doesn't mean the same thing as it does coming from other college professors. The implication here that students do poorly at Brigham Young University because of laziness is part of the toxic, abusive environment that runs rampant on that campus.

BYU is a terrible place to have disabilities and difficulties with mental health. My father passed away while I was a student there. My entire life fell apart. I didn't have enough money for food and was frequently going hungry. My paychecks from my on-campus job didn't pay me enough to cover my bills. I stopped going to class because I couldn't get out of bed. I didn't stop going to class because I was lazy. I stopped going to class because I was in a full blown mental health crisis.

Did anybody at the university care that I was struggling? Did any of my professors contact me? Did anyone ask me if I was okay, if everything was okay at home? No. They put me on academic probation, which was against university policy for a student who had lost a parent even then. I went from being a model student, a high achiever with good grades, to completely disappearing. I was giving off every sign of a student in crisis.

All I got from Brigham Young University was a paper to sign threatening to kick me out of a school and a lecture from a girl my age, a total stranger, telling me I needed to "try harder."

That's the institution where Hank Smith teaches. And that same attitude, that mercy and care only belongs to the deserving (i.e. the people who don't actually need it), is alive and well because of individuals like him.

I told him this story. I told him it was inappropriate for him to be presenting a student's personal struggles on Twitter like that. I reminded him that mercy is for those who need it, not for those who deserve it. I told him to do better because he was capable of a better, more compassionate response than this.

All I got in response was defensiveness, then silence. But you know what? It told me everything I will ever need to know about him.

He has been blocked ever since. Had I known how much deeper it was going to go, I would've held back a hell of a lot less.

A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing

Despite having him blocked, I wasn't able to completely remove myself from the impact Hank Smith was having on the people around me. Because he deletes his worst offenses as soon as they breach containment, you'll just have to settle for the summary I'm able to provide as someone who has been there and witnessed it.

Here are some of the things Hank Smith has had to apologize for over the past several years.

He has expressed mistrust and judgment towards women who work outside of the home, especially when they have children. He has presented being a stay at home mother as a morally superior choice, and has straw-manned that position into a completely different one where women aren't allowed to say they want to stay at home to raise their children. He is smart enough to know that if he was a woman saying that, no one would be mad at him. It's sexist for him to say that because he's a man passing judgment on the choices of other women.

He shows blatant disregard for the thoughts and experiences of the women with whom he interacts online. I've personally seen him retweet women who disagree with his positions so that his followers will attack them. He conducts himself with total indifference towards the safety and well-being of women online. This is ironic, given that a significant amount of his online platform and his paid speaking engagements have been dedicated to the prevention of bullying and online harassment in schools throughout the Intermountain West.

He has been caught interacting with, and possibly posting as, DezNat. As the sexist, racist, radically conservative faction of Mormon Twitter that has engaged in violence and harassment, Hank Smith has no business interacting with members of the Church like that. He talks a big game on the importance of inclusion, of showing respect to women, LGBTQ+ people, people of color, and all the things that are supposed to signal him as a good person. But if he genuinely believed those things, he wouldn't have the stomach to be around people who have made NOT valuing those people their entire personalities.

He started several arguments by stating that anyone who can't fully and unconditionally accept Joseph Smith as a prophet can't possibly have faith in any other aspect of the restored gospel. He openly insulted people, both for disagreeing with him and for telling him that this is a bad way to make friends and influence people. It was bad enough that there were several people I saw saying that they felt what little faith they were clinging to being totally undermined by how Hank Smith was conducting himself throughout that entire exchange. 

When he was called in by the adults in the room who were watching him do this, he doubled down. It escalated to the point where he attacked a gay BYU student, a personal friend of mine, by calling him a Korihor. This is a character from the Book of Mormon who is considered an anti-Christ. Following the same tactics he has long used with women, he pushed his statement out to his followers, which endangered that student at BYU. The harassment was so severe, the student transferred to another school and is no longer a student at Brigham Young University. 

Despite reports to the department chair that his online language and behavior had endangered a student, Hank Smith was not removed from his position and still teaches at Brigham Young University.

Protect Yourself

Since then, I've been advising people to stay away from Hank Smith. Do not engage with him online. Block his account. Do no post screenshots of his tweets. Do not buy his materials. Do not use them in your homes or at church. Avoid him the way you would stay away from someone whose kind words and good intentions could all suddenly disappear in a puff of smoke.

Why?

Because there will come another day, as there have been so many days before, where you may find yourself in a position where you too will deserve an apology from Hank Smith. It could be something minor, like blowing you off when you tell him to be nicer to his students. It could be because he has assembled the worst people on the internet and has encouraged them to attack you for daring to disagree with him, or trying to undo some of the harm he's causing to the people you care about.

The trouble with Hank Smith is, you never know exactly which version of him you're going to get.