![An Asian woman. [Ryan Li/Flickr]](https://images.dailycaller.com/image/width=960,height=411,fit=cover,f=auto/https://cdn01.dailycaller.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/9537662471_9963e74df6_b-e1460485256930.jpg "An Asian woman. [Ryan Li/Flickr]")
A horde of political science professors have been expressing tremendous outrage after the American Political Science Association (APSA) committed the incredible faux pas of putting a stock photo of an Asian woman in a tweet.
The mess began April 8, when APSA’s Twitter account posted a link to a new political science article, “The Agency and Authority of International NGOs,” which discusses the strength of non-governmental organizations in influencing human rights and other political issues around the globe. Perhaps because it is difficult to provide a suitable illustration for abstract political work, APSA included a stock photo of a smiling Asian woman taken from Getty Images. While one of the article’s authors, Wendy Wong, is an Asian woman, the photo otherwise had no obvious connection to the article.
![Screengrab of a deleted tweet by the American Political Science Association, which used a stock photo of an Asian woman. [Twitter screengrab]](https://dailycaller.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/2000px-Flag_of_Minnesota.svg_-6-620x598.png)
Screengrab of a deleted tweet by the American Political Science Association, which used a stock photo of an Asian woman. (Twitter screen grab)
“Instead of contacting us to request a photo, or choosing a stock photo that reflects the subject of our article, APSA decided to accompany this promotion with a photo of a random Asian woman,” Wong, a professor at the University of Toronto, complained on her blog Duck of Minerva. “What does the Getty Image ‘Portrait of a young woman smiling’ have to do with INGOs? Or authority? Or politics. What happened to my co-author? … Has all of my work on INGOs boiled down to some irrelevant stock image? Is it that hard to Google ‘NGO’ for images related to the work being advertised? Yea[h], ‘all Asians look alike,’ but REALLY?!”
Wong also complained that the stock woman was “obviously nonacademic,” though it’s unclear what allowed her to reach that conclusion.
Wong contacted APSA to complain, and was told the image choice was an oversight caused by a routine reliance on generic stock images. APSA deleted the tweet, but if anything that made Wong angrier.
“APSA deleted the post, rather than just replacing the image and issuing a better public apology than ‘bad choice of stock image,'” she wrote. “As though the whole thing didn’t happen. As though it boiled down to some faulty download or spur-of-moment decision, and not a systematic search of images to accompany a purposeful post. Perhaps we were too much trouble. Perhaps it was too hard to just Google something more appropriate. A lesson learned? Don’t be too angry. Be a model minority.”
Other academics have rallied behind Wong and called for APSA to make a more public apology.
I wish APSA would go beyond “bad stock image choice” to you know, an actual apology and acknowledgement. @dadakim @wendyhwong
— Ami V. Shah (@seenfromafar) April 9, 2016
new tweet, more focused: For shame, APSA, PoliSci, and IR. Cheers to @wendyhwong for writing about it. https://t.co/mzRjVGulDs
— Laura Sjoberg (@DrLauraEsq) April 9, 2016
Critics also got angry about early media coverage of the spat. When Inside Higher Ed wrote up the controversy, it was bashed for specifically saying the photo had upset women in political science.
Terrible title for article about APSA’s orientalizing tweet. Story isn’t “angry women.” C’mon @insidehighered. https://t.co/pZJIPsfNmo
— Erin Tolley (@e_tolley) April 11, 2016
APSA finally responded to the denunciations on Monday, with Executive Director Steven Rathgeb Smith issuing a full apology to Wong and promising Asian woman-related photo catastrophes would never happen again.
“APSA is committed to the highest standards of equity, diversity and inclusion and accuracy in the representation and promotion of political science scholarship,” he said. “We have implemented immediate measures to ensure these standards are uniformly upheld in our future social media programming, and we will be undertaking a rigorous monitoring and review of our editorial and posting policies on an ongoing basis.”
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