Prof Suspended for Post Saying It’s ‘Admirable to Kill a Racist, Homophobic, or Transphobic Speaker’
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A Michigan professor was suspended Monday for a post in which he said: “It is far more admirable to kill a racist, homophobic, or transphobic speaker than it is to shout them down.”
This came after the shouting down of Judge Kyle Duncan earlier this month at Stanford Law became a national news story. Whereas most have condemned the law students, including Stanford Law Dean Jenny Martinez, the incident has provoked novel reactions from some observers. Professor Steven Shaviro of the Wayne State Department of English took to Facebook to post his views on free speech. A screenshot of his post can be found at the Volokh Conspiracy.
“Every time protestors shout down a racist or transphobic speaker, they are indulging their own moral sense of validity at the expense of actually strengthening the very bigots against whom they are protesting,” Shaviro wrote. However, the professor did qualify his Sunday post by saying: “I do not advocate violating federal and state criminal codes.”
When the Wayne State administration learned of the post Monday, they suspended Shaviro with pay.
“We have on many occasions defended the right of free speech guaranteed by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, but we feel this post far exceeds the bounds of reasonable or protected speech. It is, at best, morally reprehensible and, at worst, criminal,” wrote Wayne State president M. Roy Wilson. “We have referred this to law enforcement agencies for further review and investigation.”
In Shaviro’s view, right-wing groups bring speakers on campus to elicit a reaction that discredits the Left.
“The protesters get blamed instead of the bigoted speaker; the university administration finds a perfect excuse to side publicly with the racists or phobes; the national and international press has a field day saying that bigots are the ones being oppressed, rather than the people those bigots actually hate being the victims of oppression,” Shaviro wrote in the Facebook post.
“The exemplary historical figure in this regard is Sholem Schwarzbard, who assassinated the anti-Semitic butcher Symon Petliura, rather than trying to shout him down. Remember that Schwarzbard was acquitted by a jury, which found his action justified,” he continued.
Schwarzbad was a Jewish and Russian-born French poet, who in 1926 assassinated Petliura, the former head of the Ukrainian People’s Republic. The poet had lost family members in the 1919 pogroms and held Petliura responsible.
Shaviro’s Facebook post has now been deleted.
