Prof: It's more admirable to kill a racist, homophobic, transphobic speaker than shout them down

Steven Shaviro had some thoughts on free speech on campus the other day, but we won’t see them on Twitter as he’s locked down his account, which makes us believe we have the right guy here. In a little rant likely inspired by the shouting down of a conservative judge at Stanford Law School, Shaviro wrote that it’s far more admirable to kill a racist, homophobic, or transphobic speaker than it is to shout them down.

“When right-wing groups invite such speakers to campus, it is precisely because they want to provoke an incident that discredits the left, and gives more publicity and validation to these reprehensible views than they could otherwise obtain” … or maybe they invite speakers to campus to hear them speak, and leftists discredit themselves by acting like toddlers having a tantrum. No one outside of Stanford would have known about the incident had the protesters not acted like animals.

Here’s Shaviro’s entire Facebook post:

So here is what I think about free speech on campus. Although I do not advocate violating federal and state criminal codes, I think it is far more admirable to kill a racist, homophobic, or transphobic speaker than it is to shout them down.

When right-wing groups invite such speakers to campus, it is precisely because they want to provoke an incident that discredits the left, and gives more publicity and validation to these reprehensible views than they could otherwise attain. 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.

In short, 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.

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.

Dear campus community,

This morning, I was made aware of a social media post by a Wayne State University professor in our Department of English.

The post stated that rather than “shouting down” those with whom we disagree, one would be justified to commit murder to silence them. 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.

We have referred this to law enforcement agencies for further review and investigation. Pending their review, we have suspended the professor with pay, effective immediately.

Of course, he’s an English professor. As this editor often says, he’s so glad he got out of college before the English department became the dumping ground for gay studies and gender studies and Marxism.

We’ll check back in a week when he’s back in the classroom. No hard feelings.

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