George Ciccariello-Maher, a former associate professor of politics and global studies at Drexel University in Philadelphia, who has received death threats because of his Twitter messages in which he champions gun control and criticizes the American military, warns that the U.S. is at war with the right and white supremacists, Newsweek reports.
“We are at war, and academia is a crucial front in that war. This is why the Right is targeting campuses with thinly veiled provocations disguised as free speech. My case and many others show just how cynical such appeals are, and how little the Right cares about academic freedom,” the professor wrote on Facebook.
Ciccariello-Maher became famous in December 2016, when he wrote a tweet “All I want for Christmas is white genocide” and that “when the whites were massacred during the Haitian revolution, that was a good thing indeed.” He later explained that that was an ironic message, but Drexel assessed that that was disturbing and utterly reprehensible. Even Breitbart wrote about the professor and soon after that 10.000 signatures were collected for a petition supporting Maher’s freedom of speech. Those who signed the petition urged Drexel to “preserve academic freedom (and wit and intelligence and anti-racism) in this nasty new era of living in the United States of internet trolls.”
The professor got back in the focus in April. Back then he tweeted about an airplane passenger recognizing a U.S. soldier for his service and in October he tweeted about gun control after the mass shooting in Las Vegas, after which he was placed on leave.
“White people and men are told that they are entitled to everything. This is what happens when they don’t get what they want,” he tweeted.
Afterwards, he received death threats and he blamed Drexel for not defending his freedom of speech. The professor announced this week that he was taking a post with New York University in New York City.
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